Dear Commissioner Selig,
I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye in the past. We’ve had some disagreements, it’s true. Like, there was that whole thing where you wanted to ruin baseball, and I didn’t think it was a good idea. But that’s over now. It’s in the past. Time to move on. In fact, I am writing to you because I think an opportunity exists for you to truly make your mark on the game you claim to love so dearly. You have the chance to do something that will have more impact on baseball’s future than the expanded playoffs, interleague play and the World Cup combined. You need to take baseball away from Fox.
The broadcasters of a sport become that sport’s caretakers, its guardians. The network that holds baseball’s broadcasting rights bears the responsibility of making sure the game translates to its audience. Fox should be baseball’s biggest champion, a multi-billion dollar public relations machine expanding the game’s popularity across the globe. Instead, Fox has merely used baseball to advance it’s own special brand of “Fox Attitude.”
Fox, which has brought us such enlightening fare as Forever Eden and Herman’s Head, botched its handling of baseball from the very beginning. The network’s first order of business upon buying television rights was to destroy the national Game of the Week. Other networks had already significantly diluted the Game of the Week tradition from its NBC heyday, but Fox put the final nails in the coffin. Rupert Murdoch’s team decreed that games couldn’t start until months into the season, and even then they were only regional. People in New York got the Yankees or Mets while Chicagoans got the Cubs or White Sox. In the modern era, in which nearly every game is televised locally, what on earth is the point of showing more local games in place of a universal, national game of the week? The only difference between everyday weeknight games and the so-called “game of the week” is that different announcers, ones who don’t know your local team as well, are now calling the game.
Perhaps this decentralization helped ratings in key markets short-term, but it damaged the game long-term, which clearly means less yield on Fox’s investment over the course of their contract. When NBC had baseball rights, the Saturday Game of the Week felt special. The whole country watched one game, which gave viewers a chance to check out teams and players they didn’t normally get to see. Vin Scully’s refined, almost royal demeanor lent the proceedings an air of importance. Now viewers watch just another game on Saturday afternoons: same teams, different channel. Big deal. ESPN’s Sunday night games help somewhat, but they can’t replace a nationally broadcast game on network television on a weekend afternoon.
While Fox has ruined the Game of the Week franchise, and made several other huge mistakes along the way (notably showing playoff games on channels like FX and Fox Family), their most egregious sins come in the actual game broadcasts themselves. Fox’s telecasts lack any traces of the dignity that Vin Scully and NBC carried themselves with consistently. Whether due to gross misunderstandings about the nature of baseball, or wildly misguided market research, Fox broadcasts are all about sensory overload. The viewer is never allowed to relax, as the Fox team never simply allows the game to unfold.
Instead we are bombarded with robotic graphics and quick, disconcerting camera cuts. The beginning of a pitcher’s wind-up is consistently missed because the game’s directors are intent on showing a close-up of some fan looking stressed out. Fox is so desperate to revolutionize the way baseball is telecast that they completely forget the basics of showing a game, which have remained constant since the 1950’s. We are forced to deal with “Catcher Cam,” which provides a grainy shot of the pitch arriving from the catcher’s point of view, but which gives the viewer no clue if the pitch was a ball or a strike, or hit fair or foul. The primary purpose of televising a sport is to let home audiences see what happens, and absurdist innovations like “Catcher Cam” undermine that purpose.
Fox falls in love with its own technology, and defaces the screen with pointless graphics. Pointless poll questions are shown every couple of innings, just an excuse to get a sponsor’s logo on the screen again and again. And do we really need to know the exact distance a runner is leading off first base? Can’t we just see that with our own eyes instead of having an annoying colorful chart thrust upon us? All the graphics, all the technology, all that patented Fox attitude, subvert the relaxing, slow-paced nature of baseball itself in an ill-advised attempt to skew the audience younger.
And do we really need to see Fox “celebrities” in the stands at World Series games? Are we really going to be impressed that they flew Brian Austin Green out to New York and threw a Yankees hat on him?
Finally, Bud, there’s the issue of Buck and McCarver. This might be the worst announcing team to call national games in the history of baseball. Joe Buck has a special knack for making pointless moments melodramatic, and significant moments mundane. His call of Aaron Boone’s home run to end Game 7 of the ALCS last year illustrates this point perfectly. One of the most thrilling playoff series in ages, between two hated rivals, ended in spectacular fashion and Buck sounded like he was on Valium. Brett Boone was more animated in the booth, and I think he might have been in a coma. Meanwhile, Tim McCarver blathers on for innings and innings making insultingly obvious points, and acts as though we should all be on our knees thanking him for deigning to share his blessed baseball wisdom with us. McCarver also specializes in the old announcers’ trick of tailoring the analysis of a game to make it seem like points he made earlier were valid. For example, if he notes in the 1st inning that a key to the Yankees’ success is Mike Mussina keeping the ball down, he will go to great lengths to point out every hit on a ball up in the zone, while blatantly ignoring hits on balls that actually were down.
Mr. Commissioner, I think you can see where I stand. But the choice is ultimately yours. Break the contract. Invoke the “best interests of the game” clause. Do what you have to do. But get baseball back in the hands of someone who will nurture it.
Please note: I haven’t even mentioned Scooter, the Mentally Impaired Talking Baseball.
Sincerely,
Matthew Lesh
