Baseballhead:
Mixed Media

Michael Cox

Welcome once again to Baseballhead, the only column that makes you better looking just by reading it. This week I'm hoping to keep the verbosity down a tad after last week's literary Montezuma's Revenge. I fully understand that most of you read this from work, and that an extra five minutes of reading time may make the difference between continued employment and a stern dressing-down from the chief.

This week I want to reflect on the embarrassment of riches baseball fans currently enjoy. Yes, I'm talking about the plethora of tilts one can take in on television and radio, even if the Yankees haven't yet consented to make YES available in your Manhattan neighborhood. Of course, I couldn't get through a piece on televised baseball without the airing of the grievances, but we'll save those for the end, mmm-kay?

First, there are your local team's games. It wasn't too long ago that most clubs held the opinion that putting home games on TV kept people away from the park. Since proving this theory false many clubs have begun televising practically every game, resulting in fans feeling much more connected, and Britney Spears having ad royalties to console her after her abject failure in film.

Then there are the national cable games. ESPN is currently carrying more baseball than ever, adding a Monday game to its usual Sunday and Wednesday schedule. Also, when no other major coverage conflicts, they sometimes run a third Wednesday game, meaning that if you keep a TV in your office you can watch baseball all frickin' day. Living on the west coast, I can tell you there's nothing like eating breakfast while watching the Mets get beaten up by Les Expos.

While we're talking about the Entertainment and Sports Network, let us take a moment to give thanks for Baseball Tonight. Every single day of the regular season we're treated to the highlights of the day's games, and the early edition of the show , which airs while half the day's schedule is still in progress, has got to be a production effort unmatched anywhere. Just keep Tim Kurkjian and Jayson Stark (the latter of whom is probably the most uncomfortable-looking man in a suit since Gene Simmons on the cover of KISS' Dressed to Kill) off the set and calm Harold Reynolds down, and it'll be perfect.

This year the producers have even added an entire screen of stats and details for each game, which I at first believed was information overload a la the "new" CNN Headline News (motto: "More news! More, I say!"). Then, once I got the structure of the information, I was able to pick out what I required while ignoring things like "Seanez: first perfect inning in five years."

Of course, if you've digital cable or a dish and an extra $140 kicking around, you can ante up for the MLB Extra Innings package, guaranteeing that you'll have baseball to watch just about any time you feel like watching baseball. Can't decide which game to watch? That's why God invented TiVo, isn't it? See Tony Muser make poor managerial decisions! Watch Rey Ordonez boot grounders, rendering himself completely obsolete! Admit that you find Dusty Baker's absent-minded tongue-flicking repulsive, yet can't turn away!

Moving over to the purely audio equivalent, for a mere 10% of the Extra Innings price you can hear any game, with the home or visiting team's broadcast squad, every day for the entire season on that newfangled Internet thingy. I've heard from those who are absolutely incensed that MLB is charging for RealAudio feeds, but this time I'm on Bud's side. Yes, yes, radio should be free, and radio still is free. Charging what amounts to pocket change for a bottomless cup of MLB is to me a fair exchange. Ask me again if they raise the price to $20 next season, however.

All in all, the modern baseball fan can achieve 100% immersion in the sport, alienating friends, family and significant others if so desired. Just try to keep your job or they'll cut the cable off.

Now we get to the gripes, first and foremost of which is the severe lack of local games you can pick up with the trusty ol' rabbit ears. Mind you, in most cities the quality of over-the-air signals is similar to the quality of Jose Lima's recent pitching, but the fans in the hinterlands with the 20-foot antennas would really appreciate a few more games. Unfortunately, their primary connection to the sport is likely to begin in June and involve Tim McCarver.

Ah, FOX. Now, there's a shambles of a broadcast partner. Since taking over as MLB's primary broadcast outlet, FOX has continually scaled back its coverage. This year, after selling off FOX Family to ABC, they used the opportunity to also drop baseball from FX. The new sum total of FOX's partnership: one game a week after June 1, then select playoff games (i.e., the ones with New York teams) and the World Series. If they could drop all the regular-season games, they would, leaving more time for top-shelf series like Who Wants to Marry David Hasselhoff?

And in its never-ending quest to innovate the sports broadcast market, FOX Sports Net's cookie-cutter local cable broadcasts this year featured special bleeping sound effects as their scorebar switched between the ball-strike count and pitch speed. Apparently the previously established whooshing and clunking sounds were no longer drawing the same number of irate phone calls they did in previous years. In any case, the new noises seem to have gone the way of the old impossible-to-see 3-D spherical baserunner icons.

If only they'd wise up and ditch that scorebar, which appears a full inch or more down the screen on some sets, yet is half-missing on others. (My home contains one of each.) ESPN's box tells me everything I need to know, and does it as unobtrusively as possible. Unfortunately, FSN and "unobtrusive" are mutually exclusive terms. Smart money says next year they try cartoon robots.

And those subscription RealAudio broadcasts? If I'm going to hear those really annoying Mountain Dew ads between innings, you should be paying me.

about the author

Michael Cox would like FOX to know he's capable of yelling just as loudly as Tim McCarver, and is just as certain that every statement he makes is an incontrovertible truth. Send your contract offer to mc@strikethree.com.