Only special games find national audience

It was an interesting end to the Major League Baseball season. The White Sox continued the “ending the curse” thing with their first World Series win in 88 years.

The team with the supposed best pitching in the postseason, the Astros, lost four in a row.

Ozzie Guillen became the first Latino manager to win it all and did so on a night when MLB honored the Latino Legends Team. That he should have been there was happenstance, also known as baseball gods’ theatre.

Geoff Blum hit a game winning home run in Game 3, a major story in itself, since he is a bench player who hadn’t had an RBI since Aug. 30.

That homer came in the longest running game in World Series history.

Former Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives Tip O’Neil said that all politics are local. MLB may be learning the same is true of its game.

In an age when every game is available every day on TV and radio, there are very few special games in the course of the year that attract fans who are not cheering for one team or the other.

This World Series, according to early ratings reports, drew the lowest rating ever. The local markets in Houston and Chicago were on board, but not the rest of the country.

All sports have saturated the nation with coverage. It takes a really special game, defined by the teams playing, to attract a major audience. The USC-Notre Dame football game this fall was one of those games.

The popularity of MLB has never been higher, but it comes on a team by team basis. The Red Sox are a prime example of the strength of the local market, even if that does not translate to fans watching games not involving the Sox.

The disturbing side of the week for MLB came from all-time home run leader Hank Aaron.

Aaron pointed out that the Astros were the first team since the 1953 Yankees to make the World Series without an African American player on the active roster.

Said Aaron, “It is very disturbing to see something like this. And you would think that this ball club could find at least one or two African Americans, especially is this city. It’s very disturbing. I think they need to look at that very carefully. They need to talk to people in the scouting department and everybody else because this needs to be addressed.”

Baltimore did not have an African American on the roster to start the year either, and the Nationals had only two.

Aaron acknowledged that part of the problem was the lack of African American youngsters playing baseball. “We don’t have enough players,” he said. “But I think each club needs to look at that very carefully. The Astros need to address that. It’s a thing where the way the game is played today you would think there is no excuse for an African American not to be on this club.”

MLB had its time to revel, now it’s time to get more work done.

Old Town native Gary Thorne is an ESPN and ABC sportscaster.