Here's my answer: I watch really old ball games on YouTube. As I sit and peck at the keys right now, I'm enjoying game 7 of the 1952 World Series between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Yankees.
All sorts of people were there! Billy Martin, Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra were playing for the Yankees, with Casey Stengel managing, and the Dodgers had Pee Wee Reese, Roy Campanella, and Jackie Robinson on their side. You can watch it here and let me know how it feels to see the great stars of the 50s in their baggy flannel uniforms.
It's still the same old ball game, and yet there are differences, such as no one was wearing a batting helmet; they just went up to hit wearing a baseball cap and that was it. Before the game, we saw the starting pitchers for both teams warming up, but not in their respective bullpens. They threw from the fungo circles, an area near the first or third baseline, to a catcher squatting near the on-deck circle!
And in the first inning, the biggest difference took me back to the old days. An errant throw from Yankee third baseman Gil McDougald sailed past his first baseman and hit Dodger first base coach Jake Pitler on the leg. And the announcer, Red Barber, said it was the first time he had seen that happen in his 23 years of calling games.
But there was no instant replay, so those who were staring into a mug of Old Frothingslosh beer in some tavern or looking down at their newspaper or slicing a salami sandwich in half missed it, and you know what they say about a picture being a thousand of Red's words...if you missed it the first time then, you were SOL (short on luck).
Remember, this was 1952. Television was just a baby then, and the production techniques were rudimentary at best: have a couple of cameras aimed at the game and hand the announcer a microphone. Nothing fancy.
For instant replay to even be available, there had to be a system of immediate recording, which came along in 1956 when Ampex developed a system to record on video tape, but without slow motion, instant replay or picture freeze, all features that the phone in your pocket has today.
In 1962, ABC TV had a Friday night show called the Fight Of The Week, and on March 24, they showed a bout between Benny Paret and Emile Griffith, with commentator Don Dunphy describing video of the fight just after it ended. This was the first use of replay in sports. It should also be mentioned that Paret died ten days after the fight. He suffered a massive brain injury. There were calls for investigations, and boxing lost a great deal of its popularity on television afterwards.
If you were watching the Army-Navy football game on December 7, 1963 (I was!) you saw the first instant replay on live tv. It was awkward and cumbersome, but CBS made it work and showed Army quarterback Rollie Stichweh scoring a touchdown.
Then, the announcer, Lindsey Nelson, had to say over and over, "Ladies and gentlemen, Army DID NOT score again!" He had to explain six ways to Sunday that they had shown the play right after the play was played.
Now, on every thing from a touchdown run to a great hit in baseball, we are treated to instant replay, slo-motion replay, replay from six different angles, and all sorts of other electronic wizardry.
Those who go to see ballgames in person and then stay home to watch one might now feel that the experiences are quite different. At the event in person, you see what you see, and unless you look at the giant JumboTron scoreboard out there, that's all you see, just like in the old days of TV, before they made it "better."
By the way, one thing hasn't changed. Players returning to the dugout after home runs or whatever are still assaulted by the others on the bench, with fanny smacks (then) and fist bumps (now). We will have to see how social distancing figures into all this.
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