ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, March 31, 1996 TAG: 9604020002
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B10 EDITION: METRO
COLUMN: ON THE AIR
SOURCE: JACK BOGACZYK
Think baseball. Think Fox. What comes to mind?
Right, Nellie, a great second baseman with a huge tobacco chaw for the White Sox in the 1950s.
Starting this season, think again.
The Fox Network, as it did with the NFL and NHL, has paid its way into the ballpark. Fox Sports says it will bring a new attitude to the national pastime with music, graphics and camera work that will entice a new generation of fans.
Fox will do so, however, by bringing back one of the game's venerable staples with some very familiar names.
Beginning June 1, Fox will return a Saturday afternoon ``Game of the Week'' to baseball viewers. You can almost see Curt Gowdy and Joe Garagiola. OK, how about Thom Brennaman and Bob Brenly. Or, sticking with the catcher-turned-analyst theme, Joe Buck and Tim McCarver. They'll form the top Fox team in the booth.
Buck and Brennaman are play-calling sons of famous baseball voices, Jack and Marty, respectively. Chip Caray, another Fox hire, goes the other two guys one generation better. HOLY COW! His grandpa is Harry. His dad is Skip. Fox Sports is paying - overpaying, most analysts say - $575 million over five years to get into baseball.
The network, however, promises to freshen up what surrounds the game. It has hired future Hall of Famer Dave Winfield as an analyst for a half-hour pregame show. That half-hour will be preceded by another one that is pointed at kids, many of whom can't name many more baseball players than Ken Griffey Jr. and Michael Jordan.
See what we mean?
This season, Fox makes its debut with 18 Saturday games, five Division Series games, the American League Championship Series and the World Series. The ill-fated Baseball Network - now, there are two words that sent fans screaming - is history. Among Fox, NBC and ESPN, all postseason games will be aired nationally, and there won't be much, if any, overlap.
Fox's Saturday schedule includes four games each week, regionalized to audiences at either 1 or 4 p.m. Each market will get one game, and the best and most attractive teams - Atlanta Braves, Cleveland Indians, Baltimore Orioles, Seattle Mariners, Chicago Cubs, etc. - will have the most appearances.
Fox doesn't want to and can't change the game that's been played for more than a century. That doesn't mean the network won't try to bring the game closer to the viewer through sights and sounds. It's still the same game. It may look different, however, sort of like when outfielders started wearing earrings.
``Baseball has lost a generation while dwelling on the past,'' said Ed Goren, executive producer for Fox Sports. ``Baseball's rich tradition is its greatest asset and its greatest enemy.''
So, Fox reportedly is spending $10 million on promotional spots, hyped with humor, that should appeal to the generation that supposedly hasn't gotten the pitch.
While viewers are waiting to see what Fox brings to the plate, they can continue to enjoy what's become the best baseball show on television. Jon Miller and Joe Morgan return for their seventh year on ESPN's ''Sunday Night Baseball,'' starting with tonight's Mariners-White Sox opener at 9 (the regular game time is 8, starting April 7).
Miller and Morgan have become baseball's best team that doesn't wear stirrup socks. Their work is insightful and witty, and their ties are quite colorful, too. ESPN, which also will continue to air Wednesday night doubleheaders, is bringing something new to Sunday games, too. It's a 2,000-millimeter lens on the center-field camera - the biggest lens in television.
It supposedly can give viewers a close-up of a batter's eyes.
ESPN also has holiday games, including a traditional Opening Day doubleheader Monday. NBC's only game before October is the All-Star Game on July 9.
The good news is ESPN will get six to 12 games (depending on the length of best-of-five series) in the opening round of the playoffs. It's the first time baseball's postseason will have games on cable, and the move to ESPN also means there will be early-October days when two Division Series games in each league will air consecutively - at 1 p.m. and 4 on ESPN, 7 on Fox and 10 on NBC.
``They added an extra round of playoffs last year, and the conversation was about how this was good for the game, more excitement and so forth, and then they didn't show them on TV,'' said ESPN's Miller. ``Didn't that sort of defeat the purpose?''
Most area cable systems have Chicago's WGN, Atlanta's TBS and Home Team Sports, so the Cubs, White Sox, Braves and Orioles will be available on the same networks and stations as in recent years. A few systems in Southwest Virginia deliver New Jersey's WWOR, which airs 77 New York Mets games.
Also, for the first time, Salem's minor-league club will have a live telecast. WDBJ (Channel 7) will air the Avalanche's May 5 afternoon game with Lynchburg from Salem Memorial Stadium.
Fox's arrival could make the major-league club owners as happy as viewers who have missed the ``Game of the Week.'' With Fox's fat wallet, the owners will recoup some of the TV bucks that have been lost because of work stoppages, poor marketing and frugal networks.
In addition to Fox's arrival this year, the network's f/x cable outlet, in conjunction with Liberty Sports, will air two weeknight games starting in 1997, most likely on Tuesday and Thursday or Friday.
The new TV contracts for baseball, including international rights, total $1.7 billion through 2000. That means more than $12 million annually to each club.
That's enough to pay about 1 1/2 Ken Griffey Jr.'s each season.
LENGTH: Long : 107 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: FOX Dave Winfield, a future Hall of Famer, will joinby CNBthe Fox Network's 30-minute pregame show as an analyst.
2. chart - Baseball on the air