Scott- your video of the 1949 World Series is from MLB Productions. They began selling tapes in the early 1980s for the World Series from 1943-forward. Their early catalogs list the tapes at $29.99 which was huge in those days!
They started adding team highlight videos they had in storage dating back to the 1960s but they were very eradic as to what they could come up with. Those were issued mostly in blue cases with the MLB logo. Some went for as much as $49.99. They went to colorful paper caes as early as 1982.
Doak Ewing of Rare Sports Films did a much better job of "harvesting" old highlight teams from the clubs especially the Braves back into the 1940s. His are cleaned up and nice while the MLB Production early films were a little spotty.
MLB teamed up with Scotch and issued a great series of team histories beginning in 1987 and that kicked off the baseball video explosion that was probably in response to the amazing success of NFL Films.
The early videos are not holding up well, they really deteriorate with time, I keep mine in a climate controlled environment but who knows. At this time I have over 775 baseball videos, DVDs and even more football with the proliferation of college highlight films.
Just picked up a documentary on Disco Night in Cleveland!
By the way the toughest baseball films for me to find are minor league histories and highlight films. If anybody has any and can share the info ?I would appreciate it, I can add it to my want list and bibliography.
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