APSU professor Phil Wood brings baseball history to life in classroom
By: Ethan Steinquest February 7, 2025
Phil Wood, an adjunct professor at APSU and former MASN television and radio host for the Washington Nationals, in his Clarksville home. | Photo by Ethan Steinquest
CLARKSVILLE, Tenn. - Austin Peay State University adjunct professor Phil Wood’s sports memorabilia collection boasts treasures like a baseball from the 1924 World Series and a postcard signed by Babe Ruth, but his most mysterious item may be a small blue pass to the long-gone Washington Auditorium.
Wood had spent years researching the pass and discovered it advertised a mechanical display that brought baseball’s away games to life before the rise of commercial sports broadcasting. As a longtime television and radio host for the Washington Nationals, he finds special significance in relics from that era.
“I see a lot of things from my collection as a form of time travel, going back to when and where each item was,” he said. “What makes this pass collectible is that it mentions the Washington Senators - it’s a remnant of a building that’s long gone and a baseball team that no longer exists.”
The historic pass nearly joined the auditorium and the Senators in obscurity when it slipped from Wood’s folder during a rainy walk across campus. Fortunately, its clear plastic holder protected it from the elements and caught the attention of Dr. Chad Brooks, dean of the College of Graduate Studies.
“I picked it up, and once I returned to my office, curiosity got the better of me,” he said. “The card read, ‘Coleman’s New Invention: Television’s Only Rival.’ That alone sounded fascinating, so I turned to AI to learn more.”
Brooks said an AI analysis suggested the pass was nearly 100 years old and could be related to an African American baseball game, so he emailed several faculty and staff for help locating the owner. Dr. Tim Winters, the director of the Honors Program, ultimately figured it out and returned the item to Wood.
“It was amazing just to hold that small piece of baseball history and to have it here in the office, but the look on Phil’s face when he saw it was incredible,” Winters said. “He looked like a kid attending his first big league game. He was clearly happy to have it back, because I think he never expected to see it again.”
While Brooks and Winters saw a fascinating historical artifact, Wood thought he had lost what is likely the last of its kind.
“I knew it probably wasn’t replaceable because of its uniqueness, so it was a nice surprise to get it back,” Wood said. “It’s one of those things where the mystery or myth surrounding it is as interesting as the piece itself.”
Solving the mystery of “Coleman’s New Invention”
Wood’s wife bought him the pass from an antique shop in Ellicott City, Maryland, around 20 years ago, but he discovered its significance only recently.
“At that point, I didn’t remember the Washington Auditorium because its life as a venue was very short,” Wood said. “It opened in January 1925, and as an entertainment venue it lasted about 10 years. Then they turned it into offices for the federal government, and it was torn down and hasn’t been there since [around] 1958.”
Once Wood learned the Washington Auditorium’s history, he realized its time as a venue predated television as a mass medium. Many baseball teams, including the Senators, were not yet broadcasting their games via radio, so the concept of “Television’s Only Rival” became even more intriguing.
“I kept researching, and it dawned on me,” he said. “How could people watch a baseball game before television if they weren’t actually there? It’s easy to find photographs. Most of them have been taken outside newspaper offices, and it’s this big wall-mounted thing that shows a baseball diamond with lights and the lineup for each team.”
The device relied on a combination of the telegraph and strategic lighting to recreate games. As play-by-play updates came in, an operator activated lights on the display board to show runners moving between bases and mark where each ball was hit.
From there, the last piece of the puzzle was finding out who the “Coleman” referenced on the pass was.
“It took me years to find out, but it’s the same Coleman that makes camping equipment,” Wood said. “I did a lot of research and discovered that Popular Mechanics did a story on this thing, which is ‘Coleman’s New Invention,’ in 1924. It’s a great big one that would fill up the entire screen area of a movie theater, and it would have been put up on the stage in the auditorium.”
Hands-on history and baseball conversations
The Washington Auditorium pass is one of many historical items Wood uses to bring baseball history to life for Austin Peay students in the Honors Program and the Department of Communication.
“A lot of stuff that I bring into the baseball class, like jerseys and bats, I let people handle them,” he said. “You likely won’t get that chance in any other class, or in real life. You can’t go on the field at a ball game and feel the guy’s uniform.”
From the evolution of pitches like the fastball to the deeper stories told through baseball card stats, Wood’s students learn how America’s pastime has evolved alongside technology and culture.
“Eight weeks isn’t enough time to teach you to become an authority, but I can make you conversant in baseball,” he said. “That’s important because there’s a minor league team in Nashville, and believe me, in five to seven years, there’ll be a major league team. If you want to work in sports broadcasting, they’re going to tell you what to cover, and finding out what you don’t know is a valuable part of success.”