As the Major League Baseball season is just over one month in, New York Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge leads the league with a .414 batting average and 1.262 OPS, demonstrating his abilities as one of the preeminent athletes in the sport. On top of that, the Yankees currently occupy first place in the American League East and have demonstrated their offensive prowess throughout the season, leading the league in both of the aforementioned categories as well. Judge was a topic of conversation on Fescoe & Dusty on 96.5 The Fan for a different reason on Tuesday, however, responding to a listener who surmised that his numbers are not “front-page news.”
Co-host Dusty Likins acknowledged that Judge hitting over .400 would have been everywhere when he was growing up watching baseball and that it would have been a primary topic. In addition, co-host Bob Fescoe averred that it would be on the front page of the ESPN website and titled “Judge Watch” while also being the lead story on SportsCenter. Fescoe proceeded to discuss what he presumes to be a void in the current media rights composition surrounding the league.
“I think what baseball is truly missing are at least two – and I say at least two, probably max of two – where I call them ‘national TV nights’ where you take Tuesday and Wednesday,” Fescoe opined. “You’re not taking Sunday because it gets lost in September and October when it’s your two biggest months of the year because football’s going on, right? So I’m taking Tuesday and Wednesday as two national TV nights, and now this requires a television partner to pay the freight on this, but if baseball wants to be on that kind of national stage, you need to have a product like the NFL does on Sundays.”
Fescoe conveyed that he would have a 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. CST window for MLB games on Tuesdays and Wednesdays that would be nationally televised by the same network across the country, taking a similar model equipped by the NFL. On top of that, he would want the ability to return back to the studio or break in with in-game highlights of what is taking place surrounding contests in progress.
“I think if you kind of introduced it that way and had those national rights for baseball on a national network, then you could get more people paying attention to what’s going on because we know what’s going on in the NFL basically, guys, ‘cause we’re force-fed it,” Fescoe said. “Rather you’re watching a game or you’re watching RedZone, you’re force-fed everything, you know everything that’s going on. Baseball doesn’t have that kind of platform any more.”
Likins emphasized how the sport has an opportunity to showcase premier young talent such as Bobby Witt Jr., Elly De La Cruz and Paul Skenes, but he surmised that the game is passing it up and affirming that it will get there later. Furthermore, he elucidated how no one is tired of anything with baseball yet because they have not been able to have it. Likins presented an example of fans not knowing about Los Angeles Dodgers two-way superstar Shohei Ohtani becoming the first player in league history to amass 50 home runs and 50 steals in a single season until the last game of the season.
“Baseball has always been the kings of telling me why things can’t get done – I call them ‘baseball excuses’ – and there was one time where we had a bracket of 64 different baseball excuses we received from the old P.R. guy with the Royals, and I’m not kidding about that,” Fescoe said. “Sixty-four different excuses of why things couldn’t get done. Baseball has made a living of telling everybody why we can’t instead of thinking outside the box and saying why we can.”
Fescoe affirmed that the menu for baseball is simply too big and that MLB Commissioner Robert D. Manfred Jr. should voice that no one is signing new television contracts until everything moves in house and under one funnel. Moreover, he believes that showcasing highlights from regional broadcasts is essential for promulgating awareness and interest into the overall product.
“I think these regional networks, they don’t care about what else is going on in baseball,” Fescoe said. “They just care about their game, and that’s fine, but if you want to grow the game, you have to expose the fans and bring the party to the fans, and once they experience and have a little hit on it every Tuesday and Wednesday, like, ‘I really like this. I want to continue to follow on other days,’ and that’s how you grow this game.”
Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. To stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.
