Playoff Schedule on TV Set

The announcement of the postseason baseball television schedule was not good news for employers in Southern California. More than a few people may be calling in sick Tuesday.

Both the Dodgers and Angels play day games on ESPN.

At 10 a.m., it will be the Dodgers at St. Louis, with Jon Miller and Joe Morgan announcing. At 1 p.m., it will be Boston and the Angels at Anaheim, with Chris Berman, Rick Sutcliffe and Tony Gwynn in the booth.

The ESPN-produced telecasts also will be carried on over-the-air stations Channel 11 and 13. Baseball stipulates that cable telecasts be offered to over-the-air stations in the markets of the playoff teams.

As of Sunday night, it was believed that Channel 13 would carry the Dodger ESPN telecasts and Channel 11 would carry the Angel ESPN telecasts. But that could not be confirmed. It’s possible that it could be the other way around.

The Berman-Sutcliffe-Gwynn crew is scheduled to work the first three games of the Angel-Red Sox series.

The second game in the Dodger-Cardinal series Thursday at 5 p.m. will be televised by Fox, with Joe Buck and Tim McCarver announcing.

On the Dodger radio network, Vin Scully will work the first three innings and last three of each postseason game, with Ross Porter or Rick Monday handling the middle three.

ESPN will televise as many as 13 games during the first round, with Fox doing up to seven. Fox will televise the league championship series and World Series.

The prospect of a Freeway World Series would be great for Los Angeles but not so great for Fox.

“What we’ve seen in recent years is that there is the most national interest in a World Series when there is geographic distribution,” Fox Sports President Ed Goren said Sunday.

When there was an all-California World Series in 2002 between the Angels and San Francisco Giants, it drew a record-low average rating of 11.9.