Gehrig, and the tradition continues today. The heyday of Wheaties came in the 1930s and early 1940s, as testimonials peaked from nearly every sport imaginable. Among the many testimonials included were: baseball stars, managers, and trainers; broadcasters; football stars and coaches; circus stars and rodeo; livestock breeders; a railroad engineer; horsemen and jockeys; a big-game hunter; automobile racers; an aviator; a speedboat driver; an explorer; and parachutists. Wheaties maintained brand recognition through its definitive association with sports, and its distinctive orange boxes. It became so popular that in the 1939 All-star game, 46 of the 51 players endorsed the cereal. In the months following, Wheaties became one of the sponsors of the very first televised sports broadcast to allow commercials. On August 29, 1939, NBC television presented the first major league baseball game ever televised between the Cincinnati Reds and the Brooklyn Dodgers to approximately 500 television set owners in New York City over experimental station W2XBS (now WNBC). Red Barber was the play-by-play broadcaster. Although full commercial television would not be authorized until July 1, 1941, the FCC allowed commercials to be inserted in this particular, special event broadcast as a test. Barber had to ad-lib three live commercials, one for each Dodger sponsor. For Procter & Gamble, he held up a bar of Ivory Soap. For Socony, Barber put on a Mobil gas station cap and raised a can of oil. For General Mills, he poured Wheaties into a bowl, added milk and sugar on top (some reports say he also sliced a banana), then proclaimed "Now that's the breakfast of champions." "There was not a cue card in sight", Barber said. A measure of the product's familiarity is the reference in the 1941 baseball song Joltin' Joe DiMaggio, performed by Les Brown and his orchestra during DiMaggio's record hitting streak. In the song, DiMaggio gets a clutch base hit, and the band awards him "a case of Wheaties". Tagline Eaties For Wheaties The Breakfast of Champions You Better Eat Your Wheaties Ties with Ronald Reagan Wheaties radio broadcasting in the 1930s touched the early career of Ronald Reagan, who was at the time a sports broadcast announcer in Des Moines, Iowa. He was asked to create play-by-play recreations of Chicago Cubs baseball games using transcribed telegraph reports; his job performance in this role led to his selection in 1937 as the most popular Wheaties announcer in the