ALL-STAR GAME: MEDIA : Broadcast Armada Sails Into Anaheim--Even Fan Reagan

When broadcast giant Red Barber called his first All-Star game more than half a century ago, featuring the likes of Lou (the Iron Horse) Gehrig and Jimmie (Double X) Foxx, he had little in the way of high-tech gadgetry or armies of assistants to aid him.

“There wasn’t anything terribly exciting or dramatic about it,” the now-retired Barber--longtime voice of the Brooklyn Dodgers--recalled in a recent interview from his Florida home. “You went into a cramped little (radio) booth with a single sound engineer, and you broadcast the game. It was that simple.”

Today, more than the score card has changed.

When the national spotlight shines Tuesday on Anaheim for the 60th playing of baseball’s annual All-Star game, a staggering array of nearly a thousand print and broadcast media representatives will be on hand to relay the balls and strikes, the highlights and trivia notes, to millions of fans around the world in words, pictures and sounds.

NBC--the media outlet for an estimated 51 million people who will watch the game live--is spending $8 million to import 90 production people, a Goodyear blimp camera, 12 stationary cameras, two hand-held minicams, 13 videotape replay machines, 3 1/2 miles of audio cable and more.

The “and more” in this case includes ex-Chicago Cubs announcer Ronald Reagan, who will be making what NBC officials say is a broadcast first when the former President gives a special on-the-air appearance in the booth.

Posing potential problems for the network, however, are late-afternoon shadows--a result of the 5:35 p.m. game time necessary to capture the East Coast prime-time viewing audience.

“Those aren’t ideal conditions to televise a game in or to watch it in, but there’s not much we could do,” said Kevin Monoghan, sports information director for NBC.

Shadows or not, the extravaganza marks a chance for Angels planners to show the viewing world that there is a place called Orange County that is distinct from Los Angeles and Disneyland.

Team information director Tim Meade, coordinating press coverage, said that with the eyes of the baseball world generally focused on Los Angeles and the Dodgers, “a lot of people forget about the California Angels and this part of the Southland. This is our chance to make them remember, and we’re not going to waste that opportunity.”

Toward that end, the team brought in Johnny Grant, the Emmy-winning producer who oversees the Hollywood Walk of Fame, to orchestrate a weeklong series of parades, tributes and other events at Anaheim Stadium that will culminate in Tuesday’s game.

“We wanted to make this into a kind of jubilee in celebration of this whole area and what it has to offer,” Grant said.

“You can’t measure what this attention means to Orange County,” added Steve Bailey, who has announced baseball games locally for KMPC since 1951. “It further establishes the area as a home to major league baseball and a growing urban center in its own right. Just think of all the stories that will be coming out of here with an Anaheim dateline on them.”

Among the destinations for those stories, baseball officials said, will be Japan, Latin America, and--for the first time for an All-Star game--the Soviet Union, which has reporters from its Tass news agency in town to cover the event.

The media rush on Anaheim began in earnest Sunday, as dozens of reporters, cameramen and others in the industry filtered into the Anaheim Hilton to collect their press credentials for the game. Major league baseball expects to give out more than 700 credentials, in addition to those taken by NBC.

Among them are representatives of local newspapers and broadcast stations around the United States and Canada who are in Anaheim to keep a close eye on the performances of their hometown players and to gather quotes from those players afterward.

Also on hand are special-interest media representatives, such as: Curt Clemons, who will do pre- and post-game interviews with black All-Stars for New York radio station WWRL and 107 other black-oriented stations across the country; Ismael G. Reyes of Houston, who will give Spanish-speaking listeners around the United States and Latin America a close look at the Latino ballplayers, and Kenneth V. Allan of Burbank, who will report back to U.S. troops around the world through Armed Forces radio and TV.

“My job,” said Clemons, “is to see that the black players--the guys who might not get on the air otherwise--are heard and seen by our listeners.”

While the task of getting hundreds of media people to their accommodations promptly, getting them credentials and helping them set up might seem a logistical nightmare, team officials and others involved in the processed say preparations are going smoothly so far.

“You always report back on how you’re treated by the host city,” said Reyes of the Spanish-language network, “and so far everyone’s been very courteous and helpful. It’s been terrific, and I’ve really been impressed with the whole area.”