What’s a Baseball Fan To Do? : WITH A DELAYED SPRING TRAINING, ESPN TRIED TO FILL THE VOID

In what has become baseball’s silent spring, no broadcaster has been affected more than ESPN.

This was to have been the year the all-sports cable network was to have begun its coverage of major league baseball, culminating a 10-year quest. A 10-game spring training schedule was planned, beginning March 3, as a preview for a 161-game regular season package.

But the owners’ spring training lockout put those plans on hold.

“We’re all dressed up, but there’s no place to go,” said Loren Matthews, ESPN senior vice president in charge of programming. “Everybody was so mentally geared up. We knew there was this dark cloud looming overhead, but it was still a downer when March 3 came and there were no games.”

ESPN has a two-step approach to fill the void left by the lockout: shifting programs scheduled to air at other times and showing taped series that had been planned to air after baseball season.

“What you will see on ESPN is what you’ve seen for the last several years,” Matthews said. “You don’t replace major league baseball with similar product, because there’s nothing like it hanging on that plane.”

ESPN has spring training games scheduled for Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday. Because of the uncertainty about baseball’s start, ESPN planned such possible replacements as the NCAA Wrestling Championships, “Swimsuit ‘89,” “Swimsuit Jamaica,” motor sports tapes and professional wrestling.

During baseball’s last extended work stoppage, the 1981 strike, ESPN televised minor league games. But this time around, minor league games were not part of Matthews’ replacement programming plan:

“The minor leagues don’t start their seasons until April 6, and I hope the lockout is settled by then,” he said while trying to plan ahead earlier this month. “Also, the minor leagues are trying to market a national schedule of games to a national network. We’re just looking for something to get through, and we couldn’t make long-term guarantees to them.”

This is the second consecutive spring that ESPN has been forced to alter is schedule. The network was in a similar bind last spring when it had to fill the nights that it had planned for the National Hockey League’s Stanley Cup playoffs. In the summer of 1988, the then-newly formed SportsChannel America outbid ESPN for the NHL rights.

“When we lost hockey and had to replace 37 of 40 nights of prime-time programing in April and May, not only did we do it, we increased ratings,” Matthews said. Despite the lockout, ESPN has had a baseball presence in two ways. The first is “Baseball Tonight,” a half-hour news show airing nightly at 8 p.m., though in a different format than had been planned.

“When they’re playing baseball, we’re a scores, highlights, features and analysis show,” coordinating producer Eric Schoenfeld said. “When the camps open, we’ll do profiles of all the teams. But when they aren’t playing, we’ll be talking about Twhat-if’ scenarios and how the lockout will affect various teams.”

The second is college baseball. ESPN, which has aired the sport since 1980, will be adding a game Thursday at 4:30 p.m.

College baseball has been among the sports benefitting the most from cable sports networks’ need for programming. Thanks in large measure to ESPN, college baseball has gone from a sport with almost no television exposure to being a staple of the industry.

The television exposure has also helped the sport’s attendance. In 1980, ESPN’s first year of college baseball telecasts, attendance at college baseball games was estimated at 6.8 million. By 1988, it had grown to 13.3 million.

“Television has put college baseball in front of the public,” said USC Coach Mike Gillespie, whose Trojans were top-ranked at the beginning of the season. “There’s been a dramatic increase in the public’s awareness of college baseball all over the country.”

The delay of major league baseball on the airwaves has made Prime Ticket the temporary baseball network, with its schedule of college games. The cable service will televise 33 games, mainly involving Southland teams, an increase of 14 over last season. Live coverage of Sunday’s USC-Cal State Long Beach match-up at 1 p.m. is the highlight of three games scheduled this week.

“We’ve gotten very positive reaction from our viewers and our affiliates,” said Don Corsini, Prime Ticket’s vice president of programming and production.

“College baseball rounds our schedule out and completes our menu to a greater degree.”

Prime Ticket has also added to its announcing team one of the best-known baseball names, Steve Garvey.

“It’s really lot of fun,” said Garvey. “This is bringing back fond memories of my days at Michigan State. I look back and see a lot of similarities. The college players hustle on and off the field. They all stand on the outside of the dugout showing the typical college enthusiasm you need on that level.”