Not since the Jersey Nets ran a promotion to get a gun in exchange for a ticket. Don’t miss your chance to sit next to a dangerous felon! — Have you ever been more confused about your marketing strategy?
What if you or I were baseball’s commissioners at a time when MLB was losing audience and interest to a greedy lack of foresight?
First, we do everything in our power to make baseball live on the most affordable and widely watched television networks. No one will have to search for matches or pay more and more to watch them. We want to help restore baseball as a national pastime and ensure that all fans, young and old, know where to go when.
According to local folklore, the Mets were once seen on Ch. 9, Ch Yankees. 11. Next are SNY and YES. Once, like three years ago.
We’re not going to ruin our conditioned TV habits. Because we recognize that now is not the time to take baseball audiences for granted, and that this is not the time to sell telecasts at auction.
But the Rob Manfred administration, on the contrary, demanded that fans pay more and search harder if they wanted to see baseball. Here, the Yankees are almost weekly exclusives on Amazon Prime streaming operations.
Manfred and the Yankees’ shot-callers made the team’s game cheese, while die-hard fans traded Amazon dough for lab rats.
Wednesday’s Yankees vs. Angels game was one of 20 handpicked Yankees games this season that were hidden behind Amazon Prime’s paying wall and held for ransom purposes, so the financial design cost them an unfathomable but cost-conscious loss of tens of thousands of games.
If the match was YES, would you have watched it normally? But would you buy Amazon Prime to see it? No, I refuse to fund MLB’s arrogant greed.
In addition, the Yankees lost two games to Apple TV+ paid streaming and another to Peacock streaming. Twenty-three games. And more can happen.
And with ESPN’s money changing Sunday afternoons to Sunday nights to exploit the largest TV market, this has become another of MLB’s institutionalized pumping schemes, even as the baseball-fan tier is waning.
The Mets-Red Sox game on ESPN on Sunday night will be an endurance test the following morning. Sunday night baseball used to be out of the question as the worst time to schedule a game. The best time was the 1pm local start on Saturday and Sunday.
Currently, most Saturday afternoon games start after 4 p.m. to meet Fox’s financial requirements. The Mets became the home team on Saturday night.
Meanwhile, Manfred and the Yankees run the risk of further conditioning their fan base to live without Yankees televised. How much would it cost to further dilute interest in the Yankees?
Will the Yankees wake up from their greedy indifference, which has been empty since the new Yankee Stadium opened in 2009 and already contains thousands of top-tier seats at exorbitant prices?
Is hemlock ingestion a marketing strategy?
How is this in the best long-term and short-term interests of baseball and its most famous team? Why doesn’t Manfred’s “marketing plan” include anything for MLB’s most important business partner: the rest of the fans?
In the words of Ronald Reagan, “Mr. Reagan.” Manfred, tear down this paywall! ”
WFAN’s uncomfortable conversation continues
WFAN persists in the notion that viewers are not smart enough to distinguish between crude oil and clever. Or you can play sports from the sound of stomach flatulence.
The company’s weekday morning drive show, Boomer & Jio, still targets young adult men, as well as disgruntled and rude people.
Last week, Greg Gianotti and Jerry Lecco — the latter standing in for “Weekday” Boomer Esiason (a disrespectful phony who plays a gentleman on CBS’ NFL weekend studio show) — may have had a “hilarious” conversation about penis enlargement, trying to capitalize on an audience that included insensitive middle schoolers on their way to mandatory summer school.
Reader Robert Feuerstein: “I was so embarrassed by these two clowns that I had to switch them off.”
Lecco and Gianotti are both fathers. One wonders how they would treat their children and family around the dinner table to such a clever person. Or is he meant only for WFAN viewers?
Reader Jim Carnall, an astute baseball auditor, strongly suggests using a bag of salt grains to measure the speed of a pitcher’s fastball.
Carnall: “‘Statcast’ velocity is measured as ‘out of the hand’, the speed at which the ball leaves the pitcher’s hand. However, it is scientifically proven that as the ball reaches the plate, a small thing known as gravity decreases. ”
So anything that is regularly shown, talked about, and hyped as 100 mph doesn’t reach hitters at that speed.
“Years ago, the Jags [predecessor speedguns] , the velocity was measured as the ball crossed the plate. ’ And it’s not 100 mph that hitters face, it’s that.
LeBron James’ ESPY announcement was self-justified
Only media people think we’re all thinking of LeBron James’ world. He was announced by ESPY as no Retiring (who would have thought I would?) included some modest self-assessments such as:
“The day I can no longer give my all to the game on the floor will be the end of me. Luckily that day is not today.”
What a self-proclaimed bastard.
So last weekend’s NBC-telegraphed celebrity golf tournament ended when an idiot in the crowd yelled out during co-leader pro tennis player Mardy Fish’s backswing, allowing Stephen Curry to win.
Fish claimed that when questioned later, the perpetrator’s idiot admitted to betting on Curry. As we often say in Cockney, “the impact of life.”
With the PGA Tour starting to encourage wagering a few years ago, we could see that happening when betting on players. Jason Day, one of the nicest men on the tour, withdrew after one round with a sore back, but was upset and appalled by the flood of hateful emails he received from “fans” afterwards.
And there are many other places where they come from.
What’s the easiest MLB team to root for? I’d go for the Padres.
Despite their exuberant salaries each year, the team is filled with big-mouthed, vulgar, high-paid billboards from the start: Juan Soto, Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr.
As of Friday, the $251 million Padres are the third-highest-paid team behind the Mets and Yankees, but the overpaid but underperforming team — they’re 46-51.
The Padres will give Machado a Gatorade shower for “turning a double into a double,” as reader Bill Hoyt writes.
Only 10 MLB games were played on Thursday. However, six teams recorded at least 11 strikeouts. Three He K’d He 13, One He 14, One He 15. In the Twins vs. Mariners, the DH team recorded 5 strikeouts in 8 at bats.
The children at Small Wonder Camp are looking very bored as they participate in the summer afternoon games. I used to be on the edge of the upper outfield.
