Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

Columnist Dean Juipe: Series lacked excitement, TV viewers

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at [email protected] or (702) 259-4084.

Unrepentant to the bitter end, that's me and this gone and soon to be forgotten World Series.

I said before it began that it would be boring and only of interest to a limited number of the country's fans, and while Sunday night's Game 7 was passably pleasurable, the overall assessment still stands.

The TV ratings were consistently abysmal and the Series as a whole had its unseemly moments.

That the Anaheim Angels are the new world champions, on the strength of their 4-1 win over the San Francisco Giants in the decisive game, is neither intriguing nor likely memorable. They were, after all and like the Giants, a wild-card team with dents in their armor.

The Series featured high-scoring and long-lasting games, with marathonlike commercial breaks. In each of the seven games, it took almost four hours to post a result.

Some games were better than others and all of them were better played than that 11-10 Anaheim victory in Game 2. What kind of a score is that? What kind of baseball fan could get a kick out of a game with 21 runs?

Well, Angels fans, that's who.

But these aren't your typical fans. When their team is up they pound these thundersticks together and make a terrible racket, and when they get a chance to pummel an opposing player with one of these makeshift bats -- as Giants right fielder Reggie Sanders discovered in the third inning as he was chasing down a ball in the corner -- they go ahead and do it.

Cool. Or unruly.

Same thing with the Giants losing a grip on their collective ego and allowing their kids to serve as bat boys, with manager Dusty Baker the greatest offender. Did we really need to see his 3-year-old son scampering mindlessly around the field, sometimes with the ball in play?

Likewise, what was with the players early in the Series claiming the balls were juiced? Not much was made of this yet there were a few stories that detailed the alleged abuses, with some players flat-out stating that the balls were harder than they had been all year and the result was this outburst of high-scoring games.

If the commissioner's office was behind the influx of lively balls it probably thought better of the ploy after scores such as 11-10, 10-4 and 16-4 lit up the boards. Perhaps a new, tamer batch of balls was delivered when the games gained real significance.

But with each team's starting pitchers compiling an ERA of 9.00 through the first five games, something had to change before everyone but those in California completely lost interest.

I don't know that this was the worst seven-game World Series of all time, but it's a contender.

After all, look at the pitching matchup when everything was on the line. The Giants sent a 16-game loser, Livan Hernandez, to the mound and the Angels countered with a 24-year-old rookie. That John Lackey did a nice job is to his credit, yet seeing him up against Hernandez in the finale only underscored how needy these teams could be.

Furthermore, the Angels were so petrified of Barry Bonds that it was almost embarrassing. Intentionally walking him in certain situations might be OK, but to walk him with the bases empty or with a runner at first -- as the Angels were often inclined to do, most recently in the first inning of Game 6 -- was sorry.

No wonder the guy is always pouting.

Regional World Series, as this one was, have been known to be exciting, but this one wasn't. There have been Bay Area matchups and New York matchups and even the St. Louis Cardinals vs. the old St. Louis Browns in a 1944 matchup, and many times the games were of great interest and masterfully played.

But the Angels vs. the Giants didn't have that kind of widespread appeal, as the good folks at Fox Sports can attest. Contractually obliged to pay big money for the World Series, they could argue the need for a refund with the TV viewership numbers so low.

They were fortunate, however, to have Washington vs. Indianapolis as the NFL game Sunday night, as that one got out of hand early and made the baseball game seem important in contrast.

So the Angels win their first World Series despite the fact their starting pitchers failed to average five innings per start, and that the Giants had been within nine outs of winning the Series themselves the night before. That's nine outs and with a five-run lead.

With two exceptions, the World Series has been held annually since 1903 and usually the champion is praised and dutifully rewarded. Frequently that team forges a bond with even the most hardened and cynical fan.

But I don't feel that way about the Angels and I wouldn't have felt that way about the Giants had they won.

It just wasn't an appealing World Series, but in the course of 99 years something like this was bound to happen.

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