THIS WAS THE LOWEST-RATED SERIES, WITH PARDONS TO SEAGER AND BOCHY

Now consigned to oblivion, baseball can't rise again to mass approval, failing for keeps as a “national pastime” even after the Texas manager and MVP winner gave sterling memories to small viewers

     Let the debates begin involving Bruce Bochy, whose head remains too large at size 8 1/8, and whether he’s the finest manager of the century or superior to anyone since the … 1960s? “This hat is too small,” he said, waiting for another World Series championship garment, his fourth in 13 seasons and fewer only than Joe McCarthy, Casey Stengel and Connie Mack, long before steroids and electronic sign-stealing and baseball’s American demise.

     He sat for three years in a recliner. No one wanted him in an frat-boy world of analytical marksmen. Now a grandfather to bossy millennials, at 68, Bochy can reflect on history and what he knows — and what sabermetricians do not. “I never thought this in my wildest dreams,” he said.

     Also let the suffering slobs in Los Angeles, who have won one such title in 35 years, dream of Shohei Ohtani while asking this of boss Andrew Friedman: Why didn’t he use the team’s fortunes to outbid the Texas Rangers for Corey Seager, which led to Trea Turner and whoever plays shortstop at Chavez Ravine these days? When asked why his team is so precious, he turned around to his mates and sheepishly asked. “Heart!” someone said.

     “Heart!” said Seager, who hit three home runs and drove in six in a five-game conquest over Arizona, matching him with Reggie Jackson as the only players to win a Series MVP trophy for two teams.

     Yet who’s even discussing the Rangers and their first championship ever, in 63 years? Who is dumbing down the San Diego Padres and Milwaukee Brewers with the longest active no-title droughts, 55 years and counting, in the four major sports?

     Does anyone care outside Dallas and Fort Worth, where Jerry Jones must be kicking a storm, unable to reach a Super Bowl in almost 30 years?

     One of the biggest hoots in sports is Michael Mulvihill, the head of strategy and analytics at Fox Sports. In yet another explanation of rock-bottom Series ratings on his network, he actually contrived this kookiness. “The line that I use a lot, and have used for a number of years: The World Series is television's longest-running hit primetime show,” he told a receptive listener, MLB.com. “Since we started playing primetime World Series games in 1971, it's always been on par with the biggest entertainment shows in prime, going back to comparisons to ‘All in the Family,’ ‘M*A*S*H’ and (so on). As the business has changed and entertainment ratings have fragmented and become lower and lower, the World Series has actually become more powerful.”

     More powerful? What he conveniently leaves out is that the National Football League, while ratings have morseled throughout the media industry, continues to blow out all competitive American forms of cable and streaming broadcasts. Any attempt to justify baseball’s degenerative problem is to delete how football has regained baseball’s ratings of the 1970s and 1980s. From commissioners Bud Selig to Rob Manfred, in the domain of Jerry Reinsdorf and other old-fart owners, the Series has become a niche, no-appointment-necessary, isolation fest when it once allowed us to leave school in the early afternoon and tell teachers to bug off.

     Now, it’s a regional sport. It is not, as Mulvihill says, television’s longest-running hit primetime show.

     “Friends” would apply, I’d say, with proper condolences to Matthew Perry.

     With apologies to Seager, who didn’t need injured Adolis Garcia, the story of this event will be all-time ratings lows that devour my mind. Game 1 was the least-watched opener ever, with 9.17 viewers. Game 2 saw Arizona tie the Series at 1-1, but an average of 8.15 million watched. Game 3 was seen by 8.13 million. Game 4 rose to 8.48 million. Game 5 managed 11.5. This is the least-watched Series on record, to the point we wonder who — anyone? — will watch in five to 10 years?

     Again, as I often do, this year’s Super Bowl was seen by a record 115 million viewers, the most-watched television show ever. The networks are drawing usual numbers of 27.5 million to 18 million amid a boring regular season of zero fantastic teams and health issues involving star quarterbacks. All you must know is that a Chargers-Bears game, weakling stuff, averaged 12.5 million Sunday night and still blew out Game 2. On Monday night, Detroit’s victory over Las Vegas averaged 15.2 and almost doubled Game 3 of the Series.

     Nothing is powerful about baseball except the revenues drawn, in person, from 81 regular-season games in 30 markets. It’s a dead national sport, when it used to be an American pastime, as people care only if local teams are involved. In some cases, such as Tampa Bay, they don’t care.

     The postseason cavern is unfixable. Manfred finally got around to increasing attendance by introducing a pitch clock, but I’m afraid Major League Baseball is a sport that loses a massive following when stakes are highest. In the NFL, playoff ratings rise dramatically. Same goes, on a lower level, for college football and the NBA.

     Thus, we feel sorry for Bochy and Seager, whose accomplishments would be global material back in the day. These days, they mean little. Someone tell Mike Mulvihill to find better ways to impress his bosses, who bought baseball for the Dodgers, Yankees and Red Sox and only get seepage from Arlington. Does Rupert Murdoch’s son, Lachlan, wish to continue down this empty backroad at Fox?

###

     Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.