Idiots Write About Sports

Major League Baseball makes a rare regular season prime-time appearance on one of the broadcast networks tonight, when Fox televises the first meeting of the season between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. Fox has many motives for broadcasting tonight’s game — which I believe will be the first regular-season prime-time telecast on ABC, NBC, CBS or Fox since the ill-fated Baseball Network deservedly breathed its last. For one, this is a Yankee-Red Sox clash, their first “This Time, It Counts” game since the American League playoffs last year. For another, both teams made a few offseason moves you might have heard about. For another, it’s not as if Fox is exactly lighting things up with its regularly scheduled programming.

When Fox first announced that it was carrying the Yankees-Red Sox game, the folks over at Baseball Musings gave the decision a big thumb’s up:

People wonder if the trade was good for the game. This is a big check mark under yes. There are many ways of making teams competitive, and one is to make the National TV rights so valuable that they once again dwarf local revenues. It used to be that teams could afford 2 or 3 top flight free agents with the money they received from national broadcasts. Now they can barely buy one. If this game is well watched, and the trend continues, MLB can ask for a lot more money next time the contract is renewed. That’s what drove the competitive balance of the 80’s. And it can happen again.

And that’s probably true. Still, the cynic in me can’t help but think that Fox’s only interest in this game is the Yankees-Sox angle, that other teams looking for prime-time TV exposure need not apply. And that’s problematic.

Think back to NBC’s coverage of the NBA in the ’90s. The Peacock Network always showed the same big-market teams featuring the same big-name stars. Which was fine — until those stars got older and those teams began to falter and ratings began to decline. It’s hard to get casual fans interested in the San Antonio Spurs, for example, when they’ve never been given any reason to be.

Baseball runs the same risk with a New York-Boston overkill. The more you convince viewers that only a Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is worthy of prime-time and their attention, the more they’ll be inclined to believe you.

Phil -

I totally agree. As much as I enjoyed watching the Sox beat the Yankees tonight, it still is getting a bit much.

Hopefully, if Fox does this again, they'll show some of the other great rivalries in the game, Dodgers-Giants, A's-Angels, Cubs-Cardinals, etc.