Seven wasn't enough

By Bill Griffith, Globe Staff, 10/19/2003

Oops. It's time for Plan B. No more Red Sox postgame shows on NESN. Forget the plans for pregame and postgame World Series shows on FSNE, even on weekends. There won't be any more worries at Channel 4 about how to get viewers to tune to Channel 38 for postgame World Series specials. But there is hope at NECN that the significant ratings bump for "Sports Late Night" might not dissipate entirely.

On the radio side, cancel those plans to move WEEI radio's operation en masse to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., for next week's daily shows around a Sox-Marlins World Series.

Other thoughts in the wake of Game 7:

Everyone expected Alan Embree would replace Pedro Martinez with one out and two men on base in the eighth inning Thursday night. That includes Joe Castiglione and Jerry Trupiano on radio, Tim McCarver on Fox, and the NESN studio crew of Jerry Remy, Dennis Eckersley, and Bob Rodgers.

The pitching changes in Game 7 (the Yankees used six pitchers, the Sox four) were golden for Fox. "The phones were ringing off the hook [before Games 6 and 7] with agencies looking for advertising space on the games." said Ed Goren, Fox Sports president. "We couldn't get enough pitching changes [slots to add commercial breaks] to satisfy the demand."

Fox's Joe Buck on the Yankees being in the Series again: "As much as baseball fans say they hate to see the Yankees in the World Series year after year, I think people like to see if the Yankees will succeed or fail."

That said, a Cubs-Red Sox Series would have created a ratings bonanza for Fox, one that the Yankees and Marlins can't equal, no matter what develops. "It was a nice change to have people claim we're rooting for the Red Sox and Cubs," said Goren. "In the past, it always was, `You guys have to be rooting for the Yankees.' " It will be interesting to see the World Series ratings in Boston and Chicago, where viewers may be too emotionally spent to get into the games.

In Boston, McCarver was perceived as being pro-Yankee; in New York, he's perceived as anti-Yankee. "Joe [Buck] and I stood outside Yankee Stadium waiting for our ride for 40 minutes after Game 6 Wednesday night," said McCarver. "It gave a lot of fans time to have their say, then they shook hands and moved along."

Buck made good on his pledge to speak only minimally in the first inning Thursday. And the trio in the booth let the Yankees' celebration pictures speak for themselves at the game's end.

Having Bret Boone quietly watch brother Aaron celebrate Thursday was a far cry from Darrell Waltrip rooting passionately for brother Michael from the Fox booth at Daytona in 2001. Still, one observer noted, "Bret Boone. That looked like the face of a jealous man."

How you know you're watching a Fox baseball telecast: A split-screen picture with the pitcher on the left and batter on the right; a tight shot of a play with the camera then zooming in even closer; the virtual billboards behind home plate; the irritating "shazooooom" prompt noise before and after replays; mega-slow-mo shots that don't really show much; returning abruptly to the action as the first pitch (hopefully) of the inning heads plateward; returning in the last of the seventh to hear Ronan Tynan's final few bars of "God Bless America."

History class

Watching the just-released "100 Years of the World Series," a 3 1/2-hour DVD narrated by Bob Costas, you realize how much has changed, technologywise, and how much remains the same (the huge crowds and media coverage) that baseball's fall classic attracts every year.

As much as this work is a chronology of the World Series, it's also a de facto history of photography and the growth of the television industry, which always pushed technological developments to improve its sports coverage. The early years of the Series are covered with a combination of still photos and narration, plus some digitally enhanced black and white film. Better film, radio tracks, and color film gradually work their way in until modern audio and even some high-definition TV appears. But woven through it all is the hold the game has had on our society for more than a century.

Mitchell Scherr, the producer of the project -- a collaborative effort of Major League Baseball and Q Video -- said that various ways of organizing the material were considered, including segmenting it by franchises or by themes. But in the end, the decision was made to go with a traditional chronology (and it was the right one).

As the years roll by, the passage of time takes on a double meaning. On one hand, suddenly the Babe Ruth years don't seem all that long ago. But watching the painful seasons of 1946, 1967, and 1975, it seems that they happened an awfully long time ago. You reach 1967 and think, "Was that Impossible Dream season really 36 years ago?" And then you realize the DVD has another hour and a half to go. The younger you are, the later that point will hit you, but it will.

The DVD should be readily available wherever videos are sold. The single-disc history goes for $14.95. A two-disc set with more than two hours of bonus features (worth it for the out-take interviews alone) is $19.95.

Who ordered this?

Tomorrow (7-9 a.m.), ESPN2 launches "Cold Pizza," yet another entry in the morning news and entertainment field. The sports aspect will be covered in a "While You Were Sleeping" segment. The rest seems stuff I can do without: celebrity and non-celebrity weathercasters and discussions on relationships, music, television, technology, gadgets, cars, and fitness. I thought cold pizza was what you ate over the sink before running off to work . . . Blue Cross made political points in announcing it had pulled $27,000 in ads from WEEI in the wake of the "Dennis & Callahan" suspensions. But the spots were filled by another advertiser within a day. Bottom line: Good ratings outweigh bad taste . . . Warren Sapp (Buccaneers) and Michael Strahan (Giants), have signed on to do Thursday night segments on "NFL Total Access," the signature nightly show of the NFL Network, which is scheduled to launch Nov. 4. The two will appear at the same time, on remote from their team headquarters, to debate the NFL's hot topics. NFL Network, at its launch, will be available only on Channel 212 on DirecTV . . . Hank Goldberg will report from Miami for "NFL Sunday Countdown" (ESPN, 11 a.m.-1 p.m.) before today's Patriots-Dolphins game (Channel 4, 1 p.m.). Channel 4 will have "5th Quarter" immediately after the game . . . Charles Barkley was on at halftime of Thursday's Cavaliers-Lakers preseason telecast, which was up against Sox-Yankees Game 7: "Paul Silas's wife and LeBron James's mother aren't even watching this game," noted Barkley. Co-host Kenny Smith: "People have picture-in-picture, but we are in the little box." . . . Tonight's Bruins-Anaheim game (NESN, 8 p.m.) may be going up against the World Series, but you have to wonder how much interest the Yankees-Marlins matchup will draw in this area.

Bill Griffith's e-mail address is griffith@globe.com