Jordan Tackles Baseball Again

Most of the big World Series questions really aren’t that big.

Q: Can the Yankees, having overcome an 0-2 deficit in the first round and the 116-win Seattle Mariners in the second, continue their improbable postseason run, defeat the Arizona Diamondbacks and win a fourth consecutive World Series championship?

A: All together now: Y-E-S.

Q: What will the Diamondbacks do, once they return to New York after pitching Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson in Games 1 and 2 at home?

A: All together now: L-O-S-E.

Q: Who will win Tuesday’s TV ratings showdown, the Yankees and the Diamondbacks in Game 3 of the World Series--a.k.a. the fall classic, a.k.a. the crown jewel of the national pastime--or Michael Jordan in a Washington Wizards’ Halloween costume, shooting jumpers against the Knicks?

A: Hmm. Can you give me a minute on that one?

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Postseason baseball on Fox hasn’t been able to outdraw Dennis Miller, going up against Err ABC the last two Mondays and coming in second in the national ratings.

What can it expect going up against Air Jordan, who never fails to amuse, entertain or enliven an evening spent in front of the television?

For the moment, Fox is talking bravely, but then, tipoff is still days away.

“I think it will have an impact,” Fox Sports President Ed Goren says of Jordan’s official return to the NBA next week, “but I think it will be a small impact.

“Regardless, I’m very comfortable going into the World Series.... I mean, you’re talking ratings and I am very comfortable where we are.”

Joe Buck, Fox’s lead broadcaster for the World Series, sounds like Schilling staring in at the Yankee batting order: Let’s have it ... because what other choice do we have?

“This makes me think of when people start comparing ratings to what it was like, let’s say, in 1986,” Buck says, “when that great World Series happened between Boston and the Mets. People start comparing this number to what was going on in 1986--you know, there are a lot more options right now.... In 1986, what else were you going to watch? ‘Trapper John, M.D.’?

“At some point, you have to realize that whether we’re going up against ‘Survivor’ or we’re going up against ‘Friends’ or ‘ER’ or Regis Philbin and his ties or Michael Jordan coming back or Wayne Gretzky getting back on the ice, whatever it may be, there’s a bigger battle going on. And there are more options [on television] for people, let alone satellite and all the other stuff going on, and the Internet.

“You know, we’d love to do this in a vacuum and we’d love to have this be like the BBC, where maybe people have one or two options. But that isn’t the case.

“So if we’re going up against Jordan, bring him on. Bring old No. 23 on. We’ll take him on and we’ll do our best and let the chips fall.”

Riding a ‘Wonderful National Story’

In 10 head-to-head matchups with “Monday Night Football” since 1996, postseason baseball on Fox is 1-9. Fox’s only triumph over ABC was Game 6 of the 1996 World Series between the Yankees and the Atlanta Braves.

Monday, the Eagles-Giants NFL game on ABC drew a 9.9 national rating with a 16 share--the second-lowest numbers in the history of “Monday Night Football”--and still bettered the Yankees’ pennant-clincher, which had a 7.6 rating with a 12 share.

Goren, however, says he was encouraged that the baseball numbers were as good as they were.

“Monday night, that game was over within a matter of innings,” he says of the Yankees’ Game 5 rout of the Mariners. “And it went on, and on, and on to a 12-3 final. In fact, Howie Long was being honored in L.A. and I got a call from Howie at the dinner because I couldn’t make it because of baseball and he said, ‘What’s the score?’ And I said, ‘I don’t know, 9-nothing.’

“I said, ‘Howie, I hear the sets clicking off around the country.’

“I really thought we would be damaged in our ratings. And in the end, the ratings held up tremendously well, with a 7.6 rating. I don’t think it was about the ballgame.... There’s a wonderful national story about this very special team, Joe Torre, [New York Mayor] Rudy Guiliani. That place was electric the other night.”

Goren believes that story line--a wounded city rallying around the Yankees--will make this a popular World Series, guaranteeing a higher rating than the 12.4 last year’s Yankees-Mets series garnered.

“Take it to the bank,” he says.

“I think that, for whatever reason, the ratings story of baseball in 2001 has been lost on a lot of people. In an environment of eroding ratings, our All-Star game was up 8% [from 10.1 in 2000 to 11.0]. In an environment of eroding ratings, our regular-season ratings equaled our ratings of a year ago [2.6 for both years]....

“You get into the postseason, the division series was up 25% in prime time [6.4, from 5.1], the LCS up 20% in prime time [7.9, from 6.6]. I don’t need to talk about other leagues, but if anybody [is] celebrating the numbers of baseball against other sports--three nights in the last week, two Mondays and one Thursday, we’ve never done better.

“So you can take it to the bank the World Series numbers will be up from a year ago. And if by some miracle, we actually get a six-or seven-game series, we won’t be talking about the numbers being up from a year ago. We’ll be talking about this World Series outrating every World Series over the last few years.”

Best news of all for Fox: If, by some miracle, we actually get a six-or seven-game series, none of them are scheduled to be played on a Monday night.

Hockey Ain’t Basketball

Suppose the Lakers had just traded for Vince Carter.

Do you think Laker fans might be clamoring for a glimpse of their new acquisition in action?

Do you think they’d mind if the local TV network told them to they’d have to wait four games, until Thursday, to see Carter in live action in a Laker uniform?

Welcome to the beleaguered life of a King fan.

In Jason Allison, the Kings have acquired the league’s fifth-leading scorer last season, the NHL equivalent to Carter, who was No. 5 among NBA scorers in 2000-2001. Yet on the day the Kings consummated the trade with the Boston Bruins, Fox Sports Net brought its King announcing team of Bob Miller and Jim Fox home--in the middle of a lengthy trip.

Allison made his King debut Thursday night in Tampa Bay. No Fox. From there, it’s on to Florida for a game tonight, then to Carolina Sunday and Chicago Tuesday. Fox won’t televise those games either.

King fans will have to wait until Thursday’s home game against Chicago for a live telecast of Allison with his new teammates.

“Just a timing thing, the way the schedule worked out,” says Fox Sports Net spokesman Dennis Johnson. “We do 39 home games and 26 road games--generally the biggest games on the road--and we try to keep the games in prime time. Three of the next four games are at 4:30 p.m. [local time] and the other is Sunday at 10:30 a.m.”

That’s NFL time, ever sacred.

In the interim, Fox Sports Net promises “extended Kings’ coverage” on its late-night Southern California Sports Report highlights show.