Schroeder, Who Has Played Baseball, Finds Himself Competing Once Again

Jay Schroeder used to compete against Darryl Strawberry, Dwight Gooden and Lenny Dykstra, and a rainy Sunday in New York gave him the chance to do it again.

However, the former member of the Toronto Blue Jays’ minor league system wasn’t to be in the seventh game of the World Series with the three Mets Monday night. He was a couple of channels removed, in a Washington Redskins’ uniform for an NFC East showdown against the New York Giants.

And this competition was for television ratings.

Rain on Sunday forced the postponement of Game 7 of the Series to Monday night, with the Mets and Boston Red Sox scheduled to start play at 8:10 p.m. EST. The Giants and Redskins were to kick off about an hour later.

It put baseball in direct competition with football, and paired NBC-TV and the World Series against ABC-TV and the NFL’s Monday Night Football.

“Everyone is going to be hurt,” Irv Brodsky, director of sports information for ABC-TV, predicted. “The fans may be the biggest losers of all. If everything went according to schedule, they would have seen the final game of the World Series and a very good football game. Now they had to make a choice.”

So far this season, Monday Night Football had a 19.1 rating and a 30 share, Brodsky said.

Through the first five games, the Series had a 26.2 rating and a 42 share, NBC spokesman Kevin Monaghan said.

“We know that the ABC game is a very good football game,” Monaghan said. “But this is the seventh game of the World Series. We’re probably going to be hurt a little in the ratings, but not too much.”

Monaghan said the overnight ratings for Game 6 of the Series, those from the 13 top TV markets, were a 33.1 rating and a 54 share, and that a seventh game probably would do just as well unless it turned into a blowout, like last year’s final game between Kansas City and St. Louis, when the Royals 11-0.

That would have given baseball fans the opportunity to see Schroeder, whose first goal in sports was to play in the World Series. He signed with the Blue Jays after being selected No. 3 overall in the 1979 June draft.

The former UCLA quarterback compiled batting averages of .234, .204, .218 and .206 before realizing a change was in order. He returned to football and the Redskins drafted him in 1984 in the third round. His big chance came a year ago when quarterback Joe Theismann suffered a broken leg in a Monday night game against the Giants.

“I think my experience in the minor leagues helped,” Schroeder said. “I had been around pro sports and seen enough people come and go. I also knew enough to prepare for every game like I was going to play, because I was always one play away from getting in.”

Schroeder has been at the Redskins’ helm ever since and Washington had won 10 of 12 starts. They were 6-1 this season, a game ahead of New York.

A Giants’ victory would create a three-way tie for first place in the NFC East with the Dallas Cowboys and Washington.

Schroeder said he wouldn’t be rooting for either the Mets or the Red Sox Monday night. Until Monday, he had been watching the Series.

“It’s been fun to watch because I played against a lot of those guys in the minors, Darryl Strawberry, Lenny Dykstra and Dwight Gooden, and I think back to those days when I was playing against them,” he said.

Weather permitting, he was to have had another chance.