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Who Are The Idiots At ESPN

T

Tilden

Guest
Trying to watch Sunday night baseball on ESPN - Red Sox vs. Astros.

Nearly impossible. Very poor camera angles; poor graphics and jibberish from the booth announcers.

Worse than that they just went split screen to explain baseball to some blonde bimbo who was only there because of her looks. The Red Sox were up and you could hardly see what was going on on the field.

DUMP ESPN FROM SUNDAY NIGHT BASEBALL . THEY ARE RANK AMATEURS !
 
Sunday Night Baseball is way off the rails. The announce team usually seems poorly prepared to talk about their actual game, every week, so they spend a large amount of time talking about other teams.

Add in the interviews they stick into the middle of innings, usually with a split screen, and Buster Olney's weekly plug for life in Vermont... argh.
 
PTBoardOp94 said:
Sunday Night Baseball is way off the rails. The announce team usually seems poorly prepared to talk about their actual game, every week, so they spend a large amount of time talking about other teams.

Add in the interviews they stick into the middle of innings, usually with a split screen, and Buster Olney's weekly plug for life in Vermont... argh.
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As long as the game involves the Yankees, Red Sox, or Mets, I doubt that ESPN cares how it's covered, so long as it is covered. ;)
 
KeithE4 said:
As long as the game involves the Yankees, Red Sox, or Mets, I doubt that ESPN cares how it's covered, so long as it is covered. ;)
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Cubs and Cardinals, too -- the only teams that matter in the Midwest. And the two teams that matter in the West, the Dodgers and Giants (although not the latter this year, as they're among the worst teams in the NL) when they venture east into the only time zone that matters to play the teams in the two East Coast cities that matter.

The Astros and Nationals could win their divisions by 25 games this year. They still won't appear on Sunday night until the postseason starts unless they're playing a team that matters.
 
CTListener said:
Cubs and Cardinals, too -- the only teams that matter in the Midwest. And the two teams that matter in the West, the Dodgers and Giants (although not the latter this year, as they're among the worst teams in the NL) when they venture east into the only time zone that matters to play the teams in the two East Coast cities that matter.
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The luster is off the Cubs now. They're a barely .500 team in the worst division in MLB -- a division that they should be leading by at least 15 games, given that they have the same talent and manager as last year. The Cardinals are all but irrelevant.

And where are the Rockies and Diamondbacks, who are two of the three best teams in the NL (Only the Dodgers and Nationals are up there with them)? Oh, yeah, they're located in Denver and Phoenix -- nonentities to the Eastern Seaboard Partisans Network.

The Astros and Nationals could win their divisions by 25 games this year. They still won't appear on Sunday night until the postseason starts unless they're playing a team that matters.
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The Nationals are an Almighty East Coast team. They'll get their games, replacing the Phillies (who stink) as the #4 team on ESPN. The Astros, on the other hand, are in irrelevant-for-baseball Texas, just like the Rangers. Texas won't matter until August, when the NFL starts its preseason.
 
KeithE4 said:
And where are the Rockies and Diamondbacks, who are two of the three best teams in the NL (Only the Dodgers and Nationals are up there with them)? Oh, yeah, they're located in Denver and Phoenix -- nonentities to the Eastern Seaboard Partisans Network.
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You could add the Mariners to that list. But the thing that hurts the Rockies & D-Backs the most is the fact that they're expansion teams that really don't have many fans outside their home area. That also hurts the Nationals. The older, more established teams have fans all over the country. Especially for the old east coast teams. If you've ever lived in a place that doesn't have a local team, you start to see which teams attract out of town fans. Certainly the Braves and the Cubs benefited from all those years on super stations.
 
TheBigA said:
You could add the Mariners to that list. But the thing that hurts the Rockies & D-Backs the most is the fact that they're expansion teams that really don't have many fans outside their home area. That also hurts the Nationals. The older, more established teams have fans all over the country. Especially for the old east coast teams. If you've ever lived in a place that doesn't have a local team, you start to see which teams attract out of town fans.
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Most teams, other than the Yankees -- the MLB equivalent of the Dallas Cowboys -- Cubs, Cardinals, and Braves, are of strictly local interest. And, now that Superstations and the huge Cardinals radio network of the '60s and earlier are gone, interest in the latter three are diminishing outside of their own markets. That lack of national interest includes the "second" team in the two-team cities (Mets, White Sox, Angels, A's). But since the Mets are in Noo Yawk, they get prime time no matter how lousy they are.

"Red Sox Nation" exists only because of ESPN. Few care about the Red Sox outside of New England, other than expatriates from that area. IIRC, they don't generate that much interest from Fox during the regular season.

Certainly the Braves and the Cubs benefited from all those years on super stations.
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As did the Cardinals on radio, especially prior to the Dodgers and Giants move to California in 1958, and the Braves move to Atlanta in 1966. The Cardinals were THE team in the west and south back in the day. Harry Carry didn't just magically appear out of the blue when he joined the Cubs in 1982. He'd been a fixture on radio for 30 years in St. Louis and other areas that aired Cardinals games.
 
KeithE4 said:
Most teams, other than the Yankees -- the MLB equivalent of the Dallas Cowboys -- Cubs, Cardinals, and Braves, are of strictly local interest.
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All that said, if I'm an ad-supported network, give me a good reason to schedule a game with Denver, Seattle, or Phoenix. Or San Diego. What's in it for me? A lot of those teams can't even get their local fans excited.
 
TheBigA said:
All that said, if I'm an ad-supported network, give me a good reason to schedule a game with Denver, Seattle, or Phoenix. Or San Diego. What's in it for me? A lot of those teams can't even get their local fans excited.
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They have to follow the scheduling rules set down by the Commissioner's Office, per their contract. Each team is only allowed a certain number of nationally televised games. Even the Yankees and Red Sox. Same goes for the other sports, otherwise we'd be stuck with NFC East and Patriots games on NBC every Sunday night.
 
TheBigA said:
All that said, if I'm an ad-supported network, give me a good reason to schedule a game with Denver, Seattle, or Phoenix. Or San Diego. What's in it for me? A lot of those teams can't even get their local fans excited.
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MLB has two big problems. First, it's done a horrible job of promoting its stars. Look what the NBA did with James, Durant, Paul when they were playing in Cleveland, Oklahoma City and New Orleans. Go back 20 years and everyone knew who Malone and Stockton were -- and they played in Salt Lake City, for pete's sake! Those teams were good AND they got national exposure every week, and not just when they were playing the New York, LA and Chicago teams. THAT'S how you turn stars into superstars.

Second, MLB doesn't have the massive gambling interest that the NFL has. Plenty of people watch NFL teams they care little about playing other teams they care little about every week because they have serious money on the outcomes of the games -- legal, through a bookie or offshore betting service, or in a fantasy league. Baseball has fantasy players, though not nearly as many as football, but there are way too many games every week for all but real hardcore gamblers to be betting. The NFL has done OK with marketing its stars (but nowhere near what the NBA has), but it's the No. 1 TV sport primarily because of gambling. Which is why all of the NFL's sanctimonious talk about gambling and how awful and evil it is is just that -- talk. NFL ratings would wither if nobody in this country had a way, legal or illegal, to put money on the games.
 
KeithE4 said:
They have to follow the scheduling rules set down by the Commissioner's Office, per their contract.
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That doesn't answer the question. Meanwhile, looking ahead, I see no Sunday night games scheduled for the Rockies. But the next two weeks will feature the Cardinals.

CTListener said:
MLB has two big problems. First, it's done a horrible job of promoting its stars.
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I agree with that. Third problem is there's no baseball fantasy leagues (or at least to the extent it exists in football).
 
CTListener said:
MLB has two big problems. First, it's done a horrible job of promoting its stars. Look what the NBA did with James, Durant, Paul when they were playing in Cleveland, Oklahoma City and New Orleans. Go back 20 years and everyone knew who Malone and Stockton were -- and they played in Salt Lake City, for pete's sake! Those teams were good AND they got national exposure every week, and not just when they were playing the New York, LA and Chicago teams. THAT'S how you turn stars into superstars.
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The Jazz, Suns, Spurs, Rockets, Hawks, and Sonics, were great teams in the '90s, but most of their nationally-televised games involved the Knicks, Lakers, Bulls, and Celtics, IIRC.

Second, MLB doesn't have the massive gambling interest that the NFL has.
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It's been almost 100 years since the Black Sox scandal, but betting on baseball (even if it's your own team -- just ask Pete Rose) is still an automatic lifetime suspension for any player, manager, or parking lot attendant that's employed by Major League Baseball. This is THE one rule they enforce to the letter, and there are no exceptions. Fans bet, of course, but MLB won't acknowledge that fact. Gambling doesn't officially exist to them. There will never be an MLB team in Las Vegas. I'm surprised they even allow a Class AAA team there.
 
KeithE4 said:
It's been almost 100 years since the Black Sox scandal, but betting on baseball (even if it's your own team -- just ask Pete Rose) is still an automatic lifetime suspension for any player, manager, or parking lot attendant that's employed by Major League Baseball. This is THE one rule they enforce to the letter, and there are no exceptions. Fans bet, of course, but MLB won't acknowledge that fact. Gambling doesn't officially exist to them. There will never be an MLB team in Las Vegas. I'm surprised they even allow a Class AAA team there.
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There's one in Reno, too. MLB has no problem with them because there's no gambling interest in Pacific Coast League games. How can there be when the primary reason to play minor league games is to get players prepared for the next level of professional baseball rather than to win individual games or league championships? I've seen hundreds of minor league games. In most of them, the starting pitchers have been in there to throw a set number of pitches or innings and would be left in to take a beating no matter what -- or pulled when pitching a dazzler no matter what. The last couple of innings are always played to win, with the strategy you'd expect at the big league level, but what comes before often bears little resemblance to a truly competitive contest.

I go to games because I like to see stars in their formative years, not because both teams will be grinding it out with World Series intensity for nine innings. The idea of sitting in a Class AA ballpark for four hours and full count after full count, and pitching change after pitching change, with only the dizzy bat race, T-shirt toss and mascot race for between-innings fun, terrifies me! Minor league games generally wrap up in well under three hours, which is just what such an intrinsically meaningless, low-stakes event ought to wrap up in.
 
MLB is still a local broadcast event. Very few viewers are attracted to some so-called "big games" out of market. Thus, ESPN and MLB are limited in what they can accomplish here. I am speaking about regular season games only. Most markets offer full tv viewing of their team, and that often extends to nearby cities. If I were running MLB network, I would go to the NFL network platform, offering highlights from good games and not afraid to jump around.
 
TheBigA said:
I go because I can get dinner and a show. Pretty simple.
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That's what most people do. It's a cheap night out compared to MLB or even a movie. I remember complaining to the owner of the New Britain team (now in Hartford) who would walk through the stands at most home games that the team wasn't showing out-of-town scores (Eastern League and MLB) on the video crawl beneath the main scoreboard between innings anymore, just promotional crap and paid advertising. He told me, frankly, that his team's best customers were families with young kids and no consuming interest in the Eastern League or the majors, that only the diehard baseball fans had even noticed that the scores were gone! They never returned -- and, of course, with smart phones so common, there's little if any need for them today.
 
seatownmedia said:
If I were running MLB network, I would go to the NFL network platform, offering highlights from good games and not afraid to jump around.
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That's what "MLB Tonight" is all about, but it's only on the network on the two or three nights a week that it isn't carrying a full game telecast.
 
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