I’m like really done with the Baseball Mafia tweeting “see, baseball isn’t dying” because THEY are all excited about a walk-off home run that happens at 12:15 in the morning. If I didn’t have to be at work until 4pm the next day I might watch the game myself (I wouldn’t because baseball is boring but that’s another story).
The Baseball Mafia has also been spinning “This LDS game is the biggest since slice bread in 2017” and such stats. But the St. Louis Post-Dispatch puts all this in perspective…
The announcement last week that the Cardinals had the best local television rating this season among U.S.-based MLB teams certainly was something to be proud of for the team and telecaster, Bally Sports Midwest. It was the third time in four seasons that the Cards were No. 1, and they were in the top four nationally for the 22nd consecutive year, also very impressive feats.
However, the full picture is not so rosy. According to Nielsen, which tracks viewership, BSM’s 149 Cardinals telecasts were seen in 6.2% of homes in the St. Louis market with a TV — the worst figure for a non-truncated season since the current system of tracking viewership began 32 seasons ago
In a nutshell, this is the fourth time in the last five “normal” seasons that the rating has decreased, and this year it was down a whopping 48% over the 10.0 figure reached in 2015
Baseball is back baby!
The scary part is from what I can see on baseball social media, I think baseball thinks baseball is doing well. Even the likes of Howie Rose were killing it last week for being long and boring.
Baseball CAN be good. Two and half hour games can be fun. Four hours is too much. I don’t even want a four hour Star Wars movie. It’s too much.
Baseball also likes playing its biggest moments after midnight. This has been a problem for decades now, brought up by the likes of Phil Mushnick.
Baseball got away with it because old people like me complained but stayed up. Especially in this area, there were plenty of Yankees postseasons, so fine we stayed up.
But the back end of the millennial and Gen-Z didn’t.
And time moved on and Jeter went away and the Yankees postseason turned into an Astros game and guess what…..the younger generation didn’t watch.
So the Baseball Mafia can be all excited about a walk-off that happens at 12:15am. Keep telling yourself everything is fine. The Post Dispatch knows the deal.
