Watchdog

The division series on TBS did better than most stuff on TV, but less well than last year's first round of baseball playoffs.

Apparently the lack of the Yankees hurt, as did the presence of Sarah Palin.

Whatever. I'm finally starting to come around to many readers' point of view when it comes to ratings:

I care less than I used to.

Excellent news today for fans of "My Boys," a series I have obsessively hyped since it debuted as the best show about a fictional sportswriter who never works since "Everybody Loves Raymond."

TBS announced it has picked up the series for a third season of nine episodes debuting early in 2009.

The lead character, P.J. Franklin, is a beat writer covering the Cubs, whose playoff flop should free up her schedule for more beer drinking and poker playing with her male pals.

Maybe TBS could cross-promote by having Frank Caliendo and Chip Caray appear on the show and do their amusing parodies of TV sportscasters.

The MLB Network, which doesn't exist yet, has announced its first official live event offering: Sixteen of the 39 games from the World Baseball Classic, scheduled for March 5-23 in various countries and hemispheres.

The other 23 games will appear on ESPN outlets, including the semifinals and final at Dodger Stadium.

The MLB Network launches Jan. 1. I'll write about it as that day draws nearer.

Yo, Mets fans, Keith Hernandez is in another mustache contest!

After winning championships last year in both a Newsday sports mustache contest and one conducted by the American Mustache Institute, Keith is in a wider field that includes non-sports figures as well as ones from sports, such as Art Monk, Jason Giambi and Goose Gossage.

I'd like to vote for Keith as the Robert Goulet Memorial Mustached American of the Year, but sorry, Mex, I'm going with Sgt. Jon Alvarez of the United States Army.

If they had been taking odds in Vegas on which of Earth's 6 billion inhabitants would catch the final home run hit by a Met at Shea, surely the favorite would have been . . . Zack Hample.

Yup.

UPDATE: Here is Zack's blog post on his adventures Sunday. He told me it's about 5,000 words worth.

Hey, check it out.

I finally made it into Davidoff's Sunday "Pop Quiz" with a tidbit about "12 Angry Men" and baseball.

This is the high point of my career, and as good a point as any to put a bow on September.

I've had one week off in each of the past four months, but naturally I kept October clear for work, what with our local baseball parks getting ready to close and each local team spending zillions to bring home a championship to send out its stadium in style, and . . . oh.

Never mind.

TBS has announced the TV schedule and announcing teams for the first divisional round playoffs in baseball history without a New York team involved.

Chip Caray and Buck Martinez will be on Bosox-Angels.

SNY's own Ron Darling has Dodgers-Cubs.

Darling will join Caray and Martinez for the ALCS.

Click below for the TBS news release.

Today is the 100th anniversary of the most controversial game in the history of baseball, conveniently timed for another visit by the Cubs to Big Town.

Here is how The New York Times covered it at the time.

Here is an article about from today's paper.

Here is my Zack Hample story from the Friday paper, in which the world's foremost baseball gatherer talks about finding a cab on Amsterdam Avenue, the odds of catching home run balls in back-to-back games at Yankee Stadium, the reaction of his girlfriend to his home run dance and other important subjects.

I was one of several journalist types Zack spoke to this week, including the CBS "Early Show" this morning, which blared the caption "Home Run Hero" under his name. Yikes.

Hample came within 10 rows or so of another home run ball Thursday night at the Stadium. ESPN showed the highlight and identified him merely as the "fan" who had caught balls in the bleachers Tuesday and Wednesday.

Just "a fan?" People, he's part of the show. In fact, it's time for him to have his own vehicle on ESPN Classic, isn't it? They could call it "Cheap Seats."

(UPDATE: Good Lord, Zack's on WFAN with Ca-Boom now!)

Check out these mind-boggling TV ratings for Nationals baseball in Washington - a previous two-time loser of MLB franchises - from long-time WatchDog reader John Ourand of the Sports Business Journal:

Nationals ratings on MASN, which have been the lowest in baseball by far all season, pulled one of its lowest figures of the season last Thursday, when the team's game against the Braves ran opposite the Redskins' season opener on NBC. The September 4 Nationals game pulled a 0.26 rating/6,000 households. By comparison, the Redskins-Giants game on NBC pulled a 26 rating/600,000 HHs in the DC market.

The Nationals' lowest rating of the season occurred a few weeks earlier, when its August 16 game with the Rockies ran opposite Michael Phelps' race for his eighth gold medal. The Nationals game on WDCA-MYT pulled a 0.07 rating/1,600 HHs, and a source said that the last half hour of the game was below measurable ratings standards. By comparison, NBC's coverage of the Phelps race scored a 20.7 rating with 477,000 HHs in the market. Season-to-date, Nationals telecasts are averaging a 0.35 with 8,000 HHs.

OMG. Like I wrote in the post below . . .

Veteran MLB official scorer Howie Karpin has a more relevant take on the whole C.C. Sabathia error/hit controversy than you or I do.

Here it is.

As a typical, obnoxious, New York-centric media scribe, I have not written enough about the recent passing of Skip Caray, the Braves' long-time announcer.

To partly atone, here is a link to an Ernie Johnson/TBS tribute video via our friends at Awful Announcing.

Heyman is being Heyman again on the Manny Ramirez trade, which he dissects in spectacular detail here.

The former Newsday scribe was well ahead of the national media curve on the story - no matter what other media outlets might have claimed - as he often is on baseball matters.

(One of his specialties over the years has been information involving Scott Boras clients, which now includes Ramirez.)

I'd like to be as good a reporter as Heyman, but that would involve making many phone calls, and I'm just not that sociable of a guy.

Here is an amusing item today from my former Tribune teammate at the Baltimore Sun, Peter Schmuck, regarding his peculiar kinship - or maybe not - with the Mariners' J.J. Putz.

Putz comes off like kind of a, um . . . Oh, never mind. Maybe Schmuck should instead bond with the Blue Jays' Kevin Mench.

Just a thought.

Hey, wait, what does this have to do with sports business/media? I don't know.

I'm just treading water waiting to be dunked into the Olympic TV water tank by my editors.

Just got off the phone with Betsy Thomas, executive producer of TBS' "My Boys," the best show about a fictional sportswriter who never works since "Everybody Loves Raymond."

I will be addressing this matter at length in a future newspaper column, but the short story is that Ms. Thomas would love to show more of the lead character, PJ Franklin, at work, but there simply isn't time in a nine-episode season focused primarily on her relationships with her male, poker-playing, beer-drinking buddies.

Fair enough. But how does Franklin have time to socialize at all during baseball season?

Thomas said she researched the matter before the show launched in 2006, including shadowing then LA Times baseball writer Steve Henson.

"I've chatted with many who say, 'I don’t travel all the time during the season; I don’t travel to all the games,"' she said. "But I've spoken to others who say you have no life. I think it depends."

Lennon? O'Brien? Davidoff? Heyman? Your thoughts?

The "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" stamp in honor of the song's 100th anniversary was issued a couple of weeks back.

The WatchDog family bought some Monday.

You should buy some, too.

Here is the link.

(We're off to an exciting morning, aren't we?)

Uh, oh. Jeff Brantley is annoying the Reds again.

This time it was Ken Griffey Jr., who celebrated a home run by bringing out an old-school throat-slash gesture aimed at the Cincinnati announcer.

Yikes. Imagine the reaction around here if Jose Reyes had tried that on Keith Hernandez!

(Did you notice how I did not mention that in 1984 I interviewed Jeff Brantley when he was a member of the Mat-Su Miners of the Alaska League? That's because my goal this week is to stop tying every post back to something in my life that no one cares about.)

I'm listening to John Mara's second appearance in five hours on WFAN to explain the personal seat license thing, this time with Chris Carlin and Kim Jones.

Kudos to him for his accessibility. But listening to this is getting kind of depressing.

As an antidote, watch Buck O'Neil (above) singing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," then watch tonight's special about the song on ESPN.

I'm out. Have a good weekend.

Loyal readers know about my fascination with the song "Take Me Out to the Ball Game," whose 100th anniversary I celebrated with a long feature over the winter that I can't figure out how to link to from here.

Thus I will be sure to TiVo Friday night's special on the song - it's on ESPN via MLB Productions - that features various players taking a stab at singing it. Deep, mysterious sources tell me the rendition by the Phils' Ryan Howard and Jimmy Rollins is a highlight.

Another will be Adam Wilbur of Medford, a band director in the Longwood school district, leading the crowd at Yankee Stadium in "Ball Game" at Tuesday's All-Star game.

Wilbur won a nationwide contest for the honor sponsored by Baby Ruth candy.

Here is my Wednesday newspaper column on Fox's coverage of the All-Star Game. Let's just say a few additional things occurred in the hours after my 10:45 p.m. deadline!

But much like in 1970, when I battled sleep to watch Pete Rose run over Ray Fosse, I made it to the finish line . . . long enough to see Fox finally get around to paying tribute to the late Bobby Murcer in the bottom of the 11th inning, then again as the final image after the post-game show.

Better late than never, I suppose.

If I'd known how Jonathan Papelbon would be treated by the Bronx faithful, I'd have mentioned in the newspaper column his crack during the red carpet parade earlier in the day, in which he told Fox he felt like he should be riding in the Popemobile to protect himself from hostile fans.

Here is an interesting Boston Herald story about Papelbon and his friends in the New York media.

Anyway, it was an interesting, wacky TV experience, and Fox mostly handled it well.

I'm currently on hold for a Bob Papa conference call. See ya later for the live chat.

Famed official baseball scorer Red Foley has died.

Here is an obit written by John Jeansonne of Newsday.

I mentioned this a while back, but here's a reminder: Thursday evening, Don Larsen's 1956 perfect game will be on public view in New York City for the first time since the day it happened.

Here is schedule and ticket information from our friends at reelsportsfan.com.

Speaking of perfect games, my daughter and I Wednesday attended a screening of "The Perfect Game," a movie coming out Aug. 8 about the 1957 Monterrey, Mexico, team that won the Little League World Series.

It is a treacly, very-family-friendly movie that is quite well done for what it is.

There is no more sacred rule in WatchDog Nation than that a link must be provided every time former Newsday scribe Jeff Pearlman writes an article in which the words "fart" and "aplomb" appear in the first sentence, and in which he profiles a major league general manager who grew up in Queens, attended Cornell and is younger than several of my handkerchiefs.

Thursday night MLB Productions is unveiling a new show on ESPN called "Holiday Inn Presents: Unbreakable Records MLB 2008."

The show is based on a recent poll of 150 major league players who were asked to select three baseball feats that most impress them.

Count on the following no-brainers making the top 10: Cal Ripken’s games played, Joe DiMaggio’s hitting streak, Bob Gibson’s 1.12 ERA and Ted Williams' .406 batting average.

I would not call any of those marks unbreakable, although they all will be difficult to surpass. The truly unbreakable records are the ones set under circumstances that no longer exist, such as Cy Young's 511 career victories and Jack Chesbro's modern-record 41 wins in 1904 alone.

Poor Chesbro still ended up being a goat among New York's American League fans, because his wild pitch on a spitball on the final day of the season allowed Boston's AL squad to beat out the Highlanders for the pennant. (Some who were there swore it should have been scored a passed ball. But I digress.)

I wish my Tribune teammate (for now), Bill Plaschke of the L.A. Times, would have thought of this before Michael Strahan retired.

Then I could have copied him and tried to talk Strahan out of retiring and thus costing me my bet with Schwartz of the Post that Old No. 92 would play in 2009.

Sigh. Back to vacation.

Much as it drives me nuts that TBS' "My Boys" is about a baseball beat writer who has an active social life in the summer, I was willing to overlook that reality flaw because it's a cute, well-written show.

But now a friend of the main character who also is a baseball beat writer not only seems to spend the summer not working, but he is engaged to a Swedish nanny (who looks like a supermodel, actually).

So, to review: baseball writers spend all summer playing poker, drinking beer and dating Swedish nannies.

Paging Oscar Madison! Help! (Come to think of it, Oscar did his share of drinking and playing poker. Oh, never mind.)

I have been doing my best to ignore baseball on vacation, but Saturday night I caught the rain delay chat between Wayne Hagin and Howie Rose on WFAN, in which Wayne recalled his worst rain delay horror story:

Aug. 12, 1990, Rangers at White Sox . . . seven hours and 23 minutes!

I was there! My friend and I stayed for the first five hours or so, then left and watched the end of it in our hotel room.

On the way out we were told we could come back for a future game even if that one eventually was played that night. We declined.

Never mind the previous two posts. Here is the definitive rendition of the national anthem at a sports event.

As wonderful as Whitney Houston's traditional take on the national anthem was at Super Bowl XXV (see post below), the most famous - or infamous - rendition ever performed at a sports event was Jose Feliciano's 40 years ago at the World Series in Detroit.

From a 21st century perspective, it's hard to believe what a controversy this caused.

If it were performed today, it would be considered creative and unusual and haunting, but certainly respectful.

The other day I viewed a fascinating production called "Base Ball Discovered" from MLB.com in which the producers put a few more nails in the coffin of the Abner Doubleday myth and trace the origins of the sport to several games still played in modern-day England, as well as to a journal from the mid-18th century.

The film debuted at the SABR convention in Cleveland last week, but the trouble is it doesn't have a distribution plan quite yet. It seems like a natural for the new MLB-owned channel set to launch in January.

I'll keep you posted.

The writer/director/producer is Sam Marchiano, daughter of Sal and a member of the famous New York Newsday part-time staff in Kew Gardens in the late 1980s, which produced numerous future sports journalism standouts.

OK, this will be my last post of the day in tribute to George Carlin. It's an exchange he had with Bob Costas on HBO on June 13, 2002, about being a Dodgers fan on Oct. 3, 1951.

(The question I have is why he was listening to Russ Hodges on the Giants broadcast rather than Red Barber on the Dodgers station. But it's too late for me to ask George now.)

Bob Costas: “You grew up as a Brooklyn Dodger fan. Where were you when Bobby Thomson hit the home run that broke all of Brooklyn’s heart in ’51?”

George Carlin: “I was sitting at home listening on a little Crosly Radio and I had my little cat in my hand, a little kitten, it was a black cat and I named him Ezzard, after Ezzard Charles, who I think had beaten (Joe) Walcott earlier that year.”

Bob Costas: “He was heavyweight champion of the world.”

George Carlin: “Right. So I had Ezzard in my lap, and I love animals and I’m not cruel to them at all but when Bobby Thomson hit that home run and I heard Russ Hodges describing it, I tossed the cat. I didn’t throw him in a mean way, I tossed him in disgust, and I looked over and saw him heading for the window, an open window and we had two stories, plus the backyard in the apartment house. So it was a three-story drop. Fortunately for Ezzard, the curtains were there. He grabbed the curtains, then swung out over the yard, and swung back in and I went and got him.”

Bob Costas: “He had the good claws.”

George Carlin: “Yeah, he has the good claws, he had good hands. And he lived.”

(One more thing about Carlin: Yes, I was watching "Saturday Night Live" when he hosted the first show, on Oct. 11, 1975. Sigh.)

Even after getting a lift from a Sunday SportsWatch column about his life as a hockey fan, Mike Myers' new, critically panned movie, "Love Guru" crashed into the boards and was knocked unconscious in its first weekend at the box office.

On the flip side of the sports movie continuum, here is a piece from SI.com about what has become of the characters in the movie "Bull Durham" 20 years after its premiere.

I always have sort of preferred "Field of Dreams," frankly.

"Bull Durham" has a tad too much s-e-x in it for a baseball movie. None of that actually goes on in the sport, does it?

Here it is, everyone. George Carlin on baseball and football. A classic. RIP, sir.

Oh, boy. More drama at Shea today.

While I'm waiting for it to play out so I can finish my newspaper column, here is a link to a good idea from WGN in Chicago that YES and SNY should copy before Yankee and Shea close for good.

(Is the U.S. Open over yet?)

Milton Bradley of the Rangers went looking for the Royals' play-by-play man Wednesday night after hearing some negative stuff said about him.

Yo, Gary Cohen: Be nice to the Diamondbacks today!

I'm in my weekly Thursday blogging funk. I'm finally cracking under the pressure.

I can't keep up with the full-time bloggers and their NSFW links and their youth and their lack of children and mortgages. I have to focus on my newspaper column now.

Check out our other sports blogs. Enjoy the Mets game and the U.S. Open and the NBA Finals and "My Boys" and the 1992 Champion Spark Plug 400 on ESPN Classic at 2 p.m.

I'm out.