Subscribe To
This Site
A MON AVISA Mon Avis - (Prentiously French) TV Kills Everything I Love If the gales of November haven’t come early, a pre-winter chill is certainly now upon us. The first visible snowflakes made their appearance a few days ago, valiantly trying but ultimately failing to make it to the ground. Christmas commercials are going full-throttle on TV, and am I the only one surprised by this? Surprised and not a little annoyed. So much so that I’ve made a vow to do no shopping at any place that Christmas shills before December. So to all concerned, no Canadian Tire gift certificates this year. It’s not that I’m a Grinch about the holiday season. In fact, I’d hazard a guess I’m in the upper percentile of enjoying the Yuletide… just not seven weeks of it. How can you maintain enthusiasm for any celebration with that kind of duration? At least Americans get to bulk up and prep for Christmas with their late November Thanksgiving. So to rid our heads of visions of those sugar plums that’ve shown up to the party far too early, let us do a mental 180, to un-Christmas and un-winter thoughts. Let us talk turkey. No, not about the bird but about baseball. More specifically, the pernicious effect of television on the game of baseball. First, let’s get one thing straight. It’s not that I’m a highbrow, highfalutin, hauteur anti-TV aesthete. In fact, I love television. I love it so much, I should marry it. (You’ll see in a minute where that reference comes from. If you don’t, you’re not half the TV fan I am.) I believe that we’re living at a particularly high-water mark for television, largely due to outfits like HBO. More than a few critics have remarked that a show like The Wire has scaled novelistic heights. (I happen to agree. Verily.) I have obsessively watched every episode of Arrested Development too many times for any adult to freely admit. Embarrassingly, bits of the show’s dialogue have entered my daily banter. (You didn’t eat that, did you?) I can only stare, slack-jawed, when somebody announces in my presence that they don’t watch television. “What do you do after dinner,” my only, and probably pilfered, response. Moreover, television was instrumental in introducing me to baseball. In 1968, as cities burned and high profile public figures were cut down right there on TV screens in front of us, it’s images from one of the greatest World Series ever played that stay with me. I can vividly remember Tom Seaver on the mound during the New York Mets’ improbable run in `69. As a little league player I wore white cleats, just like the band of hippies that were the three-time champion Oakland Athletics during the early-70s. A team with the coolest roster of names ever: Vida Blue, Blue Moon Odom, Jim “Catfish” Hunter, Rollie Fingers, Sal Bando. Could they’ve hung out with the likes of Danny Ocean or what? And yes, as a matter of fact, for all of those who have seen me play ball as an adult, I did my stint as a little leaguer. I never claimed I was good but you’ll note I could accessorize for the diamond even back then. Baseball and television went together like… like…Harry Caray and a drunken version of Take Me Out to the Ballgame. But lately, not so much.Take, for instance, the Boston Red Sox sweep of the Colorado Rockies in this year’s fall classic. Arguably, Boston was the stronger team. They had more depth, especially in their pitching. Why wouldn’t they, with a payroll Godzilla to the Rockies’ Bambi. Experience was also in the Red Sox favour, having won it all just three years previously. But a certain aura lit up the Colorado Rockies this year; an intangible sense of destiny a team can generate in October. They had a serious case of momentum. But with one bone-headed decision, Fox TV, the network broadcasting the World Series, stopped Colorado in their tracks. It seems Fox wanted to orchestrate a possible 7th and deciding game to be shown on a Saturday night, believing it would be ratings home run. To do that, they arbitrarily decreed that the World Series would commence on Wednesday, October 24th. What they hadn’t counted on (or could care less about) was Colorado’s 7-0 run to claim the National League championship. This left them with an eight day layoff before the start of the World Series. Fox might as well have decided to put the whole thing on ice over the winter and use it to kick off the `08 season. For those of you non-baseball people who are still following along (bless you), an eight day break is an eternity in professional baseball. The regular season starts the first week of April and plays out 162 games until the end of September. That’s some 180 days. So teams have a day off here and there, every week or so, a three day hiatus for the All-Star game in July, and that’s it. Day in and day out, they play the game. If they don’t, their timing and mechanics gets thrown off, wreaking havoc on those being paid to throw a ball 90+ mph and those at the receiving end, trying to hit the speeding object being hurled their way. Unsurprisingly and, for Fox and every baseball fan not residing in the Red Sox nation, anti-climactically, the Colorado Rockies were but a shadow of their former playoff selves. Their hitters couldn’t hit. Their pitchers couldn’t pitch, especially in game one when they were pasted 13-1. It got only mildly better over the next three games but all amounted to Rockie losses. The announcers made the occasional reference to the possible adverse affects of the time off for Colorado but it felt like that classic episode of Fawlty Towers when German guests came to stay and Basil fussed, telling the staff not to mention the war.. Instead of an exciting and highly watched World Series game 7, Fox just had another failed program launch, one more Cops-filled Saturday night. Yep, television seems hell bent on killing baseball. Just like it’s determined to kill Christmas, stretching it out to the point where it no longer feels like a holiday but some sort of court ordered community service. While we’re at it, let’s throw journalism into the mix, which TV has battered, bruised, stabbed and bludgeoned beyond recognition. How about Kelsey Grammer. Remember when he used to be funny, one or two series ago?TV is a cruel mistress, beguiling you one minute, tearing out your heart (and hair) for the rest of the hour. Beware all ye who enter here. No matter how much you love it, television will ultimately deface and deflower all that you hold dear.
|
