Except for the lucky ones who could be at the ballpark, New Yorkers during the Glory Days received their baseball news through the filter of the mass media: newspapers, radio, and, increasingly, television. Indeed, while radio ushered in the decade, the age of television ushered it out. Throughout, local press abounded, with sportswriters bringing the latest game and clubhouse gossip to newsstands and doorsteps.

Before television became widespread, transforming the finances as well as the experience of the game, fans relied on the eyes and words of individual sportswriters: like Dick Young, Dave Anderson, Arthur Daley, and Red Smith; and on the voices of radio announcers: notably Red Barber, Vin Scully, and Connie Desmond for the Dodgers, Mel Allen and later Red Barber for the Yankees, and Russ Hodges for the Giants. But New Yorkers did not even need to stay at home to listen, because during the warm summer months before air conditioning locked people comfortably indoors they could walk down the street and hear every pitch via the relay of radios as they passed open apartment windows and shops.