Editorial: Time's running out on night games
When Joshua David Beckett tosses the first pitch in Game 1 of the World Series tonight at Fenway Park, many schoolchildren in the region will already be tucked in bed or fighting a losing battle to stay out of it.
If Major League Baseball officials want to know why in the decades to come the viewing numbers and attendance figures are down, they can look back at their decision in 1988 to move all its showcase World Series games to night starts, guaranteeing a dwindling fan base as the years move on.
Couple that with the need by Fox Sports to recover its multi-billion rights fees by airing extra commercials between innings and you have a key reason ratings for baseball's showcase event is reeling from historic low ratings since 2000.
Some may pass off the call to return to day games as a boomer's fancy, a longing to turn the clock back to when the clock meant little in America's pastime.
But the numbers bear out the argument that once today's senior citizens and baby boomers no longer constitute the largest portion of baseball fans, it's not unreasonable to think the game will retreat into a fight for football's leftovers.
In 1967, when many over the age of 50 remember listening to the Red Sox-Cardinals games in classrooms or getting dispensation to attend a game if they had a coveted ducat, the average length of each World Series game was 2 hours and 22 minutes, with no games running more than three hours. None were played under the lights.
When the Sox battled the Cincinnati Reds in that epic 1975 series, the average time of game was 2 hours and 54 minutes with two extra-inning games, including the heartstopping Carlton Fisk home run at the stroke of midnight, exceeding three hours. The first two games in that series were played in daylight, while Games 3 through 7 were played at night.
In the Sox-Mets 1986 series, when all the games started at night, the average time was 3 hours and 19 minutes, although to a Sox fan it seemed interminably longer. Only two games were played under three hours and then only by a couple minutes.
No ratings were available for the 1967 series, but the '75 fall classic had a 29 rating a 53 share of the audience while the 1986 series had a 28.6 rating and a 46 share despite having a team from the largest market in the country playing. See a trend here?
This year bodes no better if the division and championship series are any indicators. The 14 games in the first and second rounds in the American League averaged 3 hours and 29 minutes - more than an hour longer than the 1967 series games - while the National League played its games in the breakneck pace of 3 hours and 19 minutes.
If the World Series between the Sox and Colorado holds to form, the 8:25 p.m. or so first pitch at Eastern time will mean all games end after midnight, and if they go extra innings, there will be a lot of sleep-deprived fans.
One of the reasons football has taken hold of the next generation of fans is the start time of Sunday afternoon for most games and the Super Bowl has a kickoff about 6:30 p.m., meaning the games end at a reasonable hour to get a full night's sleep.
Yes, networks that pay hundreds of millions to televise each championship game needs to recover its fees, but wouldn't there be a good number of viewers if some of the games were moved to weekend daytime? Or maybe push the start time up a half-hour, enforce the time limit pitchers have between pitches and move those human rain delays known as American League batters into the box.
Something, though, has to be done to grab hold of the next generation of fans before they lose all interest. Because after midnight, not everything turns into a pumpkin. Sometimes, sleeping children turn into non-fans and televisions turn into blank screens. That should be a scary thought for baseball officials.
The Patriot Ledger