FTFA:

Exactly when dugout phones began to be used in baseball is unclear. The Hall of Fame could not pin down a date; nor could Major League Baseball. A search through the archives of The New York Times found mentions of dugout phones dating at least as far back as the mid-1950s.

A Game of Inches cites a 1930 reference to a bullpen phone at Yankee Stadium  

It was hard to figure out where they were going with this article, until they finally said they can't just use cell phones, by MLB rule:

According Peter Woodfork, a senior vice president for operations with Major League Baseball, the only regulation is that the phones remain a single line that connects the dugout to the bullpen, with no outside calling capability.

So then the question is, is it worthwhile to have a customized wireless connection of some sort, and the answer is no - The dugout and the bullpen are the two points of communication. Maybe they'd call from the mound on occasion, but really.

And so far as those breakdowns go - c'mon, have a backup visual signal plan, will you? There aren't that many relievers that you would get up. If the pen is out of sight, station an intermediate signal relay person.

As a phone phreak I just had to read this article, even though it was short on technical details.

I found it interesting that they rejected the i580 which is an iDEN subscriber unit. I volunteered about 10 years ago with a community festival project here in south Florida, which is right in the backyard of Motorola's plant in Plantation. One of the other volunteers worked for Motorola and arranged the loan of enough iDEN portables to meet our needs. Long story short, by the end of the day they were hurling those iDEN portables at me while cussing about how difficult they were to use, most of them accustomed to plain old 2-way radios in the past. Many times simpler is better.

When you're accustomed to picking up a phone and just waiting for the other guy to answer, anything else can seem needlessly complicated. There are modernized VoIP versions of the ringdown private line, but the "user experience" should be substantially the same. Trying to junk it up with undesired features is prone to rejection.

Now, if they put a coin phone in there for Tony LaRussa to use, he'd probably go broke over the course of a baseball season. (Did I get the snark right?)

Would it put illegal for a team to use their own cellphones to communicate with the bullpen? Could they text?

Would it put illegal for a team to use their own cellphones to communicate with the bullpen?

Could be. The No Fun League just fined Troy Polamalu $10K for calling his wife from the sidelines just to say he was OK after being removed from the game for concussion-like symptoms after a hard tackle since he has a history of concussions.

since he has a history of concussions.

And dandruff.

There are bad hair days, and then there are bad hair decades.

Would it put illegal for a team to use their own cellphones to communicate with the bullpen? Could they text?

It would be illegal since the requirement for the phones is that they can only call each other and not anyone on the outside.

Little kids have the cellphones with only two buttons - "Mommy" and "Emergency". Some cell phone manufacturer could do that for MLB really easily.

Little kids have the cellphones with only two buttons - "Mommy" and "Emergency". Some cell phone manufacturer could do that for MLB really easily.

I'd love to see TLR call his Mommy

Steve Garvey's kids have a "Who's Your Daddy" button.

Sadly, the line is usually busy whenever a kid calls. He really should get call waiting.

Yeah, I'm not seeing a big reason to change, here. If the rule is that the communications have to be between the dugout and bullpen only, a hard wire seems like the best, simplest option.

It hasn't always been the case that the phones had no outside calling capability. There are stories about how bullpen guys used the phone to order food, call the other bullpen, and Moe Drabowsky supposedly called Hong Kong one night.

Could be. The No Fun League just fined Troy Polamalu $10K for calling his wife from the sidelines just to say he was OK after being removed from the game for concussion-like symptoms after a hard tackle since he has a history of concussions.

That's outrageous.

Moe Drabowsky supposedly called Hong Kong one night.

There is also a story of Drabowsky using the bullpen phone to call the other team's bullpen (a fomer team of his) to get a releiver warmed up at an unlikely time. Perhaps stuff like this led to the requirement of a direct line without the ability to even reach other parts of the ballpark.

As a phone phreak I

As a what?

As a phone phreak I

As a what?

It's an old term. Very big in the mid-late 70's and early 80's among the geek set. Sometimes meant someone who was just into phone technology, but more frequently meant those who found ways to make free long distance calls.

I probably still have a blue box around here somewhere...

It's an old term. Very big in the mid-late 70's and early 80's among the geek set. Sometimes meant someone who was just into phone technology, but more frequently meant those who found ways to make free long distance calls.

As a kid in the 70s, we straddled two phone areas had two party lines, whereby on occasion we couldn't call anyone because they were in use. When we made long-distance calls an operater would come on and ask us what number we were calling from. As a teen in the 80s at some point I decided to try giving them a random number. Then, I made a LOT of calls. My brother's Hustler magazines may have been involved. I spent at least a year in terror that I was going to get everyone in the house arrested for some type of fraud. It never happened, ever. No letter, no call, no nothing from the phone company.

Do you have any idea if these calls were all simply written off? I can't be the only party-line holder who did this.

Now, if they put a coin phone in there for Tony LaRussa to use, he'd probably go broke over the course of a baseball season. (Did I get the snark right?)

Just to be safe, you should probably throw in a remark about drunk-dialing, too.

Do you have any idea if these calls were all simply written off? I can't be the only party-line holder who did this.

Far as I know, yes -- at least, I never heard about anyone getting busted for this.

Phone phreakers, on the other hand, absolutely did get busted rather a lot.