To the average Dodger fan who can't get out to Ebbets Field to see a ball game, the next best thing is to tune in on Red Barber. That's what the Dodger fan thinks and he's wrong. Next to seeing a ball game, the best thing is to sit in the studio with Mr. Barber and watch and listen as he takes the skeletonized report of a game coming over the telegraph wire and wraps up the bare bones with flubdub and pads it out and feeds it to the customers so it sounds as though he, and they, were seeing the plays.

"This is just a business," Mr. Barber explained before the wire opened for the third game of Brooklyn's series in St. Louis. "We don't try to fake it. We have the telegraph sounder right in here near the microphone where it can be heard because we don't try to kid the listeners that this is anything but a telegraphed report.

"From spring training on, Connie Desmond and I are studying the mannerisms of the players in the National League and memorizing them so that when we do a game like this we can visualize them on the field. For instance, I remember how Ed Stanky stands at the plate, how he crouches lower and lower when he's trying for a base on balls. So when I describe it over the air I'm not faking. I know he's doing that."

For a "reconstructed" game a telegraph operator in the studio copies the wire report on a typewriter. Barber stands beside him talking into a microphone which is hung over one of those thingummies that orators use to support their notes and elbows. Because this is radio, the thingummy is painted robin's egg blue. Although Barber sits down in his booth at Ebbets Field, he prefers to stand in the airless studio because sitting makes him loggy.

At his elbow, propped up on a sort of music rack, are the line-ups of the two teams with the current batting average of each player. John Paddock, a left-handed statistician who is a cousin of the great sprinter Charley Paddock, keeps the averages up to the minute, writing in a new figure after each new time at bat. He doesn't do the arithmetic himself but uses a "Ready Reckoner," one of those little books that show at a glance what a man is hitting when he has 104 hits for 396 times at bat. A passionate Dodger fan, Paddock daren't talk during a broadcast but roots for his guys with ardent gestures.

Here's the way Barber builds up a play:

The telegraph types: "Reiser up -- bats left."

"And here's Pete Reiser," says Red. "Hitting .283, 106 base hits. He's having a tough year, fighting that bad shoulder. Dickson will pitch very carefully to him. Reiser up, square stance, he's one of those square-built guys, not very tall. Strength is not necessarily dependent upon height. The Cards are playing this fellow a step in because of his speed." . . .

All this time there's been nothing over the wire except the bare fact that Reiser is up. The rest all comes out of Barber's memory and knowledge, filling the gap until the typewriter adds: "B 1 OS (Ball one, outside)." . . . "Dickson comes down," Barber says, "and misses the plate. Ball one, out- side." . . . Or "S I C (Strike one, called)." . . . "Dickson comes in with one," Barber says, "and Reiser is caught lookin'. Strike one, called."

The telegrapher writes: "H. Walker up -- bunt, foul -- hit -- Walker singled to right."

Barber says, "Harry Walker, who's always nervous and pickin' at that cap of his, has to have it sittin' just right. He cuts at the first pitch and tries to bunt it, fouls it off. One strike. Melton working very deliberately. That's his custom, you know. Walker, with that two-toned bat of his -- swings on it, bloops a single to right, turns first and stops as his brother Dixie fields the ball."

The Cardinals get Harry Walker and Stan Musial on the bases, and Barber reminds his listeners that they're there: "Walker and Musial takin' a lead off first and second. They both of 'em can run like scalded cats, you know."

It infuriates the announcer when a friend remarks after a broadcast, "What were you doing reporting all those pick-off throws to first base. Trying to fill in?"

It infuriates him, because he doesn't add a pitch or play that doesn't happen. He merely embroiders each play with words. He can't read Morse code and doesn't want to learn because he doesn't want to know too soon how the next play is coming out. "If you know in advance what's happening, you're no longer a broadcaster," he says. "You're a dramatic artist." Ordinarily, he waits until the telegrapher finishes a sentence before he announces the play.

Once, however, he got himself trapped. The Dodgers had Stanky on first with the tying run, and the operator wrote: "Stanky was picked off first, Dickson to Musial." . . .

At that point Barber said, putting a lift of excitement into his voice, because after all, he's a Brooklyn fan: "Dickson wheels, throws, and Stanky is picked off."

"But," the operator wrote, and went on to report how Stanky, trapped off the bag, fled toward second, jockeyed, retreated, and finally regained first base safely. Barber had a hell of a time talking fast enough to fill in until he could get the play straight on the air.

There were a couple of excusable errors when Barber or Desmond, reading over the telegrapher's shoulder, mistook a swing for a called strike, or vice versa. Generally, though, the broadcast was painstakingly accurate, including only the telegraphed facts and the "color" provided by the announcer.

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