SHOW MUST GO ON
‘Baseball Tonight’ still on scene as analysts cycle back to dugout
The “Baseball Tonight” seat next to Karl Ravech has featured a rotating cast of players and managers for 25 years, coming and going in various stages of their big league pursuits. This year three of the four managers in the two American League Division Series had worked for ESPN. Alex Cora’s Red Sox took out Aaron Boone’s Yankees and the Astros after Houston eliminated Terry Francona’s Indians. Ravech, who is anchoring the “Baseball Tonight” World Series coverage from Boston and Los Angeles, recalls the small moments at ESPN that help to explain Cora’s success as Red Sox manager this season. “Many of these explayers have a standard by which they operate, and many of them are spoiled and don’t treat people with respect,” said Ravech, who worked with Cora from 2013-16. “He seemed to have this desire to know what role everyone played when he was working with us. He was engaged and invested in what they’re doing in the moment. We’ve all seen people who have one foot out the door. So, to watch Alex work a room with people he never met and put them at ease is a unique quality with the people I’ve dealt with.”
Ravech and Cora have remained friends. As is the case with Boone, whose introductory press conference at Yankee Stadium Ravech attended. Ravech said he is able to put that aside when dissecting the decisions Cora makes and setting up the analysts — now Mark Teixeira, David Ross and Eduardo Perez — who sit in Cora’s former chair. In fairness, there has not been a lot to pick apart from Cora this season, as he has led Boston to 108 regularseason wins and is now two wins from a championship.
“The people I have dealt with, be it Aaron Boone, Buck Showalter, Terry Francona, they all understand that there’s a great level of respect. And that I have a job to do to, which is to report objectively, and they have a job to do and that’s to win baseball games,” Ravech said.
Cora left in November 2016 to become a bench coach for the eventual- champion Astros. Five months later Ravech was dealing with a different loss. As part of the massive layoffs at ESPN, the network decided to shelve “Baseball Tonight” except as a lead-in to “Sunday Night Baseball.” The cheaper alternative was to add MLB Network’s “Intentional Talk” to the ESPN2 lineup.
“Sure, I am terribly disappointed in the amount of shows and programming that we do and I miss doing it, but during the World Series we take over center stage and provide the content for ESPN, which is a thrill and an honor and great opportunity every time you come to the World Series,” Ravech said.
That doesn’t mean the 53-yearold, who re-signed with ESPN in June of last year, is done fighting for more baseball coverage on the network and proudly cites a 15 percent ratings boost for the Sunday show this season.
“I have brought it to the attention of everyone in the company that’ll listen about the show’s growth, and we should probably in my mind be doing more baseball and there is an appetite for it,” Ravech said. “I never understood why we ceded the property. It was such a wildly popular program, and television today is about niche programming anyway.
“If we owned a certain slice of that pie, why not grow it even if it is incremental? ... I understand the changing landscape with tablets and phones and they are still getting highlights. I would challenge our group to come up with newer and creative ways to continue to attract a crowd. But the bottom line is the bottom line, and ESPN is a business and it’s one that’s been thriving since I’ve been here.”