What’s good for baseball…
ByAs all of the end-of-season numbers come out, certain trends emerge. Mostly, those trends involve the Yankees and their popularity. The team led the AL in home and road attendance, and the YES Network is more popular than ESPN in the New York City area.
Yesterday, Maury Brown at the Biz of Baseball released FOX’s top most watched games of the season, and unsurprisingly, they all involved the Yankees. Take a look:
| Date | Game | Viewers (000) | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| April 25 | Yankees @ Red Sox | 4.086 | L 16-11 |
| August 8 | Red Sox @ Yankees | 3,962 | W 5-0 |
| April 18 | Indians @ Yankees | 3,546 | L 22-4 |
| August 22 | Yankees @ Red Sox | 3,539 | L 14-1 |
| June 13 | Mets @ Yankees | 3,498 | L 6-2 |
First, the Yanks performed spectacularly poorly on FOX during their most popular games this year. They went 1-4 and were outscored 58-23. No wonder more than a few national baseball commentators were lukewarm on the team for the playoffs. If the representative sample looks so bad, baseball writers tend to ignore the 157 other games and the 102 additional wins.
Second, the Yankees are good for baseball. Their games draw viewers to FOX. Although one of these games was the first national exhibition at the new stadium, the rest were just your run-of-the-mill midseason games against a few archrivals. That popularity means more money for baseball.
For Yankee fans, this news means more Tim McCarver and Joe Buck and more weekend Boston/New York series. TV executives and the scheduling gurus recognize that these series are great for baseball. People are taken in by the games, and generally — although not as much this year — the baseball is crisp and compelling. Analysts and fans of other teams might like to complain, but in the end, the truth is simple: The Yankees are good for baseball. Just look at the numbers.
This can’t possibly be right. I was told that only the Angels, Twins, and Red Sox are good for baseball, because they’re teams full of baseball players who play the game the right way and have good fundamentals and are full of me firsters and they don’t buy championships, they build from within with homegrown scrappy grinders.
Thanks for saving me the trouble of typing something very similar.
Don’t forget the Cardinals, the team with the best fans in the world. Unlike Yankee fans who are all pompous bangwagoners with homophobic and family unfriendly tendencies and who heckle their team constantly.
Ouch, I didn’t realize those numbers about the Yankees on Fox, but Tim McCarver really is one of the worst announcers. He doesn’t hide his bias against the Yankees at all, and everything he says is either against the Yankees, or he spins it so it sounds bad. I hate watching the game on Fox….
The Yankees are traditionally good every year. The other teams are not as good. So, you need a narrative which makes other people feel less bad about their teams.
It’s really just economics.
ESPN, Fox, print media, etc…know that Yankee fans will tune into the games and be interested in their team.
They know that the fans of the other team will tune into the games, but that there are less of them than there are Yankee fans.
So, how do you get the fans of the other 28 teams to tune in?
You make sure that there is an available narrative which appeals to people who are not fans of the Yankees.
Remember, there can only be an anti-Yankee bias because the Yankees are good at baseball.
Soo right!!!!
Had the misfortune of tuning in to Sox outlet WEEI today and heard some nitwit mediocrity named Bradford talking about how the entire nation (that’s the US, mind you, not just Sux Nation) was rooting aganst the Yankees.
And yet the latest research shows the Yankees by far have the most fans in America. There is no “America’s Team,”, of course, but Yanks have most legit claim to the title. And its not just New Yorkers. There are still areas in the southern US where the Yanks remain the favorite team, notwithstanding expansion to Atlanta and Florida.
Still, the Yankee haters will always be with us. Best to ignore the entire pack of get-a-lifers.
Yeah. We saw sound fundamental baseball from the Angels last night.
Seriously, I think a professional sport gains, in a business sense, when it has one or two focal teams, or players. That creates a story line that attracts the marginal fan. “Will Jordan and the Bulls repeat?”, “Will Tiger win again?” The rabid fan is going to pay attention regardless. The casual fan is drawn in by this kind of thing, and gets emotionally involved with either “the gritty underdog” or the “amazingly talented” favorite.
In baseball, the obvious and main focal team is the Yankees. It’s the money of course, but also the presence in NY, and the history, and the consistent success. The problem, again from a business point of view, is to keep the top dogs from being too dominant. You have to maintain the tension. That’s worked well for baseball.
That kind of story line, which also happens to be much easier to write than a deeper analysis, creates the kind of image you describe the Angels, Twins, and Red Sox as having. They have to have that image, whether it’s accurate or not, because that’s their assigned role in the drama.
What’s the Indians game doing in there?
First national broadcast at YS3.
i Guess first national game at Yankee Stadium
No matter what people say about the Yankees… “Buying Championships”… they’re all excuses. I went to Bora Bora on Vacation over the Summer, and had to make sure the Yankees Games were going to be on TV there. There was a local who was nice enough to open his home to any Yankee Fans on vacation who wanted to watch the games. I didn’t see them all, but i saw 3 of them.
BORA BORA??!! Local yankee Fans in Bora Bora? no Red Sox Fans… Sorry Rest of America, but Yankees come out on top… AGAIN.
http://www.faceofthecookie.com.....8455_m.jpg (SFW)
I went to Europe last winter (Amsterdam, Paris and London for 10 days) and I saw 13 Yankee hats and 0 hats of any other professional baseball team.
Yeah, I’d say the Yankees are America’s team.
Yeah, I’d say the Yankees are
America’sEurope’s team.Fixed.
Yeah, I’d say the Yankees are
America’sEurope’sthe World’s teamFixed again.
Yeah, I’d say the Yankees are
America’s Europe’s the World’sthe Universe’s team.There. Now it’s perfect.
NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If anyone needs me, I’ll be over here jamming this ice pick into my ear canal.
I am in pain!!!! listening to those 2 ignorant announcer- help!!!
It only goes to prove; deep down, everyone really wants to play their home games in the Bronx. The guys who aren’t man enough to admit it become haters, and resist the greatness of all things Yankee.
That just shows you how awful and unprepared they are in a nutshell. The season extends beyond FOX broadcasts and it’s your job to pay attention to those games if you’re going to leveraging your position as an expert when you give out your opinions.
And if Buck and McCarver (for example) don’t, then their producers absolutely should be. Do they listen to their producers? Who knows, but Buck didn’t even know the score at one point last night.
“…his foot was off the bag.”
/Replay? I’m TIM—MOTHER-F*****G—McCARVER, I don’t need no stinkin’ replay.
TBS’ Division Series numbers we also up 11% from last year…I’d say that had a lot to do with the Yanks being in it.
No, its obviously people wanting to see players playing fundamental baseball and how to play it the right way. And we know ONLY the Angels can do that.
Or more people just wanted to be Fisted by Chip Caray.
For all the people that say Yankees are bad for baseball and that our free spending ways is bad for baseball.
If and when the Yankees do pull out from the friggin MLB and no one watches your backwaters shit farming team play each other. And all the teams can’t generate enough to sustain, you can go cry yourself a shit river.
These 2 a- hole announcers on fox… Please get them off the station !!!!!!
They get paid lots of money for talking s….
It really makes watching the game painful.
we are in NY it was a great game 2 until these 2 a-holes started saying Angeles need to do something
and they started hitting & they continue to talk negatively about the Yankees.
Who made the decission to put the game on FOX?
Every error they are happy about.
Yankees rule!!!!
Great!!!!!!!!!!!! what else do you both commentators have to say now???????
silence- might be better then your bitter unappropriate comments, why do you not change jobs?