The NFL has been known for dominating Thanksgiving Day programming with a slate of marquee matchups throughout the day on national broadcast networks. Over the last several years, the NBA has presented a packed slate of games on Christmas Day as well, which will be countered by two NFL games airing exclusively on Netflix as part of a new media rights deal announced last quarter. While Major League Baseball has plenty of compelling matchups and events throughout the year, Andy “Dirt” Johnson was disappointed with the schedule the league presented on the Fourth of July holiday.
Johnson, who was home for the 248-year anniversary commemorating the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, conveyed that he was inside and had woken up early. Once it became the late morning and early afternoon, he thought that there would have to be baseball games on national television, especially considering it was the Fourth of July. In fact, when he considers power rankings of the holiday, baseball ends up appearing on the list. As he flipped around the channels on YouTube TV, he came to realize that no games were being broadcast on national TV networks.
“Now I have the MLB At Bat app, so I can go find these local broadcasts and all that, but I thought there had to have been something, and there wasn’t,” Johnson said on Monday’s edition of Dirt & Sprague on 1080 The Fan. “I think there was a game on later in the afternoon or maybe in the evening; eventually that day there was one on, and I was just – it pissed me off.”
While browsing the X app, Johnson saw a social media post of a scene from The Sandlot in which the players are taking the field on the Fourth of July with fireworks and hot dogs within the setting. As a result, he decided to watch the classic sports movie since there were no baseball games for him to see on national television.
Johnson concurred with another social media post that argued MLB should make the Fourth of July a baseball event in which there are four games on network television and subsequent marketing of the sport. In considering the landscape of the league, Johnson felt that it would not have been difficult to predict the teams that are viewed as contenders to win a World Series championship.
“How did you not have some sequence of games including those teams just as a broadcast network tripleheader starting in the morning and going all day?,” Johnson asked. “Give me Phillies and Braves, give me Yankees and O’s – give me three different marquee games and market your sport – and it felt like a major missed opportunity.”
The MLB schedule on July 4 started with a matchup between the New York Mets and Washington Nationals at 11:05 a.m. EST that was broadcast locally on SNY and MASN in addition to being available to watch on MLB Network and fuboTV. PNC Park hosted an afternoon contest between the St. Louis Cardinals and Pittsburgh Pirates at 12:35 p.m. EST, commencing nine additional afternoon games all broadcast locally. Four matchups aired at night, concluding with the Arizona Diamondbacks against the Los Angeles Dodgers on DBacks TV and Spectrum SportsNet LA.
“You get hot weather all over the country – it was like 103° in Las Vegas – you get people sitting inside looking for something to do,” Johnson said. “Like, ‘Dude, here’s a baseball game. Watch this thing. It’s the Fourth of July, we’re celebrating America; there’s nothing more American than baseball,’ and it felt like a missed opportunity.”
