Lessons learned from the World Series

By Bob Greene

It wasn't the slow pace of the games. If people love to watch something, they hope it never ends.

It wasn't the lack of a compelling storyline. The Cleveland Indians, in the major leagues for so long, against the Florida Marlins, in the majors for just a few years, was a ready-made storyline. Florida manager Jim Leyland's chance to win a world championship after a lifetime in baseball was a fine storyline. Cleveland's Jaret Wright, three years out of high school and pitching in the World Series, was a fine storyline. The snow in Cleveland vs. the muggy summer-like nights in Miami was a fine storyline.

It wasn't that the games were presented dully. NBC, led by Bob Costas' masterful play-by-play, made the World Series as lovely to watch, as pretty to look at, as interesting to listen to, as baseball games can possibly be. The games were lovingly wrapped up, tied together with a shiny ribbon, and handed -- for free -- to the American public.

So what happened? All of the excuses that the sports executives and broadcast experts are thinking up are invalid excuses. So why did Americans, in huge numbers, choose to reject the World Series? Why was it so poorly watched?

It was so poorly watched because baseball has not stopped paying for what it did to itself during the strike -- and it may never stop paying. During the strike -- when the players, with an average salary of $1.2 million, walked away from the game, and when they and the owners took so long to decide to resolve their differences -- America found something out. It found out that it didn't need baseball.

As has been pointed out, this was not a case of the country being angry at baseball. It was something far worse. The country became indifferent to baseball. Baseball was OK -- a lot of things are OK. The national pastime is not baseball -- hasn't been for years. The national pastime, for better or for worse, is watching television.

And when major league baseball went away, it wasn't missed nearly as much as the players and the owners assumed it would be. There were a lot of other things to watch.

When the strike finally ended in the spring of 1995, Lou Whitaker, an infielder for the Detroit Tigers, arrived at the Tigers' spring training camp in his Rolls-Royce. Emerging from the Rolls, he told sportswriters:

"It might take fans a little while to get over their crushed feelings. It's just like a man and a woman. Maybe we'll send a few flowers."

Comments like that one are what did baseball in. Unfairly or not, there are a lot of people who decided, during the strike, that big-league baseball could be summed up in a single phrase: a beautiful game played by jerks. And if that was unjust to the many ballplayers who did not fit the description -- well, the balance shifted during the strike. The overwhelming sentiment toward baseball on the part of Americans became: Don't call us, we'll call you.

Which is where it stands now. If the weather is nice, if the home club is winning, if there's nothing better to do, people in a major-league town will go out to the ballpark. Those people go for their own reasons; on the North Side of Chicago, there is little question that the two main draws are the wonderful feeling of Wrigley Field, and that great moment when Harry Caray leads everyone in the park in singing "Take Me Out to the Ballgame." It's the only place in the world that feels like that, which is why millions come every summer even when the Cubs are at their worst.

But the World Series, as a television event that people feel they just can't miss? Those days are gone. If there is an exciting game on a night when nothing much else is competing for the national attention, people are more than willing to sit and watch. Bottom of the ninth inning, Game 7, one-run difference? Sure -- that's a momentary diversion for people, one they can get excited about, sort of like a heavily promoted Movie of the Week. America waits to be entertained -- and if baseball, once in a while, can persuade America that it's an entertaining option on a slow evening, America is willing to listen to reason.

That's the big change. Baseball has to earn the country's attention, every time. Every game. "Maybe we'll send a few flowers." Maybe they should have.

Chicago Tribune