Flyover World Series? Get over yourselves
I started hearing it this morning, but I guess I should have expected it. With news of the Indians being one win away from the World Series, apparently Fox executives are worried about a “flyover” World Series between Cleveland and Colorado. Boo freaking hoo.
I’ll concede that the potential viewing audiences for a Red Sox-Cubs or a Yankees-Dodgers series could be more numerous than an Indians-Rockies series, just by dint of sheer population. And I could argue that the viewers that matter - the real baseball fans - will watch a World Series no matter who’s playing. Even if it were Florida and Toronto. The only benefit to a coastal series is that all the hangers-on - the girlfriends who wear pink Red Sox caps - might tune in. But if the ads are directed to a hardcore baseball fan, then what good do you think they’ll do for an audience of hangers-on?
But the real problem here is the bigotry of geography. I’m a meat-and-potatoes Ohioan, regardless of where I live. Any time I hear the term “flyover state,” it incenses me more than these East Coasters can understand. I’m proud of where I grew up, and I take particular pride in the success stories to come out of the Midwest. Such as this year’s Indians team. Nevertheless, East Coasters - particularly New Yorkers - feel compelled to treat the vast majority of this country like a third-world hellhole.
Take, for example, Game 2 of the AL Divisional Series between the Yankees and the Indians. Late in the game, a swarm of midges emerged from the lake and descended on Jacobs Field. The midges do so every year at about this time and the lack of a breeze kept them from being blown out into the lake. It happens, just like earthquakes happen in Southern California, heat happens in Arizona and the stench of garbage and piss in the alleyways happens in New York. But commentators and fans alike decided to deride Cleveland, calling it a “Biblical plague.” Princess Derek Jeter was quoted as saying “Just when you think you’ve seen it all. I guess that’s home-field advantage for them - just let the bugs out.”
Or take The Simple Life, that reality TV show with Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie. Or take any reality TV show, really, standing up Midwestern rubes as straw folk for Hollywood types to throw rotten tomatoes at. Or take my boss, a born-and-bred Brooklynite who believes that nothing of worth exists west of the Hudson River.
You get my point.
To those people, I’d like to point out that this is not some sort of colonial arrangement, where the “flyover states” provide all the raw materials and the labor while you sit back and sip your coolatas in Manhattan studio apartments. Middle America is not some sort of cesspool lacking culture and sophistication. The people of Middle America, their ideas and their values don’t deserve automatic dismissal simply based on your regional bigotry. And this country doesn’t revolve around Fifth Avenue and Hollywood - as much as it may seem so at times.
Oh, and as for the World Series, it’s about the best two teams in Major League Baseball playing each other. Pure and simple. It’s definitely not about ratings, which don’t matter much to those of us in or from middle America. If it were about ratings, then rig the game. Bribe Cleveland to drop the next three games and arrange the precious Cubs-Red Sox matchup for next year. Heck, rigging the game worked to bring fans back into the seats after the big strike in 1994; witness the home run derbies between McGwire and Sosa.
Now nobody wants to see that again, do we?
Last 3 posts by Dan
- No, Jesus would drive a second-hand beater - Nov 3rd, 2007
- somebody in Redmond's batting for the other team - Sep 11th, 2007
- Knocked Up and why I never need to enter a theater again - Jun 5th, 2007
Thanks for posting this. I am getting tried of hearing the same crap every year about the Yankees and Red Sox. I’m guilty of plenty of baseball snobbery myself, but does 75% of the MLB editorial budget of every national sport publication have to go to those two teams?
October 17th, 2007 at 10:35 pm
Good show, Dan!
I would like to request a rant from you about media bias during the games and how the TBS announcers were very blatantly rooting for the Yankees and how it’s taken 4 games for the Fox announcers to start thinking that the Indians have a chance.
Please?!
October 17th, 2007 at 10:42 pm
Jason-
Think it’s bad out in Ohio? Here in New England, the only time I get to see the Indians play is when they’re up against the Yankees or Red Sox. It’s worse for catching Cincinnati games. ESPN ignores the Ohio teams, for the most part, and box scores and the reviews on mlb.com just don’t cut it.
I hear either XM or Sirius broadcasts every ball game of every team, but that’s not enough to convince me to subscribe to radio.
And one would think that New Yorkers would have been a little sympathetic to farm country - after all, the Yankees’ Triple-A team for the longest time was the Columbus Clippers. But when the Yankees ditched the Clippers for Scranton/Wilkes-Barre just before this season, leaving the Clippers as the Washington Nationals affiliate, I saw not one story covering the change.
Jess-
Damn straight!
October 18th, 2007 at 7:21 am
Dan, have you considered subscribing to MLBTV? You can get the Cleveland games streamed over the ‘net from mlb.com
Note for other interested users: You CANNOT watch games in your own market. So people like me who live in Cleveland and don’t have cable TV are just SOL. But people in Dan’s position - in the middle of Bean People Nation, can get the Tribe with no problems.
October 18th, 2007 at 2:57 pm