How Naperville baseball fan has been saving game's video legacy since the 1980s

Around the late 1970s, home video recorders made it possible for baseball fans to tape their favorite games and relive cherished moments years later with children, grandchildren and old friends.

I still have Beta and VHS tapes of old ballgames, and some collectors have uploaded games to YouTube.

But what about the games from decades prior to home video? Who preserved those games for future generations?

The answer is practically nobody. Local stations like WGN and national networks alike trashed their broadcasts.

Enter Naperville resident Doak Ewing of Rare Sportsfilms, whose DVD catalog is a feast for baseball historians.

You want to see highlight reels of individual teams, all-star games and World Series? How about rare footage of legends like Babe Ruth and Honus Wagner? Consult Doak's catalog and place your order.

The same goes for newsreel footage of the Go-Go Sox and an NBC Game of the Week between the Philadelphia Phillies and the legendary 1969 Chicago Cubs.

I caught up with Doak at the recent Society for American Baseball Research convention at the Palmer House in Chicago, where he set up shop in the dealer's room.

I also bought four DVDs:

• 1948 Chicago White Sox "Down on the Farm"

• Stars of Baseball 1968 and 1970

• 1966 and 1971 Chicago Cubs

• 1966 "A Look at the Sox"

Doak, who also sells DVDs of classic moments in several other sports, said he started out as a film collector, tracing his interest to his boyhood on an Ohio farm.

Doak said he convinced his dad, who was on the board of directors of the county library, to borrow from the library's collection of 16mm World Series films.

"We would watch these World Series films, like some of the ones that are right here on my table (in the dealer's room)," he said. "But this was back when they were brand new."

He began seriously building his collection of World Series films while working in marketing with the Atlanta Braves in the early 1980s.

"We were cleaning out the bowels of the stadium one day (at Fulton County Stadium) and in this storeroom down there, I found all these films. They were going to throw them out. And I thought these were too good to throw out."

They were mostly World Series films, and Doak was allowed to take reels home.

His passion for film collecting grew even more when he moved to Chicago and worked in marketing for the White Sox in the 1980s. By that time, he had about 50 films, including NFL and golf footage.

"When I first started collecting in the early '80s, there was a newspaper called The Big Reel," he said. He subscribed to it and started trading with other people.

He also found that he enjoyed watching films with other baseball fans on movie nights.

By that time, videotape had burst upon the scene. One day, someone told him, "Doak, why don't you put some of these on videotape? You'd make a million bucks."

Although the pecuniary value may have been exaggerated, the historical value of Doak's offerings is priceless.

Over the years, Doak has spared no expense to make sure the films are converted to high-quality video, with color corrected and scratches removed from the images.

Rare Sportsfilms offers more than 300 DVDs of baseball and all major sports, some of which are narrated by Doak himself.

He said he probably has in the neighborhood of 3,000 to 4,000 films, many of which are stored in a climate controlled room in his basement.

He is especially proud of the broadcast of Yankee Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series.

"That's our signature piece. It's black-and-white. It's an old kinescope."

He said someone in Oregon, answering an ad Doak had placed in The Big Reel offering to buy baseball films, wrote him a postcard telling him he had three or four baseball broadcasts on kinescope. The Oregon man had obtained them from a flea market peddler who acquired them from someone in the Armed Forces in Hawaii who ran the post theater.

They turned out to be World Series reels from the 1950s, among them the long coveted perfect game, which was kinescoped for the Armed Forces.

"After these films were to be shown, they were supposed to be destroyed. That was the agreement with Major League Baseball, NBC and the Armed Forces. And most were destroyed or forgotten about."

Doak had the pleasure of being present when Larsen, Yogi and Berra's family members viewed the rediscovered gem at a charity screening in 2007 at the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center in New Jersey.

"Don was right down in the middle of the audience. They asked him, 'Did you shake off Yogi?' He said, 'Not once.'"

At the screening, a reporter asked Doak if he had any Holy Grails. He immediately said Game 7 of the 1960 World Series between the Yankees and the Pirates, which was won on a home run by the Pirates' Bill Mazeroski.

The attorney for the estate of former Pirates partial owner Bing Crosby heard about Doak's interest and alerted him to the discovery of the kinescope of the game in Bing's wine cellar.

Anyone interested in buying Doak's DVDs can contact him by calling his office at (630) 527-8890.