THE beautiful thing about Bud Selig is that he reminds us that anyone can grow up to become the commissioner of baseball. Anyone. Anyone.
Commissioner Selig, after all, is always the last to see what everyone else can’t miss.
This week, Selig acted to partially fix an old problem, the kind many of us would have completely fixed 20-plus years ago.
Seems Selig came to the realization that at least half the nation’s population is asleep before the ends of World Series games. And that’s because TV money told MLB to begin Series games 90 minutes later than regular-season night games begin.
Most fans years ago knew this needed fixing, especially those in eastern time zone cities who were unable to stay awake to see World Series played by eastern teams, including their own. Eastern zone teams have faced eastern zone teams nine times since 1992, when Selig became commissioner.
Apparently, until recently, it never dawned on Selig that returning to his hotel or wherever he was staying during the Series, that 2 a.m. is kinda late to be getting back from a ballgame.
It apparently never struck him in 2000, when the Yanks played the Mets, that the Yankee and Met fans who had the best chance to be awake to see the games end did not live in New York but in Tacoma, Fresno and on Guam.
Throughout it all, the commissioner’s office dismissed the complaints and pleas of fans, patrons and media as nonsense. It even would offer data as proof to the contrary. Otherwise, MLB would have had to admit that maximizing primetime TV ad revenue in three time zones had become the primary function of the World Series.
So MLB and Fox this week got together to throw back a half-hour of World Series start time. Instead of very late, they’ll start late, at 8 p.m., thus maybe even end around 11:30 instead of midnight.
Selig explained that this will “allow the largest number of people to watch.” What a concept! Funny, though, that’s the same way his office explained 8:30 and later starts.
Still, a 7:30 start would allow every person over the age of 10 living in the mainland U.S. a reasonable chance to see the last out of every World Series game. Weeknight games played in the Pacific time zone could begin later. Why is that so hard to do?
Anyway, it took Selig only 16 years into his reign to partially fix what we’d have never allowed to be broken in the first place.
That’s like steroids. By the early 1990s, lanky spray hitters were suddenly showing up as muscled sluggers. But it took Selig another dozen years to notice what we couldn’t miss.
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I confess. This past Sunday night I betrayed Howie Rose, something I knew was risky and wrong, when I chose to both watch and listen to ESPN’s coverage of Mets-Giants.
Why I thought that ESPN, instead of smothering another game with verbal and video excess, would let this one breathe, I can’t explain. But it was, of course, a mistake.
A microcosm from Sunday’s telecast as to why ESPN’s Sunday night baseball remains insufferable:
Shortstop Kevin Frandsen charged a bouncer, made a sweet grab on the half hop, then threw out Gary Sheffield. “Nice pickup,” admired play-by-player Jon Miller. The play otherwise spoke for itself. But Joe Morgan was just getting started:
“Very nice play. Well, you have to time this perfectly because you’re going to get that in-between hop, and the way you field the ball is that you catch it on the short hop or on the big hop. But this is the in-between hop. You can’t get there in time to get the short hop, so he gets it on the in-between hop; you don’t get it at its highest point. And a nice pick, there.”
Good grief.
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Wednesday night’s Orioles-Yankees was another played in new Yankee Stadium to insanely priced, can’t-miss-’em empty seats. Fleet Week had begun in New York City; thousands of U.S. Navy, Marines and Coast Guardsmen in town. Ah, never mind.
Hooray! Comcast cable and NFL Network, two TV entities built on soak-the-public self-interest, finally have reached an agreement through which the public will be additionally soaked. And, according to a news release distributed by both, we’re supposed to respond, “Hooray!”
From reader Mark Morley: “Whenever I watch Mike Francesa on YES and get tired of his pompous act, I just wave my hand dismissively at the TV while turning the channel with my other hand.” Actually, Francesa this week had some shining moments. He even asked Sweeny Murti a question, then allowed Murti to answer it.
Curt Smith’s bio of Vin Scully, “Pull Up A Chair,” is out. Cheap at 30 bucks, it’s published by Potomac Books.