The Chicago Cubs split their weekend series with the St. Louis Cardinals at London Stadium, continuing Major League Baseball’s push to expand internationally and showcase the game of baseball to a worldwide stage. The matchup marked the first time Major League Baseball was played overseas with the new rule changes fully in place, and it was a spectacle to behold with a packed stadium and two iconic franchises on the field.
Viewers in the United States watched baseball with breakfast on two national broadcasts over the weekend. FOX Sports sent over its broadcast team of Joe Davis, John Smoltz, Tom Rinaldi and Ken Rosenthal, but the highlight of the weekend was the studio analyst debut of Derek Jeter. Joined by host Kevin Burkhardt and analysts Álex Rodríguez and David Ortiz, Jeter displayed his personality and played into the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry throughout the show. The next scheduled on-air appearance for Jeter on an MLB on FOX game is at the MLB All-Star Game from Seattle, Wash., and he will be featured throughout the postseason on studio coverage as well. Saturday’s broadcast received considerably better reviews than the ensuing day.
The broadcast duo of Michael Kay and Álex Rodríguez is set to embark on a summer slate of games on the KayRod alternate Sunday Night Baseball broadcast. Leading up to the festivities, ESPN sent both of them overseas to call the back half of the London Series, perturbing consumers in the midwest marketplaces.
670 The Score Chicago host Laurence Holmes forewarned consumers of impending disaster and prompted them to sync their televisions to the radio broadcast featuring Pat Hughes and Ron Coomer. The station was the only local entity to send its crew across the pond to call the action.
“Sunday was unconsumable [sic],” midday co-host Dan Bernstein said. “It was just in a front, and I always say this; it’s a simple rule in broadcasting, specifically sports broadcasting. The lowest possible bar – don’t make people dumber about the sport, and that broadcast and A-Rod fails in that regard. He actively will make you dumber about baseball.”
Throughout the broadcast, a lack of preparedness and interest was evident from both commentators, as described during the station’s “transition” segment from Mully & Haugh to Bernstein & Holmes. For one thing, Rodríguez congratulated Chicago Cubs utility player Ian Happ on a contract extension he had agreed to two months earlier. Then, Kay mispronounced Cubs infielder Nick Madrigal’s surname, overemphasizing the linguistic schwa in the first syllable. To Holmes, it proved evidence of a misconception throughout the industry pertaining to making an event sound more important than it truly is.
“What I really hate – and I know this might be the Chicagoan or the midwesterner in me – [is] the idea that New York broadcasters make things bigger,” Holmes said. “….You don’t have to make a special broadcast for this. You’ve got baseball people inside of your umbrella of broadcasters – send one of them.”
Holmes surmised that part of the reason ESPN decided to send Kay and Rodríguez to London for the assignment – aside from Rodríguez already being there to fulfill his FOX Sports obligations – was to bring the element of the rivalry. After all, Kay has regularly called matchups between the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox over the years, perhaps compelling executives to assume he would be the best fit for the National League Central clash. Additionally, Rodríguez was a former member of the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast booth until it was revamped prior to last season with Karl Ravech, David Cone and Eduardo Pérez.
“It’s absolutely disrespectful and ludicrous, and they played right into it,” Holmes said of ESPN pertaining to the strife. “That’s why I was telling folks – sync up your TV and just listen to Pat and Ron call the game.”
In a conversation between Holmes and David Haugh, the hosts recalled a segment Rodríguez did with former Chicago Cubs infielder Javier Báez at a batting cage dissecting the art of hitting. Everyone was in agreement that circumstances involving demos about the game itself lend better to Rodríguez as a broadcaster because of shortcomings in other areas. As a result, they hope FOX Sports, ESPN and other media entities allow him to explore that area of the industry and stray away from color commentary.
“For whatever reason, the national entities think that he has personality, and he does not because all of it is a front,” Holmes said. “It’s all fake, and it comes across fake inside of the broadcast…. Someone’s told him that he’s charming – and it’s probably him that told himself that he is charming – and he is not.”
