MLB Playoffs

And yet, Peter Angelos continues to debunk that theory with each passing season.

 

I love that background music for the intros.

 

Playing second base, P.T. Barnum?

 

All of this pregame shtuff reaks of effort. Too much. But Mudbone, you're right about the background music.

Early prediction: Carpenter throws a 2-hitter.

 

A little subliminal MasterCard ad there before the first pitch. Sneaky bastards.

 

Corrected.

 

It's 43 degrees here at Busch.

I'm hoping the PowerBook doesn't freeze.

 

Or it could mean the sport has declined in popularity. A Variety reporter (who I guess is considered an expert enough to be quoted) nailed it:

Variety reporter Rick Kissel suspects that focusing too much on bigger markets has hurt baseball overall.

"One thing that may be hurting baseball is that Fox and ESPN put so many of their eggs in the basket of the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry. Maybe if they tried to capitalize on the stories elsewhere in the league, fans would be more invested in other teams."

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7005280727

 

Edmonds goes grannny here?

 

Christ how bad is McCarver? And Buck had some rough moments in Game 2... is McCarver's bad announcing contagious?

 

The World Series just hit an all-time low. Chris Meyers shilling for tacos in the bleachers. Fox is quality stuff!

 

Yeah, that's part of it, Ralph. Baseball's been good at shooting itself in the foot the last decade or so. (Before that, they were good at cutting off the leg to save the foot. So it's a step up, at least.)

But their marketing has always sucked. MLB has no idea how to sell the game -- probably because they never had to sell it before. It sold itself. But that was because there was not much to sell, elsewhere.

So I think it's mostly the result of consumers having more options for keeping up with sports, and non-sports too. When you have more options, naturally you're going to have more people

I mean, consider the NFL: Was there a day during the offseason when we didn't hear about something football? It never went away. If it wasn't T.O., it was Favre's will-he-won't-he saga. Then it was Big Ben's motorcycle accident. We had 24/7 predictions for a month before the draft, and analysis of the picks for a month after it. It never went away.

But football is played on Sunday afternoons when everyone (conceivably) can watch, or go to, a game. Kids stay interested that way, and when you hook 'em young, they usually stick around.

Baseball, in contrast, keeps shooting itself in the foot with kids -- namely, by pricing kids out of the "cheap" seats, by pricing kids out of baseball cards (I remember getting like 15 cards in a pack for $0.50, plus the all-important stick of gum, and I'm not that old), by pushing playoff games way past kids' bedtimes.

It's all about Wall Street and, well, Wall Street doesn't give a shit.