The WGOM

There are obviously times that kids can watch (3pm-9pm)...

Okay, let's start here. 3pm-9pm in which time zone? 3pm-9pm ET is 12pm-6pm PT, so you're cutting into school time for kids on the West Coast. 3pm-9pm PT is 6pm-12pm ET, so now you're too late for kids on the East Coast. Well, 6pm-9pm ET should be okay for kids everywhere, but scheduling, for instance, an Angels-Giants game at 3pm PT is a pretty big FU to the season ticket holders that have day jobs. Even if you can twist someone's arm to knock off work by 4:30, there's no guarantee traffic will actually cooperate for you to get to the game in a timely fashion, and the most dramatic part of the game might already have passed by the time you get there. And if you lose that customer, you're probably losing his kids, too.

When the most exciting part of a game is after midnight, how can you expect the next generation of fans to grow up enjoying baseball?

Here's a dirty secret: I don't remember watching the '91 WS at all. Not one pitch. I'm not even sure how much of it I really got to see. I'd say I turned out to be a rather devoted fan, nonetheless.

I do remember the highlights, and I do remember the important storylines, though, because it was the talk of the town. (And because it was back when TWiB was the best thing on television.)

When it comes to kids, baseball has a lot more to offer than a few innings of playoff baseball that may or may not involve their hometown team. The most important thing that got me hooked into baseball was playing it. If I hadn't ever played at any level, I highly doubt we would be having this conversation. The next most important thing, personally, was listening to the games on the radio in the summer. My family didn't have cable, and certainly not all games were televised back then, so listening on the radio was the way to keep up with the team. Listening on the way to my little league games, or on the way back, or on some random trip in the car, summer meant baseball on the radio.

Then there were the annual trips to the Dome. Living two hours from the Dome, I got to see the Twins once a year. It was a glorious treat (and as a kid, I had absolutely no qualms about indoor baseball) and I remember some of those trips quite fondly. I also can't remember who won or lost any of those games. I do remember Kirby Puckett hitting a ball to the RCF gap, hustling hard to first, then second, and then realizing that (could it be?) he was going to try for third! It was a bang-bang play at third, but Kirby had made it safely under the tag for a triple. There'd been a triple, one of the most exciting plays in baseball, by my favorite player on the team, and I was lucky enough to make it there that day. I was beside myself.

And the baseball cards! Oh, the baseball cards. Every summer as a kid, I'd save my allowance money to spend it on baseball cards and I spent hours organizing them, reorganizing them, talking about them with my friends, trading to make sure I got a full Twins' set, and even making trades to complete a full set a couple of times. If you could make baseball cards affordable for kids again, I think you'd do a lot more to get kids interested in baseball than changing the air time of a couple of games each year.

I loved baseball because baseball was fun. As a kid, I thought it was neat that the Twins won the World Series, but they could have swept in the most boring possible 4-game sweep you can envision, and I'd probably feel the same way about baseball. Late playoff games didn't ruin baseball for me, and they aren't going to ruin baseball for future generations.

[Also, your initial point was about whether or not a sport cared about its customers. Advertisers pay more for primetime because that's when people can watch TV. Putting games on when the most people can watch them sounds like a customer-friendly practice to me.]

Here’s a dirty secret: I don’t remember watching the ‘91 WS at all. Not one pitch

I watched, but I went to bed before Kirby's HR in Game 6, and my dad made me go to bed after 9 innings of Game 7 (luckily I snuck a radio in with me). I didn't see the '87 WS at all, but I got hooked in the summer of 1990 thanks to baseball cards and radio broadcasts.

I think you make some great points. We'd all prefer if MLB approached some things differently, but drawing fewer kids as fans is largely beyond their control. There are just so many new entertainment and sporting options available today, baseball was bound to take a hit. (I would like to see cheap baseball cards again, though!)

I'm fully aware there are 4 time zones across the continental US. If we're really going to nitpick, let's not leave the Hawaiian time zone out of this!

But I'm tired of arguing. If you think having the most exciting moments in the baseball playoffs happen after eleven pm for about 2/3 of the population of the US is customer friendly, I guess I'm not going to convince you otherwise.

If we’re really going to nitpick, let’s not leave the Hawaiian time zone out of this!

I hardly think it's nitpicking to point out that an area of the country with seven major league baseball teams is on a vastly different time zone than the one with the Yankees and the Sawx.

If you think having the most exciting moments in the baseball playoffs happen after eleven pm for about 2/3 of the population of the US is customer friendly, I guess I’m not going to convince you otherwise.

Game times for last year's World Series:
2:54
2:55
3:03
3:35
2:56

That gives us a grand total of 38 minutes of baseball past 11pm in the eastern time zone and zero minutes of baseball past 11pm in the central time zone if games start right at 8ET/7CT/5PT, which I would argue is the best compromise time for a nationwide sporting event on a weekday. Pitchers who stand around and take their sweet time to make the next pitch, and quantity of advertising in the playoffs are more of a problem than an 8pm ET start.

I get the impression that you've never tried following sports from the West Coast. I really had no idea how bad it would be until I moved out here, and if I had known beforehand, I might not have moved this far west. If someone stays up late to watch a baseball game, then he gets to make a choice between sleep and baseball. It's certainly an inconvenience, but it's a choice he can make. If a game is scheduled while he'm working, during the day, many times he simply can't watch that game. It's not an inconvenience, it's an impossibility.

So you have a choice: either 2/3 of your customers can stay up an extra hour or so to catch the special moments, or 1/3 of your customers can miss the special moments altogether. Like I said, someone gets screwed either way--you have to balance the number of customers versus how severely you're screwing them.

Christ Stick. 'Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim'rous beastie.' (I'm referring to the font size in the reply postings).