A Series wish list and calling the game
Posted: Wednesday, October 24, 2007 2:54 PM
Five things I’d like to see in this World Series:
A HIGH QUALITY SERIES OF AT LEAST SIX GAMES
It worries me that the World Series might be becoming similar to the NBA Finals. Can anyone remember the last good NBA Finals? I had to check on that -- a worrisome thought in itself for those in NBA commissioner David Stern’s neighborhood -- and was reminded that the Spurs and Pistons played a Game 7 two years ago. And that’s the only memorable NBA Finals in the last eight.
With a bloated field (16 teams) and a television-friendly structure, the NBA playoffs last two months. All but the hardcore fans lose interest, finding it too challenging to follow a story for that length of time. And the two survivors run a high risk of exhaustion by the time they arrive at the Finals.
So we come to baseball where only one of last year’s eight postseason teams is a repeat customer (that team is the Yankees, pointed out for those who blame Joe Torre for all ills in the Bronx). There hasn’t been a competitive World Series since Marlins-Yankees 2003 and the last Game 7 was Arizona’s win in 2001. I hope the Rockies and Red Sox can handle the schedule, weather, and late-night games to give us a Fall Classic to remember. Game 1 certainly didn't hint at that, but I don’t want to ever equate the World Series with the NBA Finals.
GOOD DEFENSE
America should see how the game has changed. Most know about the Rockies' sterling defense, led by Troy Tulowitzki. Of course, we also have to watch how Manny Ramirez handles the spacious Coors Field outfield, and who knows about David Ortiz if he's playing first base in the games in Denver.
COLORADO’S STARTERS RISE TO THE OCCASION
To have a competitive series one matchup needs to be avoided: Boston’s lineup against the back end of the Colorado bullpen. In the LCS the Red Sox were able to run up pitch counts against C.C. Sabathia and Fausto Carmona. If Jeff Francis and the young arms that have fueled this amazing Rockies' run aren’t strong…well, you saw what happened in Games 6 and 7 against Cleveland, and in the Game 1 rout.
DEMISE OF THE DH
Perhaps the sight of David Ortiz, one of the game’s most prominent figures, sitting out some or all of the games in Denver will finally make the dense understand the absurdity of the DH. What is the identity of the Red Sox in 20007? Papi-Manny. The game’s best duo. And half of that may be inactive in the middle games. Great for the game, isn’t it? How can this great game continue to allow some of its best players to be eliminated from playing in its marquee event?
SHORTER GAMES AND AN END TO THE WHINING
I sat in Fenway Park when Ramirez ended Game 2 of the LDS just shy of 1 a.m. ET. It looked like not one fan had left the marathon. Yet the incessant moaning from scribes about late start times continues. Of course, it’s only those on the East Coast who complain. They don’t take into account those in other parts of the country who pay to go to the games. Or think that for every kid on the East Coast who needs to stay up late, there is a high school athlete two or three time zones away who can watch the game after practice.
Here’s the real problem: the games are TOO LONG. Average time has nudged past three hours and 30 minutes for postseason games, and MLB is admitting that this needs to be addressed. It’s hard to push players when the stakes are so high, but the money comes from the sport’s entertainment value. Right now, there is no way that many people can watch a game start to finish. It’s a come-and-go enterprise and that hurts the game.
By the way, since I learned firsthand that postseason baseball television exists as target practice for scribes and anyone with a URL, another inconvenient truth: extra commercial time adds only 10 minutes to a postseason game. This is about the exponential growth in taking pitches, working counts, controlling the running game, and gathering oneself on the big stage.
Baseball is long. Spring training is way too long, the regular season is too long, the postseason is one month long, and now each game is a four-hour exercise. When at-bats take 10 minutes, as has happened in this postseason, it taxes both the physical and the mental. Truly, the strong survive.
Switching gears...Watching Boston's rout in Game 1, it struck me. Fox was doing a terrific job of covering a World Series game at one of sports’ greatest stages, Fenway Park. The pictures were great, stories were told, all angles were covered and I realized that for its efforts, Fox would be surgically dissected.
Yes, I am speaking from experience, having been part of TBS’ first year of postseason baseball coverage. There was a learning curve, steeper than many may have thought. In its twelfth year of covering baseball, Fox has cleared those hurdles, and its production team, loaded with top-level pros, is smooth.
Yet, Fox's World Series coverage, as TBS painfully learned, will be reviewed and critiqued as if it was a prime-time entertainment show. Big difference that the critics rarely acknowledge: sports are live whereas sitcoms, dramas, and most reality offerings are scripted, edited and polished.
Pictures are critiqued but words are crushed. Announcers take the brunt of the heat. It is an occupational hazard -- all of us knew that when we started, but I offer that the hazard has grown wildly and made the occupation less appealing.
It used to be a handful of writers -- most of whom took their assignments seriously -- that offered reviews. Now the number of scribes has swelled, including many who don’t regularly cover television, but feel compelled to offer “talk show” assessments -- some of whom hurl those words from glass houses. And anyone with an URL now offers his or her own “expert” analysis of sports television.
Most announcers that I talk with grasp the need to ignore all of this, both good and bad. You find the few voices you trust and listen to them. Any other written word is akin to the mind-numbing chorus of calls to your local sports talk station.
The lesson of baseball announcing is: you can’t win. True story: in the early 1990s, I was making an appearance for the San Francisco Giants offseason tour. A well-meaning fan cornered me before dinner and proceeded to plead with me to give the score more often during broadcasts. I was moved by his earnestness and as I left him, vowed to make that effort. Within two minutes, I met another fan who proceeded to harangue me for…yes, you guessed it…giving the score TOO OFTEN as if I was a robot.
I tell that tale often as an example of being unable to please everyone in the particular art of baseball broadcasting. After working the Red Sox-Angels series, I received both the good and the bad. I read little, took even less than that seriously. But one e-mail I received stood out. A friend directed me to some blog written by a self-proclaimed expert on sportscasting from Boston. In this unique view, my grievous sin in working the LDS between the Red Sox and Angels was failing to offer any “new information” on his beloved Red Sox.
Now, excuse me, but NEW INFORMATION! What is he talking about? This Boston team has played for nearly 200 days. It is covered as thoroughly as a national politician for the most passionate fan base in America and someone expected that a play-by-play guy from California and, most recently, the National League, was going to offer something new. Listening to the ALCS and Game 1 of the World Series on Fox, there hasn’t been new information offered…because, THERE ISN’T ANY!
Sitting in California watching the Rockies and Red Sox, I thought of all this and hoped that the Fox folks wouldn’t be brutalized as TBS was in many quarters. Too many talented men and women with tons of baseball television experience put their hearts into the LDS on TBS with no rehearsals. The criticism comes with the territory, but is unpleasant nonetheless.
Just now I realize that this entry should have mentioned more of Game 1, but then again, a guy in California has no new information.
