Baseball bends for Fox

No sport sells tradition like baseball, from Babe Ruth to the Brooklyn Dodgers, from the ivy-covered outfield wall at Chicago’s creaky Wrigley Field and the fabled Green Monster at Boston’s rickety Fenway Park to the wave of new ballparks designed to evoke memories of simpler days, when there was no other national sport.

There was the National League. There was the American League. Never did the twain meet, except for the All-Star Game and the World Series.

On Tuesday, the All-Star Game returns to Chicago, the city of its birth, with TV’s Fox network hyping the 74th edition of the game with the tag line, “This Time It Counts.” For the first time, there is a prize beyond pride. The league that wins the All-Star Game gets home-field advantage in the World Series.

In the face of low ratings, tradition crumbled, and not for the first time in recent years.

The All-Star Game, normally a prime-time summer showcase, delivered its worst showing ever last year, attracting fewer than 15 million viewers. Two decades ago, when the other broadcast networks countered with endless reruns and before cable TV offered hundreds of alternatives, the game drew more than 27 million viewers.

For the dwindling audience that tuned in last year, the memorable image was not a majestic home run or an acrobatic catch. Instead, the TV screen was filled with the picture of Bud Selig, the commissioner, shrugging helplessly as both managers informed him they had run out of players.

The managers weren’t playing to win, just to get every player in. The game ended in a tie and a hail of boos. In the intervening year, Major League Baseball instituted the new stakes for the All-Star Game, which the commissioner insists was done solely to benefit Fox.

Sure enough, when Selig dusted off the concept of linking the All-Star Game to the World Series, one he said had been kicked around in his office for the past 10 years, Fox couldn’t say yes fast enough. And because Fox pays baseball $2.5 billion for broadcast rights, Selig couldn’t implement the concept fast enough.

“This has nothing to do with the tie,” Selig said. “This has everything to do with us getting a 9 rating last year.”

So now Fox is selling -- and Selig is too -- the change as a restoration of tradition, not a revolution. With incentive to win, they say, the game will matter again.

“I think it’s a nudge in the right direction,” said Fox broadcaster Tim McCarver, a two-time National League All-Star catcher for the St. Louis Cardinals. “I don’t think it was instituted to make a major change to the All-Star Game or to the postseason.”

Yet there is nothing subtle about the 3,300 “This Time It Counts” banners produced for the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, the 1 million “This Time It Counts” coasters distributed by Budweiser, or the relentless “This Time It Counts” ad campaign on Fox. All this for a nudge?

“It does seem like more than a nudge,” McCarver later admitted. “That’s television.”

Fox plans to eliminate the sideshows of All-Star Games past. Since the managers are supposed to play to win, Fox promises not to repeat last year’s stunt of interrupting them for interviews during the game. The network will ask coaches and players to wear microphones and catchers to wear a miniature camera atop their masks, and microphones will be attached to bases and outfield walls to capture the sound of collisions. McCarver and Joe Buck will handle the game broadcast, supported by Kevin Kennedy, Steve Lyons and Jeanne Zelasko.

Among the major sports, baseball’s all-star game is the only one that makes the pretense of significance. Football’s Pro Bowl, which comes after the Super Bowl, is a celebration of the season, a tad more intense than touch football, a paid Hawaiian vacation for players and a last fix for fans before the NFL hibernates. The basketball and hockey games are more art festivals than athletic competitions, all the oohs and aahs of slam dunks and pretty shots with none of the defense.

That’s not the case with baseball, where Selig hopes to recapture the All-Star magic of decades past. In 1970, in perhaps the most memorable play in All-Star Game history, baserunner Pete Rose slammed into Ray Fosse at the plate, overturning the catcher in a collision that ruined Fosse’s shoulder and his career. And Selig said he still recalls attending the 1950 game at Chicago’s Comiskey Park, in which Hall of Famer Ted Williams caught a fly ball, crashed into a wall and broke his elbow.

“I think everybody understands what home-field advantage means for either league,” he said. “I do think you’ll see an intensity that has been lacking.”

Considering that the network pays billions in rights fees and fans pay $125 and up per ticket, Selig said players should embrace the chance to compete for something more than bragging rights.

“They care. They should care,” he said. “You don’t think it’s an exhibition game if you paid a lot of money.”

However, in the name of restoring tradition, Fox and Selig are trying to legislate intensity, a dubious proposition under any circumstances and particularly so when baseball itself has done a fine job chipping it away.

The rivalry between leagues eroded because the distinction between leagues eroded. In an era where players hop from team to team, no longer is there a mystique about the All-Star Game.

At one time, the game was must-see TV, a rare sighting of the stars in the other league.

In those days, the television menu was limited to the All-Star Game, the playoffs and World Series, a national game of the week on Saturday and the Dodgers on Sunday, if they were playing out of town. If the Dodgers were in San Francisco, playing the hated Giants, then and only then would an entire series be televised.

$2.5 billion in influence

Now virtually every game, everywhere, is available on cable or satellite. You can see stars every night, even if they play in the other league.

They might come to your town, since National League and American League teams now face each other, a distinction once limited to the World Series but since abandoned in the interest of juicing ticket sales.

The players’ union reluctantly approved the change in the All-Star Game format as a two-year experiment, with a tip of the cap toward Fox. It’s not just the owners who are anxious to keep the network happy; that $2.5 billion props up player salaries.

If Fox demands a meaningful story line in an exhibition game, the league and its players go along, just as they do when Fox wants coaches and players to wear microphones during games and Fox dictates playoff games in prime time, even on weekends, no matter if kids fall asleep by the end.

But the players are furious with Selig for suggesting they will suddenly play with intensity, just by decree.

“I think pride is the biggest motivating factor to play baseball,” said Angels Manager Mike Scioscia, a two-time National League All-Star catcher for the Dodgers and this year’s American League manager. “I don’t think it’s going to add incentive for players. The players have always played the game hard.”

Said Garret Anderson, the Angels’ All-Star outfielder: “I think they’re discounting what the players do on the field. I’m out there trying as hard as I can. I don’t want to be embarrassed. Nobody wants to get hurt, but nobody wants to be embarrassed.”

In return for accepting the two-year trial, the players’ union won the right to vote for more than half of the All-Star roster. Players voted for statistics, not stars, so Fox must bang the “This Time It Counts” drum even harder, since such fan favorites as Sammy Sosa, Derek Jeter, Roger Clemens and Mike Piazza were omitted from the roster.

The union also persuaded Selig and team owners to consider an agenda full of proposals, some far more revolutionary than the one that inspired the blizzard of “This Time It Counts” advertising.

Among the players’ suggestions: How about more teams in the playoffs? A true World Series between the major league champion and the Japanese champion? And, as rosters become increasingly populated by foreigners, scrapping the National League vs. American League format in favor of U.S. All-Stars vs. World All-Stars?

You can almost hear the Fox ad already, with the strains of John Philip Sousa in the background: This nation defends its honor in its national pastime! Team USA, in the red, white and blue. Team World, in teal, purple and black. Might even generate a 9 rating.

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Still leading the leagues

Viewership for Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game is down but still leads other sports. Viewers of each sport’s all-star game, in millions:

*--* Year MLB NFL NBA NHL 1993 22.31 * 22.91 2.45 1994 22.02 * 13.67 3.26 1995 20.16 17.72 15.78 # 1996 18.48 16.10 17.46 6.48 1997 16.72 13.52 16.90 4.05 1998 18.97 10.41 16.93 4.41 1999 17.64 11.88 + 3.32 2000 14.71 13.24 10.52 3.88 2001 16.03 6.97 7.76 2.69 2002 14.65 6.21 13.10 2.68 2003 N/A 9.06 10.83 2.45

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* - televised by ESPN (ratings not available); + - no game, due to lockout; # - no game due to players’ strike

Nielsen Media Research

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Baseball All-Star Game

When: 5-8 p.m. Tuesday

Where: KTTV Channel 11

Announcers: Tim McCarver and Joe Buck, broadcasting from U.S. Cellular Field in Chicago.