Bring back day baseball for the World Series

By Guest
Updated: February 6, 2013

The 2004 World Series Trophy in City Hall Plaza, Manchester, NH. Taken during the trophy’s tour with it’s winner the 2004 Red_Sox. Photo by M@ Sheppard, who has released it under the GFDL. 16:59, 1 December 2004 . . M@ . . 602×1103 (182,813 bytes) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Good news for baseball over football this week. The ratings came out for the 2013 Pro Bowl and only 9.9 million watched that game.

That means that Game Three of the 2012 World Series outdrew the Pro Bowl, after failing to outdraw the football All- Star game the past few years.

Why does baseball do so bad in the ratings game compared to football?

If you asked many baseball fans, that are middle aged and up males, most would say, “The games end too late, so why bother watching only the beginning.”

Football knows the optimum time to end a game is 10:00 in EST. Baseball has not had a game end at that time, since they played day games back in the 1970?s.

The first night game in the World Series was the brainchild of Charley Finley, Oakland A’s owner, it was not until the fourth game of the 1971 World Series that baseball ever played a game under the lights.

Some may remember like I do bringing a transistor radio and an earplug and listening to the World Series.

In sixth grade I can recall the seventh game in 1960, passing notes to others telling them the score. School was out when it was 9-9, and I can recall the spot on Commonwealth Ave., in New Britain, CT where I stood when Bill Mazeroski led of the last of the ninth with a home run.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ix848GU0gNo

Baseball has not played a day game since starting Game Six in 1987 at 4:04 ET.

Why not bring back day baseball for the fall classic? Everyone will be awake at the end of the game if you start every game at 4 in the afternoon.

Last year 111 million people watch the Super Bowl, and the World Series averaged 12.7 million for four games.

Nobody watches baseball because the games all end past 11 in the Eastern Time zone.

Games that used to average two and one half hours 30 and 40 years ago, now all last past three hours all the time.

Football has never started a Super Bowl past 6:30 and they know the game needs to end by 10 to get maximum exposure.

Baseball continues to keep their head in the sand, and refuse to see how those numbers would improve if they went back to the days of transistor radios, and day baseball for all the World Series games.

Do you think more people would watch the World Series if the games all ended before 10:00?