Thursday, October 29, 2009

Re: Baseball’s Follies   [Andy McCarthy]

Hooray for Ed's excellent suggestions. The appalling television manipulation of the playoffs has had teams like the Angels and Yanks playing only eight games over a three-week period and will now push a World Series between teams from two Northeast cities well into the first week of November. This is neither the pace nor the conditions in which baseball is meant to be played.  It's not merely inconvenient; it is affecting the game. The Angels, one of baseball's best fielding teams, were dreadful in the rain, wind, and chill of Yankee Stadium with temps in the low 40s (by contrast, the Phillies and Rockies played remarkably well given temps in the 20s for their games in Colorado — after game 1 was posponed due to snow). Also, teams with excellent starting pitching (e.g., the Yankees) are penalized by all the days off — which never happen in the regular season and are done strictly for TV ratings in the playoffs — since teams with inferior second-tier starters get to pitch their best guys more often than usual on full or close to full rest. The most important games of the season are being played the worst circumstances and conditions. It's not right.

10/29 10:36 AMShare