San Francisco Chronicle - (Sunday)
SPRING TRAINING STIFLED
Fans waiting for Giants baseball have just 4 chances to catch preseason games on TV
The San Francisco Giants’ spring-training television schedule is almost nonexistent. Not a single game has been aired so far, the first telecast isn’t until next Saturday (when they play against the Oakland Athletics) and just three other games are scheduled to be telecast from Arizona.
So you could understand a fan’s frustration on Friday when the Giants hosted Bruce Bochy’s Texas Rangers. The game wasn’t televised, nor did KNBR carry it on radio. NBC Sports Bay Area filled the 12 p.m. starting-time slot with “FanDuel Racing.”
It’s maddening, seeing this at a time when you’d love to follow the Giants’ progress, especially when you learn that the Dodgers and Cubs are televising at least 25 games each from spring training.
At issue is the Giants’ contract with NBC, which owns the rights to all games and makes every decision on scheduling. The Dodgers and Cubs own their regional sports networks (SportsNet LA and Marquee Sports Network, respectively) and can be just as generous as they want.
But that is hardly the case around Major League Baseball, where the landscape is shifting. Last summer the Bally Sports Network, responsible for the broadcasts of 14 MLB teams in the regular season, stopped paying the rights to two of them, the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks, forcing MLB to take over the broadcasts on short notice.
The Giants have security in their contract, with a guarantee that all regular-season games will be televised on NBC Sports Bay Area and a dozen-odd games (usually on Friday nights) are shown on the over-theair NBC channel. But from NBC’s view, if there’s a spring-training game at 1 p.m., there won’t be much in the way of audience, ratings or sponsors. In difficult economic times, this becomes a losing proposition.
Giants CEO Larry Baer has been supervising the Giants’ broadcast platforms for years, and he successfully fought for a full-season TV schedule at a time when chunks of the schedule went dark. He’s just trying to ride this one out.
“We have a great relationship with NBC,” Baer said in a telephone conversation on Friday. “Unfortunately, when it comes to spring-training games, it becomes a matter of production costs. We understand that, and we’re gratified that things work so well in the regular season.”
All the king’s men
Among the many critiques of the Giants’ front office at the onset of winter, a prevailing opinion had President of Baseball Operations Farhan Zaidi trading one or more of his top prospects for the kind of veteran help that makes a difference. As of Friday, that hadn’t happened. All of those young players are in camp and trying to prove themselves.
This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Nobody thinks the Giants will surpass the billionaire Dodgers in the standings, and they’ll be fortunate to get past Arizona and San Diego. A reasonable fan can ask
only for entertainment, so why not fill up the spring-training scorecards with fresh blood?
There are a few players I’d love to see make the Opening Day roster: Luis Matos, as a regular in the outfield; Tyler Fitzgerald, a versatile defensive player (outfield or middle infield) who can hit; Heliot Ramos, who hasn’t hit at all in the big leagues but always seems full of promise; and the endearing Casey Schmitt, who needs a lot of work on his hitting but made a significant spiritual impression upon his promotion last year.
Not to worry about young pitchers getting exposure. Right now, the fourth and fifth rotation starters are Keaton Winn (assuming he’s healthy by Opening Day) and Sean Hjelle. With a cast of thousands in the wings.
Dismissing history
One of the most important things about Caitlin Clark’s record night, surpassing Lynette Woodard as the all-time leading scorer in major-college women’s basketball, was its reminder of the NCAA’s small-minded ineptitude in managing its own record book.
The University of Kansas first fielded a women’s basketball team in
1903, competing for decades as a club sport. It became a varsity team during the 1968-69 season and began to flourish, featuring the magnificent Woodard from 1977-81. She scored 3,649 points over that period, but the NCAA wasn’t hearing of it.
Figuring the women’s game was some sort of novelty act, the NCAA refused to recognize or fund women’s sports until 1982. Kansas and other teams competed under a governing body called the AIAW (Association for Intercollegiate Athletics for Women), with records and other accomplishments dismissed with an asterisk.
In other words, Woodard didn’t count. Nor did Nancy Lieberman, Ann Meyers, Carol Blazejowski and other stars of past eras. In the NCAA record book, which I like to call “Hey, We’re Sexist,” they are nowhere to be found. Iowa’s Clark wasn’t chasing Woodard’s record, but rather that of University of Washington star Kelsey Plum (3,527).
“The AIAW record that Lynette Woodard held — that was the real one,” said Lisa Bluder, Clark’s coach at Iowa. “There’s no reason it shouldn’t be. Just make sure we acknowledge
Lynette’s accomplishments in the game.”
Short takes
• The Golden State Warriors have two certain Hall of Famers, Chris Paul and Klay Thompson, as backup guards — and there is no precedent for such a thing. The old Boston Celtics offer a decent comparison, with future Hall of Famers Sam Jones, K.C. Jones and Frank Ramsey behind starters Bob Cousy and Bill Sharman in the late 1950s, but at the time no one thought of those young players (especially
Ramsey and K.C.) as budding legends of the sport.
• The Dodgers believe there’s never been a better 1-2-3 in the batting order than Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani and Freddie Freeman. Could be, but until further notice I’ll take the Cincinnati Reds in the 1975 World Series: Pete Rose, Joe Morgan and Johnny Bench (followed by Tony Perez and George Foster).
• As the Dodgers just get better: Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the righthanded pitcher who left Japan go sign a 12-year, $325 million contract with the Dodgers, offers a bit of Greg Maddux with his extensive repertoire and a knack for changing speeds and movement, all designed to disrupt a hitter’s timing. Quite refreshing in a velocity-obsessed world.
• It was jarring, to say the least, to see those photos of Brandon Crawford in a Cardinals uniform. Look at it this way, though: the Giants got the best of him, and Crawford essentially said goodbye to the organization in an on-field speech back on Oct. 1. Keep that closure in mind until he takes the field for St. Louis in a game that counts.