FOX has control today, don't they?
And Orlando....right again!
ST. LOUIS POST-DISPATCH
10/08/2005
Sports Columnist Bernie Miklasz
[More columns]
SAN DIEGO — By the time Woody Williams threw the first pitch of Game 3, Major League Baseball's bedtime special, the Cardinals and Padres had played only one game since late Tuesday afternoon. That's a span of 4 1/2 calendar days, covering more than 100 hours.
This preposterous gap in the National League Division Series is an affront to one of baseball's enduring traditions: the daily routine. This is a sport that takes pride in playing every day, pushing teams to prove themselves through fatigue and pain and expected developments. It is nearly impossible for a weak team to overcome a grueling test that distinguishes the durable from the fragile.
And Major League Baseball, in subservient accommodation of its master and god - the all-powerful television network programmers - has dumped the Cardinals-Padres series into inconvenient time slots for fans in both markets.
Game 1 in St. Louis started at noon Central, which presumably shut out many working Padres fans who had no office window of opportunity to watch a game that began at 10 a.m. on the West Coast. A baseball breakfast might be a fun and doable diversion on the weekends, but not on a Tuesday morning. And the afternoon starting times of Games 1 and 2 also put many St. Louis fans in the position of choosing between baseball and work, baseball and getting paid.Advertisement
Saturday was the whopper. Assuming that the contest would last about three hours, Game 3's starting time of 10:09 p.m. St. Louis time required Cardinals fans to stay up past 1 a.m. And it was even more demanding for Cardinals fans in the Eastern Time Zone, and this franchise does have a healthy national following. How many on the East Coast were willing, or able, to remain awake beyond 2 a.m.?
This rude scheduling is outrageous, but the anger is cooled by the familiarity of having gone through this nonsense before. In 2002, the Cardinals played an NLDS game at Arizona that began after 10 p.m. An embarrassed Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig apologized to the fans of St. Louis and declared that he would ban late-night starts in the future.
"I told our people, 'No more 10 p.m. starts,' " Selig said at the time. "That's the end of it."
Selig lied.
Three years later, ol' Bud obediently heeled for TV again.
Selig traded the honor of his word to the people of St. Louis in exchange for more network loot.
Nothing new. This is the same commissioner who only recently found religion on the steroids issue - and only after being browbeaten and humiliated by Congress. Selig, of course, spent years looking the other way during baseball's juiced-up era, because home runs were good for box office.
And business concerns come first with MLB. With TV rights fees increasing in baseball's most recent deal, the commissioner and his lackeys are even quicker to bow down before the TV gods.
Saturday night's late-night baseball wasn't brutal for most Cardinals fans, who happily would forego sleep if it means watching baseball. And therein lies the paradox: St. Louis is such a great baseball town, MLB knows it can get away with inserting the Cardinals into insane starting times, confident that Redbird fans will watch.
Why punish fans for their loyalty? There should be some basic fairness in these proceedings for the Cardinals and Padres and their public. Because the Padres (26th) and the Cardinals (21st) play in the two smallest TV markets in the 2005 postseason field, that's no reason to continually dump on the teams and the cities or potentially distort the competition.
No other division series was splintered the way the Cardinals and Padres were. The three other series had schedules calling for the teams to play their first two games on consecutive days, take a day off, then play the final three games without another break. Until Game 3, the Cardinals and Padres had more days off (two) than games (one).
Here's what I don't understand: What are MLB and the TV masters afraid of? We're told that one reason for spreading the postseason schedule out is to ensure that no two baseball postseason games are on at the same time - giving the fans a chance in theory to see every game. But in a transparent attempt to appear fan friendly, MLB imposed a few weird starting times that are fan hostile.
It's unnecessary. Let fans choose. If two games are on during the same time slot, it's no crisis. Not with the proliferation of TV sports in the culture - especially on Saturday, when postseason baseball was going up against college football, anyway. Baseball wasn't going to get the singular attention of sports fans. So just play games at a reasonable time and let the audience decide.
Every Sunday, the NFL puts bundles of games on its satellite TV package, with half starting early in the afternoon, and the other half beginning late afternoon. (Even the over-air networks have competing NFL games). Fans like to surf through the menu to keep up with the action. And it's easy to record one game while watching another live. Many college football bowl games are played simultaneously or with overlap. And NBA playoff games are televised in clusters. Why is baseball so outdated in its thinking?
Saturday, St. Louis and San Diego got the last laugh.
The Chicago White Sox vs. Boston Red Sox series was already over.
Game 4 of the Anaheim Angels vs. New York Yankees was rained out.
Baseball had no playoff game to televise during the early afternoon hours, and was empty for the late-afternoon slot.
After the Atlanta Braves and Houston Astros played in prime time, it was onto the bedtime baseball special, Game 3 of the Cardinals and Padres.
Makes sense, considering that Commissioner Selig is asleep on the job, anyway.
