Fenway Park: in late October the ‘World’s Largest Beer Cooler.’ Boston umpires annoyed everyone in the ballpark Wednesday night by helping the Red Sox beat St. Louis with a botched call in Game 1 of this year’s World Series.
ARE DISPLACED BY NETWORK HACKS
IN ERA SINCE HOWARD COSELL
Night games in frigid weather
not the Fall Classic of old;
no ‘color,’ no ‘flavor’
Making double-plays sound like brain surgery;
Fenway Park is ‘World’s Largest Beer Cooler’;
still ‘no place like home’ for broadcasters
By David Maril
Baseball purists complain about the World Series, with late-night games being played in the cool- weather autumn season, and often reminisce about the mystique of Fall Classic day-games.
Television, which feeds the game’s profits, is the driving force behind multiple layers of playoff rounds that extend the season so it nearly approaches winter.
Prime-time scheduling makes the games available to a wider national TV audience but often forces local fans of the competing teams to chill-out in late-night frigid conditions, making Boston’s Fenway Park, the site of the first two World Series games this year, the World’s Largest Beer Cooler on late October evenings.
However, one of television’s greatest influences on the World Series is often overlooked these days: The removal of home-team announcers from the network coverage of the two league-championship teams.
Local voices used to enhance the color and flavor of the network broadcasts, but no more.
If this year’s World Series teams were playing in the golden era of baseball, you’d turn on the TV and hear Curt Gowdy, Ned Martin or Ken Coleman from the Red Sox, and Harry Caray or Jack Buck representing the St. Louis Cardinals. (Caray later went to Chicago, calling games for the White Sox and finally the Cubs.)
