As I went to bed last night, I was (as usual) annoyed at MLB. Please understand, I want baseball to be great, I want baseball to be relevant like it used to be.
Last night I saw some tweets from MLB about “Gio’s revenge” and I honestly had no idea who Gio was or what he is avenging. I learned Gio plays for the Yankees, a city I had been in earlier in the day, but I couldn’t tell you what position he plays.
Now before you old man me, please understand….and you know this to be true….
- I am on twitter 16 hours a day and very active
- I have been running a BASEBALL WEBSITE since 2008
- I watch most innings of Mets games.
I have no idea who Gio is. Is that my fault or MLBs? I live in the market where the guy plays! No idea. But baseball casually tweets about his revenge like I have any idea what that meant. I still have no idea.
Meanwhile, I scroll down and I see many highlights of Lebron James slamming basketballs. These are quick motion video highlights and they are fun to watch. I’ve heard of Mr. James and a bunch of other NBA players. They have seeped into the culture.
Yesterday around 4pm The Baseball Mafia was so excited about their four screen box. Playoff baseball and they were excited. I get they have to get a lot of games in, but why not do this four box excitement at 7pm Eastern? Let me remind you where the population lives…
But they played these games on a Wednesday afternoon instead of prime time for the blue cone.
The Yankees game was in the 4th inning at 10pm EDT last night. (Yes it rained)
AND if you even wanted to make the Los Angeles argument – I imagine that at 10pm the Los Angeles fans were watching the playoff game involving the Los Angeles team that started at 10pm EDT.
Today MLB will play games at noon (9am pacific, but these people I am told can’t watch baseball before 5:30 local time), 2pm,3pm 7pm and 10pm.
The 7pm game is Cardinals-Padres and is being fed to the NFL Wolves, which is the point of today’s lengthy piece.
The NFL has the 0-3 Broncos vs the 0-3 LOLJets. Not exactly Patriots-Bucs.
Which game do you think will rate better? Bottom of the barrel NFL or Cardinals-Padres?
And that got me thinking about when football passed baseball….and I am going with starting in 1985 and passing them in 1990.
I think before 1990 I watched every ALCS NLCS and World Series. I remember those 1980 Phillies. Those rotten Cardinals. Those annoying Dodgers. The Bay Series with the Earthquake.
Then…something happened.
1990. A’s-Reds. I remember being out at the bar and the game being on and not caring.
I think MLB got a run of Who Cares teams. Those two Blue Jays rings? Who Cares. Sure one Joe Carter moment. Who cares?
Then the lockout/strike/whatever it was.
The Yankees dynasty hid some sins all the way through 2001. MLB had a good story to tell – Ghosts and all that – some history – and a nice keystone in Jeter.
That ended and then…..random Angels ring. Random White Sox. The Marlins. Who cares. You get a little Boston in there, that was good storytelling.
Philies-Rays?
The Cheating Astros – I know the Baseball Mafia worshiped Altuve, but did Joe Sports Fan care about the Astros?
And here we are.
As for the NFL – it was the #2 sport. Several things have changed….
The accessibility of the league. If you follow me on twitter you will see me most Sundays talk about how AWFUL watching the NFL in NYC was. We got one game at 1pm and one game at 4pm and those games were the Giants and Jets. The rest of the country would get a double header and we would hear Pat Summerall tell us “coming up at 4, the Cowboys take on the 49ers (or whatever)…and then the dreaded phrase “except in New York). We would switch over to Channel 4 and suffer through Jets-Bills.
There was no WFAN, no ticker, no score bug NOTHING in those days. And in those days, if WNBC had the late game we wouldn’t even get a half time show. We would get the 6pm news. AWFUL.
Slowly that all changed. 10 minute tickers (score updates every 10 minutes!!!)….sports radio….”rotisserie football” which you know as Fantasy came around when Thurman Thomas was the no doubt #1 pick. Now you had reason to follow other teams…as long as you could.
AOL came along, we could get boxscores for our Rotisserie Football teams.
Then DirecTV Sunday Ticket! We could bounce from game to game.
Eventually Red Zone – someone else did the work for us.
Meanwhile on field…
The 1985 Bears. They were GOOD and they were FUN. Rock Stars
The 1986 Giants – good for the sport
Joe Montana!
A good Cowboys Team, just as Fox was getting into the sport!
Brett Favre! John Elway!
and then Tom Brady!
Meanwhile…baseball plays 4 hour slogs until midnight. Has baseball ever wondered why the Super Bowl starts at 6:30pm and not 8:30? Maybe they should look into that.
So VERY long way of saying…it started with the 1985 Bears and ended with the 1990 A’s-Reds. Since then, NFL is king.
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