Baseball is a game designed to played under warm skies and on green grass. But professional baseball is not a game, it is a business – big business. Three games of the World Series have been played so far and the star of the series is not the New York Yankees or the Philadelphia Phillies. It’s not even the weather for a November baseball game. The real star?It’s the Fox Network.
Because of Fox, the October classic will conclude in November. Why? Because Fox didn’t want baseball competing with its football broadcast schedule. So an artificially long playoff schedule was devised so that Fox wouldn’t have to broadcast playoff games in competition with the NFL. Think I’m kidding? The Philadelphia Phillies had to wait 9 days after they clinched the National League pennant before they could play the Yankees in the first game of the World Series. Now, I want to be clear on this. Fox paid Major League Baseball a lot of money for the right to screw up the October classic. So, MLB is just as guilty as Fox.
There is the joke about a man who approached a woman at a cocktail party. He smiled and said, “You are very beautiful. Will you sleep with me for a million dollars?” She smirked and replied, “Sure, if you have a million dollars.” The man replied, “I don’t have a million dollars, but will you sleep with me for five dollars?” The woman slapped the man’s face and said, “What kind of woman do you think I am?” The man rubbed the side of his face and smiled. He said softly, “We both now know what kind of woman you are. All we’re doing is negotiating the price.” I hope that MLB gets a good price for the start of the World Series in the coming years. After all, one day, if the broadcast networks want, the seventh game of the World Series might start after Thanksgiving. All they have to do is negotiate the price because we now know what MLB is.