We remember Don Larsen who turns 90 today. He pitched the only post-season perfect game in the 1956 World Series.
Thanks to technology, Cubans got to see this gem on TV.
It happened because of some rather creative us of existing technology, as we see in this report:
Pioneering and innovative use of technology in pre-Castro Cuba included a major baseball event: using an airplane as a relay to bring the 1955 World Series as a live TV broadcast to Cuban audiences.
That year Cuban fans were thrilled to see—live—Cuban baseball player, Edmundo ‘Sandy’ Amorós, left fielder for the Brooklyn Dodgers save the game with bases loaded, by catching a drive by NY Yankee Yogi Berra and turning it into a double play at the bottom of the seventh inning, winning the 1955 World Series.
To make this possible (long before satellite TV) engineers custom-equipped a Cubana Airlines DC-3 which flew a circular pattern between Key West and Havana, acting as a relay transmission station for the live TV signal. The airplane took off a half hour before the game and remained airborne throughout, flights lasting about three hours.
And then in 1956 Cubans got to watch the one and still only perfect game in baseball history.
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