MLB to Small Town America: Drop Dead

fixed, etc.

 

The Phillies used to do something similar with their four-man crew in the 80s. Harry Kalas would do innings 1-3 and 7-9 on TV with Richie Ashburn, while Andy Musser and Chris Wheeler did innings 4-6. When either crew wasn't on TV, they did the radio broadcasts.
I think for non-televised games, they just stuck to the TV rotation for the radio broadcast.

 

The Royals had a separate TV crew but only broadcast road games. They'd do one home game on TV only if attendance passed 1,000,000.

If you ever saw a Royals home game other than that one on TV, then it was a national game on either ABC or NBC and I don't know how often either came to Kansas City.

 

As I recall, the Royals' attendance was always real good from the start of the franchise until the team went to shit in the late Nineties.

 

The Kansas City A's drew well too before Finley started alienating the fan base, and fighting with KC government to create phony reasons for him to move the franchise.

 

2021 Minor League Baseball schedule announced

 

The league once known as the California League opens May 4 and concludes Sept. 19. Don't know if this part is pandemic inspired. but, teams will play six-game series Tuesday-Sunday. Teams have every Monday off.

The former Pacific Coast League will also have six-game series, with Wednesdays off. Season starts April 8 and ends Sept. 21. No more September call-ups, playoffs or Triple-A championship game?

 

I doubt anybody in the league office in New York knows the history, but the PCL during its heyday -- when the league consisted of San Diego, Los Angeles, Hollywood, Oakland, San Francisco, Sacramento, Portland and Seattle -- played seven-game series with Monday as a travel day, according to several guys I interviewed. They'd have night games Tuesday through Friday (or perhaps one businessman's special), a day game on Saturday and a Sunday doubleheader. That would give them time to catch the train overnight either home or to the next destination, with a Monday off-day.

Mo Bauer, who played for the Angels in the mid-50s, said many guys opted for the Coast League instead of the majors because of the stadiums, the pay, the travel, the weather and the ability to play up to 170 games, because the schedule started in March and ended in October. He was in the Cubs organization and much preferred L.A. to Des Moines.

 

In the early 90s, HBO did a couple of shows called “When It Was A Game”, which showed old color home movie films of baseball from the 1920s-1960s. It was a huge deal at the time in the pre-YouTube era.

In addition to MLB, they did a segment on the PCL, and one or two players they interviewed said the same thing, that some guys saw it as a demotion to get called up to the majors, and how some other guys, as their MLB career wound down, liked to go to the PCL and saw it as an extension of their careers.

 

The AP story I saw yesterday said the former PCL teams requested Wednesdays off because they're going to be flying more, and it was much cheaper to fly on Wednesday than on Sunday night or Monday.
The six-game series, like almost every change in the schedule, has to do with reducing travel costs. If you only play 10 road series, compared to 15 or 20, there is a cost savings there. Even within the leagues -- some of which are only eight teams -- there are imbalanced schedules that cut travel even more. In Double-A South, for example, Mississippi is playing Biloxi 30 times (five series) and Chattanooga 18 times (three series). The Triple-A Northeast Division is only six teams, and they'll only play against division teams during a 142-game schedule.

No announcement yet on any postseasons, because of COVID. There will be a Triple-A all-star game.

 

And as many people have stated on this thread, about 2 percent of us give a flying finger of fate who's actually playing at what level. So it really doesn't matter if it's the Thunderbirds vs. the Bay Bombers (or the Midwest Pioneers) every night, as long as you have a playground for the kids and brewskis for the adults. The fewer road trips and bus rides, the better.

I just know a lot of folks behind the scenes who have put in massive amounts of time and energy for very little pay with the idea that they might work their way to the bigs some day, who now are seeing MLB consolidating and eliminating their jobs.

 

Georgia Hase and Ralphie Valladeres Nights would have been huge!