Is baseball afraid of competing with football?

Shea Stadium, where commissioner Bowie Kuhn once tried to block out the chill during the World Series (image via Wikipedia).

At 11:45 p.m. Central time on Sunday, Oct. 11, I simply gave up the ghost. My droopy eyes could not take another minute of the Phillies-Rockies Division Series game in Denver.

Lucky me. I would have to hang on at least another 90 minutes to watch the game to its conclusion. Imagine the poor Phillies loyalists out in the Delaware Valley, rubbing their eyes ’till almost 2:30 a.m. local time with Monday morning work (if they’re lucky) awaiting them a few hours later. Ah, for the 1960’s, when TV stations were usually off the air by this time and the after-effects of ancient blue laws frowned on Sunday night baseball games.

Baseball has put itself in this position by choice. Nobody has held a gun to the heads of Bud Selig and Bob DuPuy and their schedulers. They do not have to slot playoff games for late nights in cold-weather cities, in an era of a three-tiered postseason that this year is fated to last into November for the first time in a non 9-11, schedule-delayed season.

Of course, you’ll hear the usual corporate-speak. We have to play at night for the maximum TV audience required by both our broadcast and corporate-sponsor partners.  With cold-weather, well, that’s baseball, you grin and bear it the same you do in April.

Left unsaid in all of this is the fear factor. Fear of college and pro football. Baseball simply does not stand up for itself as a pre-eminent attraction that can go front and center, head to head with football.

Baseball does the scheduling equivalent of a lambada dance to avoid going directly against college football on Saturday afternoons and the NFL on Sundays with its postseason presentation. The fear, with some justification, is that the grand ol’ game will be swamped in the TV ratings by the football colossus on both weekend days.

I’ll counter that logic. Wouldn’t there have been more potential viewers on a weekday afternoon for a playoff contest than late on Sunday night? Playing on Saturday nights is no bargain, either, since only the most diehard fans outside the cities involved are going to stay in on the traditional Date Night to watch baseball. Isn’t Saturday the most lightly-watched of the seven nights anyway for viewership?

Baseball has thrown counterpunches at football’s burgeoning popularity for four decades. The lords of the game lowered the pitching mound five inches to boost hitting, instituted a designated hitter, likely tinkered with the baseball, looked the other way on steriods for awhile and started a wild-card system to enlarge the playoff field so that September was not merely ceded to football in the publicity mill.

But on playoff scheduling, baseball is timid. If the game has endured such a renaissance that Selig had been crowing about since the 1990’s, why not test it out and let it stand on its own against football? Baseball interest is legit and deep-rooted.  An old sportswriting colleague once said if somehow gambling could be banned, football would shrivel and die.

Starting games late, later and latest only worsens the poor weather conditions in which teams must somehow display their best stuff. At least day games would boost the temperature to some degree. More importantly, more day games would increase exposure to the next generation of fans. Only the most neglectful of parents would have allowed their kids to follow the Rockies-Phillies to its conclusion, even with a Columbus Day holiday beckoning.

I would suggest a World Series played at night only on Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Sundays — there, the lords of the game avoid the NFL except for one prime-time game. Give the kids and those who cannot extend their bedtimes a couple of day games. They used to smuggle transistor radios to school to listen to the old all-daytime World Series. Now, even if they tucked radios under the pillow, it’s doubtful the young’uns would make it to the final pitch, which often takes place in the wee hours.

Baseball had the right idea when it started experimenting with night World Series games in 1971. They wanted to expose the Fall Classic to a larger audience. But I don’t think they thought of an all-night series at the time. They figured they’d still play mostly weekend day contests. No one at the time thought the season would eventually extend beyond Halloween, with all night games.

The game was in denial almost from Day One on the frigid conditions often present for night games. Who could ever forget the sight of commissioner Bowie Kuhn, pretending the 38-degree chill did not exist, resplendent without an overcoat at the 1973 World Series at Shea Stadium?

Play more games during the day, even up against football. Remember, the NCAA and NFL aren’t going to yield to MLB. Why does baseball always have to yield to fooball?