Tag Archives: Barry Bonds

All-time low rating: Why World Series continues to decline; trails NBA Finals, NCAA tourney, BCS

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It doesn’t add up.

Bud Selig will tell anyone who listens that Major League Baseball is more popular than ever. The game continues to set attendance records.

However, if that’s the case, why are TV ratings sinking at the same pace as Detroit’s bats during the World Series?

The latest Giants World Series victory averaged an all-time low of 12.7 million viewers per game. The numbers are striking.

From Sports Media Watch:

The World Series has now set or tied a record-low rating eight times since the 1994-95 players’ strike (1998, 2000, 2002, 2005, 2006, 2008, 2010 and 2012). In addition, this is the seventh time in the past eight election years (midterm or presidential) that the World Series has set a record-low.

The 2012 World Series was the third in five years to average a previously unheard-of single-digit rating. Over the past five seasons, 20 of 27 World Series telecasts have drawn a single-digit rating — compared to four such games previously.

Forget about losing to football. From Sports Media Watch:

Compared to other sports, the World Series trailed the five-game Bowl Championship Series on ESPN (8.4, 14.1M), the three-game NCAA Tournament Final Four (10.1, 17.1M*) and the five-game Heat/Thunder NBA Finals on ABC (10.1, 16.9M).

This marks the fourth time in five years that the NBA Finals has averaged a higher rating and more viewers than the World Series, and the fifth time in seven years the NBA has averaged better numbers among adults 18-49. Prior to 2008, the NBA Finals had only topped the World Series three times, all in years when Michael Jordan‘s Bulls won the championship (1993, 1996 and 1998).

Once upon a time, the 1977 World Series averaged 44 million viewers per game. Now that’s not a fair comparison in the modern era of TV ratings, but even by recent measures, the World Series has declined. There wasn’t one series in the ’90s that averaged less than 20 million viewers per game. As late as 2004, the series pulled in 25 million viewers per game.

So what gives Mr. Commissioner? Popularity should be measured by attendance and ratings. If I’m MLB and its TV partners, there has to be concern why fans aren’t watching the biggest games on their big screens.

As it relates to the World Series, here are some of my theories:

Sweep madness: Baseball has run into an extraordinary string of bad luck. The Giants sweep was the fourth in a World Series since 2004. Only two series in the last nine have gone beyond five games and only one to the full seven.

Nothing kills ratings more than a sweep. People start to check out after 2-0. Even worse, there’s no carryover effect from one year to the next. With the exception of St. Louis-Texas in 2011, the World Series hasn’t delivered much in the way of lasting memories–except for fans of the winning team.

Football: Back in 1977, football was limited to the colleges on Saturday afternoon and the pros on Sunday afternoon and Monday night. And baseball usually scheduled on an off-day to avoid a conflict with Monday Night Football.

Now the World Series bumps up against football on virtually every night. Saturday’s Game 3 faced a stiff test in Notre Dame-Oklahoma, and Game 4 went up against Peyton Manning and Drew Brees on Sunday Night Football. Baseball definitely took a hit.

I remember when the NFL didn’t schedule a Sunday night game to avoid a conflict with the World Series. Not anymore. Football rules.

Local: I wonder if baseball has become more provincial. If the home team isn’t involved, perhaps we don’t care anymore. I definitely didn’t hear much talk about the World Series on my two local sports talk radio stations in Chicago. Can you say, Da Bears!

Star power: Or lack thereof. Stars draw viewers, and this year’s World Series didn’t have them. Sure, Buster Posey and Miguel Cabrera are terrific players, but they don’t move the meter like a Derek Jeter or ARod, or dare I say it, Barry Bonds. Now the Giants winning two of three series with Bonds in the lineuep? I guarantee that would have generated some ratings.

Kids out: As I wrote Saturday, lamenting how kids get shut out because of the late start of games, I wonder if we’ve lost a generation of baseball fans–at least as far as the World Series is concerned. All I can say is that when I came home Saturday night, my sports-obsessed teenage boys were flipping between ND-Oklahoma and Michigan-Nebraska games. When I asked them what was going on in Game 3, they had no idea.

They didn’t grow up with the World Series. They never got to see the end of games when they were younger. As a result, the World Series isn’t important to them.

MLB should reach out to my boys. They could provide some good feedback on the all-important youth demo.

And finally: At least the short series prevented a Game 7 on Nov. 1. There’s something not right about baseball in November.

Anything else?: I’m open to suggestions.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Costas interview with Leyland: Bonds, Tigers, retirement and being a singer

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On MLB Network Saturday:

Detroit Tigers manager Jim Leyland looks back on his 26-year career as a Major League Baseball manager in a new episode of MLB Network’s Studio 42 with Bob Costas this Saturday, June 9 at 2:00 p.m. ET.

Studio 42 with Bob Costas featuring Jim Leyland will re-air on Sunday, June 10 at 10:00 p.m. ET

And here are some excerpts:

On managing the Pittsburgh Pirates in their 1992 NLCS loss to the Atlanta Braves:

The ’92 loss was probably the toughest I’ve ever suffered and it was a very interesting scenario.  I said it at the time and I still think about it today, this whole picture flashed in my mind [of] a Little League World Series.  It was almost reduced to that, like a Little League game, where one side’s jumping up and down and one side’s crying.  It was unbelievable.

With all due respect to the media people [and] TV people, I asked them, “Can we have a couple of extra minutes?”  I said, “This is a tough one,” and they gave us that.  I always appreciated that…It was pretty much what you’d expect, some guys crying, some guys just really lost…I was in a total fog.  You know the old saying from Jack Buck, “I can’t believe what I just saw,” that’s kind of the way I felt.

On managing Barry Bonds while in Pittsburgh:

I saw a lot of good things in Barry…He’s not as tough as he lets on. I think he’s one of those guys that it was a motivational tool for him to upset people, to make them mad at him.

He was coachable and he was manageable.  A lot of people didn’t think so, but it depended on how you coached him.  Barry was one of those guys where he was very coachable, but you had to let him think it was his idea.

On managing the last inning of the 1997 World Series between the Florida Marlins and Cleveland Indians:

I thought “Devon [White] is going to hit a sacrifice fly, get a fly ball over somebody’s head, get a base hit, whatever it may be,” We were gonna win the World Series.  When he hit the ground ball to second and they forced the guy at home, I said, “Oh my God, I’m almost out of pitching.  I gotta look at what I’m doing.”…I was looking back down at my card and just before the pitch to Edgar [Renteria], I looked up again…Just as I looked up, Edgar hit it and I looked it and it was in center field.  I’m going, “Oh my God, it’s over, and what a relief.”  I was actually relieved more because I didn’t have to continue to work on my lineup card…It was an amazing feeling.

On Game Seven of the 1997 World Series being underrated:

It’s always stuck in my craw, it’s always bothered me a little bit…I really believe had that been the Yankees [and] the Dodgers, Yankees and the Mets, it might’ve gone down as the second greatest World Series game of all time. … It was truly a better game for me than the Arizona [Diamondbacks] and Yankees [Game Seven in 2001] …It’s one of the greatest games, I think, that was ever played…I think the fact that it was Cleveland and Florida, it just didn’t get the hype that it should’ve gotten.

On if he felt he was done in managing after one season in Colorado in 1999:

I didn’t think I would ever manage again.  I truly did not think that I would ever manage another Major League Baseball team. I left four million dollars on the table.  My wife wasn’t real happy about it.  I just felt like I didn’t want to go back there and try to fake my way through it.  It wasn’t the right thing to do.

On taking the managerial position in Detroit in 2006:

[Detroit] was probably really the only situation [I would go to]. I live in Pittsburgh so Philadelphia would’ve been a nice little ring.  I would’ve been interested.  They had a good team, a nice, new ballpark.  But [Detroit] had more to it than a lot of other things.  I didn’t think, at my age, I was ever going to get a chance to manage the Tigers.  All of a sudden, this kind of fell in my lap. Here it was and I said, “You know what, I’m reenergized.  This is what I thought I always might have a chance to do, get a shot to do. Here it is, a little late.” But, yeah, this worked out good.

On when he will retire:

When the passion’s not there. When I start getting up in the morning and not wanting to go to work, I’ll go home. Tony [La Russa] and I are a little bit different in that I had a six-year sabbatical [from 1999-2006] and that really refreshed me. That got the battery going again.  I think that really helped me out. I think if I would’ve tried to do it like 33 straight years like Tony did, I probably would’ve stepped away too, maybe even before that.  But that six-year sabbatical, I spent some time at home and watched the kids grow up a bit.  It really refreshed me.

On what he would do if he wasn’t in baseball:

I’m embarrassed to say this, but I would’ve liked to have been in a band.  I love to sing.  I played the trumpet as a kid.  Our family sat around the piano. I never played a piano in my life, but my brother played the piano, my two sisters played.  I love it.  I still like to sing.  I’m not as good as I was at one time.  I was ok at one time…I can’t quite hit the high ones like I used to, but I was ok.  I sang weddings and I was in a choir and different things like that, and I loved it.  But this worked out a little better, I think.

I love soft rock.  I’m not into the rap too much, obviously.  I’m a little old for that….I love the oldies.  I saw “Jersey Boys” four times…I love musicals.  I saw a lot of the musicals.  I like those and participated in those in school, so that’s probably what I would’ve tried to do.  I doubt it would have worked out, but who knows?  That’s a tough business.  That’s probably tougher than our business to be successful in.