It isn't as if the better team lost the World Series because the Detroit Tigers looked like a Babe Ruth League team on defense. With all the throwing errors and the outfielders falling down, I thought they were filming a movie called The Keystone Kops Go To The World Series.
Next year, the World Series is scheduled to start on a Tuesday instead of a Saturday. According to reports, FOX is the prime mover for this change. In the TV business, Saturday night is a sinkhole for TV ratings because Saturday night is "go-out-on-a-date-night" and not "sit-down-and-watch-TV-night". Even worse in the autumn, lots of sports fans have already gotten their "sports fix" for the day watching a smorgasbord of college football games in the afternoon/early evening.
This year, the World Series began on Saturday and drew an 8.0 rating; for the second game on Sunday night, the ratings jumped to 11.6. FOX wants to build momentum into the Series and so it does not want to be digging itself out of a ratings hole created by having the first game on Saturday night. So, the new MLB TV contract calls for the World Series to start with games on Tuesday/Wednesday with Thursday as an off day and then Friday/Saturday/Sunday. If needed the Series will conclude on Tuesday/Wednesday. That makes for only one Saturday night game instead of the two that can happen under the current model.
One more World Series item. Baseball is a summer game; remember the title of that famous book, The Boys of Summer. Football is a game for autumn and winter; remember John Facenda intoning the virtues of "the frozen tundra of Lambeau Field…" Now can you please explain how the World Series seems always to be played outdoors in anything but summer conditions while the Super Bowl is intentionally sited in places with a dome or warm weather?
Now that the baseball season is over, the people who write about baseball and talk about it on radio and TV need to create stories to keep themselves relevant. Notice that I said "create stories" here because that's precisely what some will be doing starting very soon. And one of the creations will be the righteousness or not of Mark McGwire on the Hall of Fame ballot this year for the first time. Every once in a while, some journalist will climb up on a very high horse and lecture the rest of the populace about how journalists are there merely to report the news and not to make the news. It's all so noble, you know; it's amazing that all of us cretins out here can possibly begin to understand how lucky we are to have these selfless folks looking out for us and helping us to live out our meager existence. Remember all that each and every time you hear any of these folks discussing Mark McGwire on the Hall of Fame ballot.
For the record, that's not even news. Every player who played ten years in the major leagues gets his name on the Hall of Fame ballot five years after he retires. Unless McGwire announces a comeback and signs a contract in the next six weeks - or so - he's on the ballot; we've known that to be the case for the last five years. We also know about his alleged steroid use and his pathetic appearance in front of the Congressional Committee a year and a half ago. There's no news there. So, why will all those things be written and retold over the next couple of months? Because the reporters are making it a story and making themselves part of the story about the upcoming vote. If the ethics of journalism were to be honored here, we'd hear nothing about this until they announced the result of the vote - - which by the way is the result of the actions of the Baseball Writers Association of America meaning that journalists created that story too and have ever since the Hall of Fame has been in existence.
Mark McGwire said he did not want to talk about the past. Well, wouldn't it be wonderful to elect him to the Hall of Fame and for him to have to give an induction speech. I wonder how that would work out without using just a few past tense verbs…
With the baseball free-agent season almost upon us, I've read and heard a lot about Aramis Ramirez being a hot commodity this year and maybe one of the top two or three players "out there" assuming that the Cubs don't re-sign him. I'm sorry, but I don't get that. When the Cubs really needed him to be a stud early this year after Derrick Lee got hurt, Ramirez crawled into a hole and was seen only slightly more often than Punxsutawney Phil. Wherever he winds up, I'm sure the local fans will appreciate the way he walks to first on infield ground balls and his defensive range, which despite rumors to the contrary is in fact greater than your typical headstone.
The baseball managerial carousel is spinning. The Padres decided to let the Giants talk to Padres' manager Bruce Bochy and those talks led to Bochy leaving the Padres to take the job with the Giants. All Bochy has done for the Padres is to stay there since 1995 and win the last two division championships. [For perspective, when Bochy arrived in San Diego, Tommy LaSorda was managing the Dodgers and Joe Torre was managing the Cardinals.] I guess that's not enough for new Padres' CEO, Sandy Alderson; supposedly, he wants to run a Moneyball franchise and Bochy isn't one of the guys who keeps a computer in the dugout to track millions or arcane stats during the games. Can anyone be surprised that Bochy took the Giants' offer? The fact that they were granted permission to talk to him after two consecutive division championships had to tell Bochy all he needed to know about his place in the Padres' organization.
As an interesting sidebar here, almost concurrently with the announcement of Bochy going to SF, there were stories that Barry Bonds would file for free agency in large part because there had been only perfunctory contacts between the Giants and Bonds about coming back to SF. Obviously, I have no idea if that story is accurate, but the timing of it is interesting since you have to assume that Bochy and the Giants' ownership had to discuss Bonds in their meetings. I'd love to know if Bochy really wants Bonds back or not…
Here's another "managerial matter". No one seems to want the job of managing the Washington Nationals. Lou Piniella took his name out of contention even before the Nats' process had gathered any momentum; now Joe Girardi has dropped out for those ubiquitous "family reasons"; Terry Pendleton told the Nats to lose his phone number because he's staying in Atlanta. When the Giants fired Frank Robinson back in the 80s they replaced him with Danny Ozark; now that the Nats have fired Frank Robinson, I wonder if Ozark is on their list too. I'd guess that Ozark is about 80 years old now and probably has a couple more dugout years in him.
In the afterglow of the announcement of a new CBA for baseball without a strike or even the threat of a strike, I read somewhere that lot of people are beginning to believe that parity may be coming to baseball akin to the NFL and the NBA. I'm not sure what those folks are smoking, but I wonder what a poll of baseball fans in Washington, Pittsburgh, Kansas City and Tampa might have to say about that.
Finally, a baseball observation from Dwight Perry in the Seattle Times:
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"With the US population surpassing 300 million, the Dow cracking 12.000 and even 'Jeopardy" episodes hitting 5,000, would it be asking too much for the Devil Rays just once to crack .500?"
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