--October 15, 2002--
Fox Playoff Coverage Leaves Much To Be Desired
The first two rounds of the post-season this year have been highly entertaining. We've seen some great hard-fought pitcher's duels, a few thrilling slugfests, and some major upsets, leading to the first-ever all wild-card World Series. From a fan's perspective, it's just been terrific baseball.
But I've got to say it -- No matter how exciting the games have been, I absolutely hate FOX's television coverage.
It's not the announcers. Good play-by-play and color commentators are hard to come by, and Joe Buck and Tim McCarver, who will likely land the World Series gig, and the B-team of Jon Miller and Joe Morgan have ranged from passable to excellent. No, the problem I have with FOX lies in the directing and camera work; specifically the fact that they want to show us everything but what's happening on the playing field, especially in the late innings.
You know what I mean. The pitcher has just thrown ball one. No sooner does the ball pop into the catcher's mitt than we are treated to a close-up of the manager in the dugout; then a player in the other dugout; the pitcher's wife; the fan in section 214, row 7, seat 14; another player watching from the bench, then another, and another; another fan... and finally, the next pitch -- already halfway to the plate. This kind of coverage (or lack thereof) ends up pleasing nobody. Real fans of the game are frustrated, left to wonder what the runners are doing, where the fielders are positioned, how the catcher is setting up. All the subtleties of this great game -- heck, anything beyond the score and the count -- are completely lost. Marginal fans, who may be tuning in only during the playoffs, are given nothing to learn or even hold their interest. If anybody tells me that baseball is a boring game to watch on TV, I'm afraid I can't argue with them when the game is on FOX.
I must admit that I'm spoiled when it comes to baseball telecasts. I grew up in the Chicago area, watching Cubs games on WGN Channel 9, with the great Arne Harris at the helm. Harris directed every Cubs home game for over 30 years until he passed away on the eve of the final day of the season in 2001. Capturing the feel of actually being at the game on the small screen is no easy task, to be sure, but Harris became expert at it. A great fan himself, he had a knack for showing us exacly what we'd be looking at if we were in the stands, somehow never missing a thing.
Arne never used the split-screen technique when runners were on base. He considered that lazy. Instead, he'd rely on the excellent work of his camera crew, and make all the right cuts to capture the play perfectly. Now FOX has a monstrosity called the "FOX Double Box," which features two frames, each less than a quarter of the size of the screen and surrounded by hideously busy graphics. In these miniature frames they can show us the tiny pitcher throwing to the plate while the tiny runner makes a break for second. At least I think that's what they're showing; I don't always get to within six inches of my TV screen in time to tell for sure.
It's bad enough that the TV networks get to dictate when the games are played. Game 1 of the Cardinals-Diamondbacks NLDS began at 9:00 pm local time in Phoenix on a Tuesday night. Arizona fans were up well past midnight, and the poor fools in St. Louis who wanted nothing more than to watch their hometown team open the post-season were forced to fight off sleep until nearly 2:00 am to see the game end. That's just nuts, and If Bud Selig had a backbone it wouldn't be allowed to happen. But I digress. And don't even get me started on the extended commercial breaks between innings, routinely bloating the games to four hours plus.
These are purely financial considerations, perhaps inevitable, perhaps not. But it wouldn't cost FOX a penny more to show the games to us baseball fans the way we really want to see them: on the field.
Arne, we miss you.