A SPORTS TREASURE IN GAME SHOWS.

Byline: TOM HOFFARTH The Media

``There's something here you've got to see,'' David Schwartz says as he pops a Beta tape into the machine on his desk and motions to the TV monitor. It's the Nov. 26, 1959 black-and-white episode of the ``To Tell The Truth'' game show as the three silhouettes take their position on the stage.

``My name is Don Drysdale,'' says Don Drysdale, wearing a Dodgers uniform with No. 53 and an interlocking L.A. cap.

``My name is Don Drysdale,'' says a second man, wearing a business suit.

``My name is Don Drysdale,'' says a third man, wearing a cowboy hat and Western outfit.

``One of these men is a pitcher for the World Champion Los Angeles Dodgers,'' says the show's host, Bud Collyer, as panelists Monique Van Vooren, Don Ameche, Kitty Carlisle and Tom Poston begin to size up who's telling the truth.

Schwartz leans back in his chair and smiles. As a program screener and unofficial TV and game show historian for the Game Show Network, he'll often come across these kind of quirky moments while logging information about the infancy of the medium and have to stop and look in amazement.

``Baseball was on TV then, but only a real fan from that time might be familiar with the faces of some players,'' Schwartz says. ``For the most part, a panelist on this show who probably isn't up on sports wouldn't recognize Don Drysdale. So that's why it worked.''

An athlete thriving in today's crush of mass media and saturated TV exposure, where viewers have repeated video highlights and Internet access, might not be able to process a time when someone like Drysdale could appear live on a national television game show next to two schmoes pretending to be him and actually fool an audience. (For the record, Ameche disqualified himself from guessing because he recognized Drysdale, and the other three picked him correctly.)

But the other incredible aspect of TV shows like this that have been found (many on kinescope), restored and are now on digital Beta tape available for an endless loop of reruns on cable is the realization that there's a treasure of sports history buried in the most unusual places.

And it's someone like Schwartz - a lifelong Dodgers fan who was born in New York, grew up in the San Fernando Valley and now amassed his own extensive video library at his home in Canoga Park - who gets to uncover these gems among the 60,000 episodes of shows in GSN's possession.

``Inside these vaults are a who's who of pop culture,'' said Schwartz, a Taft High graduate (1969) who majored in radio-TV and film at Cal State Northridge and worked in programming at KIIS-FM and KRLA-AM radio stations before joining GSN when it started in 1994.

``Where else could you expect to come across Cy Young or Ty Cobb on any kind of TV show? But they show up on these game shows and are interviewed, talk about their careers. Ted Williams, Roy Campanella, Jackie Robinson, Willie Mays, Satchel Paige, Wilt Chamberlain. ... It's amazing we still have them considering all the tapes that have deteriorated or been lost.''

Young, according to Schwartz's research, appeared on ``I've Got a Secret'' on April 13, 1955, less than seven months before baseball's all-time wins leader died. Cobb's appearance on the same show and in the same year was six years before baseball's cantankerous all-time hits leader (at the time) died. Robinson was a mystery guest on ``I've Got a Secret'' in 1957 and on ``What's My Line'' in 1969, the latter just three years before his death.

Schwartz returned from the library room across the hall from his office in the GSN building in Culver City across from the Sony studio lot and produced a tape of a very young Chamberlain on a 1961 episode of ``What's My Line?'' as the mystery guest - where panelist Arlene Francis surprisingly figures out he's ``Wilt the Stilt'' from the Globetrotters, although he was then with the Philadelphia Warriors. Host John Daly then does an awkward interview asking about how many field goals he had the previous season.

Mickey Mantle was just 19 when he appeared on the May, 1951 debut of ``It's News To Me'' on CBS, where panelists tried to guess how the person had made recent news. For Mantle, it was because he just got his first major-league hit. A year later, Mantle was on ``I've Got a Secret'' to reveal that he was the youngest father in Major League Baseball. A year after that, he was on CBS' ``What's My Line?'' and ABC's ``The Name's The Same.'' All those episodes are in GSN storage.

Since New York was where most of the shows originated, it was easier for athletes from that area to come on - not just as mystery guests but as imposters on ``To Tell The Truth,'' which is where future Dallas Cowboys coach Tom Landry (then an assistant with the New York Giants) found himself in a 1959 episode trying to fool the panel into believing he was Father William A. Lising, a missionary who had logged the most air miles. Yankees players such as Ralph Houk (before he became their manager) and future Hall of Fame broadcaster Jerry Coleman also pulled off imposter roles.

Most of these pre-1960 episodes of ``What's My Line?'' and ``To Tell The Truth'' air between 3 and 4 a.m. on GSN during its ``Black and White'' hour. Phil Rizutto (May 17), Sal Maglie (May 20), George Mikan (May 23), and Frank Gifford (May 28) are on upcoming episodes.

According to ``The Encyclopedia of TV Game Shows,'' which Schwartz co-authored, the sports-themed game shows that evolved during the '60s and '70s drew many more athletes, especially with the Dick Enberg-hosted ``Sports Challenge.'' But game shows also gave sportscasters like Enberg and Vin Scully a taste of something different.

Enberg, the Angels broadcaster and future network star, did ``The Perfect Match,'' ``Baffle,'' and ``Three For the Money'' between 1967 and 1975. Scully did ``It Takes Two'' in 1969, and four seasons of a CBS weekend series called ``Challenge of the Sexes'' in the mid '70s. He also had his own daytime celebrity talk show, ``The Vin Scully Show,'' in 1973 - all 60 episodes are in CBS' vault, but Schwartz has managed to find a copy of one to put in his collection of more than 2,000 tapes and DVDs.

ESPN, which started its own game show in 1988 with ``Boardwalk and Baseball's Super Bowl of Sports Trivia,'' has since come out with ``Stump The Schwab,'' ``Teammates,'' ``I'll Do Anything,'' and ``Beg, Borrow and Deal.'' They'll all soon be logged into Schwartz's computer for future reference. Fifty years from now, the same reaction may be had by those looking at digital, HDTV flashbacks to the days when a Chris Berman or Stuart Scott hosted their game shows, or to the athlete guests they had on.

Which is why someone like Schwartz realizes the historic value in having them all documented and saved now.

``I had no idea that these classic shows featured all this kind of talent and celebrities, because almost all of these shows were on at a time before I began watching TV,'' said Schwartz. ``It's was fascinating to go back and view moments in TV history and see people in their prime, or even before the beginning of their careers. Even though we are repeating shows, they are still first-run to someone.''

SOUND BYTES

WHAT SMOKES

--The last four years of Bob Costas' ``On The Record'' for HBO became a mish-mash of topics, but sports are supposed to be more the focus of the renamed ``Costas Now'' series for the premium cable channel that starts tonight at 9 p.m. Chats with NBA commissioner David Stern and actor Billy Crystal and a panel discussion with Charles Barkley, Cris Collinsworth and John McEnroe are included in the first of the hour-long monthly shows. Bring on Triumph The Insult Dog each time (as Costas did once last year), and we'll never miss it.

--A fight that some boxing writers are calling the greatest they'd ever seen has prompted Showtime to offer multi-rebroadcasts - including tonight at 11 - of Diego Corrales comeback decision over Jose Luis Castillo in the lightweight unification title fight last Saturday.

--The second season of ``NASCAR Drivers: 360'' debuts tonight (FX, 7:30, after the NASCAR Busch Series race coverage).

WHAT CHOKES

--The more we're forced to listen to Steve Lyons do color work on the Dodgers' TV games, the easier it is to understand why he once dropped his pants to shake out dirt during a big-league game. During Monday's FSN telecast from St. Louis, a shot of Cardinals play-by-play man Joe Buck drew this response from Lyons: ``Is there a better play-by-play announcer in baseball?'' Broadcast mate Charley Steiner, trying to bail Lyons out, said: ``I think our guy,'' a reference to Vin Scully. Maybe because Scully wasn't on the trip - which is the reason why Lyons was doing the game in the first place - it slipped his mind. It took Lyons a few seconds to qualify his remark, saying Buck was one of ``the best of the new, young announcers.'' Lyons, who may someday hope to work with Buck on the Fox national telecasts if Tim McCarver someday moves on, is entitled to his opinion. But the Dodgers had to realize these kind of knucklehead comments could come out of his mouth before they hired him.

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SOUND BYTES (see text)

BY TOM HOFFARTH