Sad clown
It's a shame Major League Baseball has surrendered its public relations operation to Fox Television and ESPN because they're delivering a great product this post-season. What a marvelous World Series matchup between two teams that are not the New York Yankees or Boston Red Sox.I'm not sure America realizes the extraordinary spectacle they're witnessing. The Philadelphia Phillies, 9 outs away from a world championship as I write this, have been in the National League since 1883. They won 17 of 98 games that first year, and it was downhill after that. They've managed five league pennants, but only one World Series Championship. That was in 1980, when they became the last of the original 16 American or National League teams to claim a title. Last summer, the franchise became the first in the history of the world in any sport to lose 10,000 games.
Across the infield from the Phillies are the Tampa Bay Rays, who averaged 97 losses a season over their first ten years of existence entering this year, but in 2008, lost just 65. In 2006, only two years ago, they were zombies, going 3-33 on the road after July 1st. They have still never had a pitcher win 14 games in a single season. But in one year, their bullpen went from having the worst earned-run average in the majors in 50 years to the fourth lowest batting average allowed this century.
We're experiencing another golden age for parity in baseball, mirroring the 1980s, but Major League Baseball hasn't been tending its garden in public relations. They've marketed maybe 7 of their 30 teams to a national public, and since none of those seven made it to the World Series this year, nobody's there to watch. Have you seen the credit card commercials? It's merchandise only for the Yankees, Red Sox, Cubs, Cardinals, Dodgers, Giants, and the Mets. This is typical. Fox promotes only its favorites for its game broadcasts, and ESPN's Sportscenter is an unmitigated disaster in the way it reports on everything baseball through the prism of the Yankees/Red Sox rivalry. The NFL never, ever has this problem. They have no small markets, no neglected franchises, and, it also seems, no business recessions.
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Is it really the best idea to let fans do the voting on this?
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Sad clown: New York Magazine has an interview with the talented and underappreciated Tracy Morgan.
posted by CM @ 8:29 PM
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