He Managed to Virtually Assure High Ratings

Stay with me on this one--I have assurances that Fox will not be interrupting this column to promo “The Tick” or “24” or “The X Files”--because I have a theory about Bob Brenly’s strange behavior during this World Series.

Before signing on to manage the Arizona Diamondbacks in 2001, Brenly worked for Fox. He was there in the booth last year, right next to Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, commiserating about the Yankees’ five-game rout of the Mets and the all-time low World Series ratings.

He remains tight with the Fox crew, schmoozing with Buck and McCarver before World Series games, adopting Jeanne Zelasko as unofficial 26th Diamondback, agreeing to wear a mike in the dugout for the benefit of Fox’s sound technicians.

He also knew how badly Fox needed a seven-game series this time around. Fox Sports officials made no bones about it: Last year’s ratings were in the tank, we’d better do better this year--and, frankly, Diamondbacks in five wasn’t going to get it done.

Brenly had a plan.

He would pitch Curt Schilling twice during the Series on three days’ rest.

He would pitch Byung-Hyun Kim, a jittery 22-year-old, past the point of fatigue and logic, not once but twice, on successive nights in hostile Yankee Stadium, long enough to rescue the done-for Yankees in Games 4 and 5.

He would pitch Randy Johnson in Game 6, and keep pitching him in Game 6, inexplicably through seven innings when common sense and a 15-0 Arizona lead suggested removal after five innings in case Johnson might be needed in relief the next night.

Game 7 assured, Brenly could have left it at that, mission accomplished, and enjoyed the complimentary Fox fruit basket.

But no. Brenly’s a multimedia kind of guy, very aware of the environment around him, and he quickly sized up the competition: the twice-postponed Emmy Awards, lots of popular TV stars wearing red, white and blue ribbons, Barbra Streisand in the on-deck circle--a formidable opponent.

Brenly knew he had to keep America watching, so he refused to pinch-hit for a fading Schilling in the bottom of the seventh in a 1-1 game with Mariano Rivera nowhere near the mound.

As I watched Schilling drag his weary right arm out for the eighth inning and a tee shot for Alfonso Soriano, I kept waiting for another of those Fox “Insta-Poll” questions to pop up on the bottom of the screen:

SHORT OF FLIPPING COINS OR ROCK-PAPER-SCISSORS, DO YOU HAVE ANY PLAUSIBLE EXPLANATION FOR WHAT BOB BRENLY IS DOING OUT THERE?

Now, of course, we know.

Brenly was just trying to keep Fox in the ballgame.

(FLASH! Emmy Awards Update on Fox! James Gandolfini will have somebody whacked during the 2002 season of “The Sopranos.”)

The overnight numbers are in, and what do you know? Game 7 crushed the Emmys with the highest World Series rating in a decade. Great piece of managing by Brenly.

(FLASH! World Series Update on the Emmy Awards! The Angels have just announced plans not to be there again in 2002.)

Virtual ads. Virtual updates. Virtual manager polls. Virtually no respite from McCarver (which is 17th-century Gaelic for “Laddy won’t ever shut up, will ‘e?”). Buck knew something had to be done to keep the show from becoming completely unhinged and spinning off to New Mexico, so he took the minimalist approach to Luis Gonzalez’s decisive ninth-inning at-bat against Rivera.

“The chance of a lifetime for Luis Gonzalez,” Buck simply intoned.

“Game 7 of the World Series. Bases loaded. Infield in. One out.”

And, he might have added to the stage being set, no more X Files promo on the backstop behind Gonzalez.

“Floater!” Buck shouted as Gonzalez made contact.

“Center field!

“The Diamondbacks are world champions!”

And then, the most glorious, beautiful, satisfying segment of Fox’s 2001 World Series coverage.

For the next 31/2 minutes, no one on Fox’s payroll said a word. Only 210 seconds of Diamondback fans cheering, Diamondback players hugging and Queen’s old perennial, “We Are the Champions,” cranking up in the background on the stadium sound system.

No time for losers. No time, either, for Kevin Kennedy reminding Joe Torre that this was “just an awesome finish for the New York Yankees, win or lose.” Or for Zelasko, leading cheers for the home team, to beam as Brenly raised the World Series trophy aloft: “Look what you have done, Bob! Look what you have done!”

That would come later, when Fox decided to permit a few postgame comments in between commercials for United, DirecTV, “Shallow Hal,” Chevrolet, Siemens, “The Simpsons,”’ Coca-Cola, “Malcolm In The Middle,” Lexus, Intel and hot-off-the-press Arizona Diamondback “World Champion” merchandise--$24.99 for the cap, $19.99 for the T-shirt.

Right about then, I would have paid to hear Keith Olbermann ask someone, anyone, a real, journalist-style question. But, strangely, Fox ran no ads, virtual or otherwise, for Keith.

Was this World Series one of the all-time classics?

Was it a match for the 1991 thriller between Minnesota and Atlanta? The edge-of-the-seater between Boston and Cincinnati in 1975? Bill Mazeroski lifting the underdog Pittsburgh Pirates past the stunned Yankees in 1960?

Who can say?

I do know this, though: “The Tick” is coming to Fox Nov. 8.