Some baseball fans fondly remember the World Series day game, with stories of teachers wheeling television sets into classrooms and kids sneaking transistor radios into schools or rushing home to catch the final innings.
But that era, which baseball chipped away at haltingly starting with a single early-1970s experimental night game, is now hazy for generations of fans — and unimaginable for those under the age of 40, who have never seen a full World Series game contested in daylight. It has been 35 years since the last World Series day game, and don’t hold your breath for the next one.
“When it comes to the World Series, what we try to do along with our broadcast partners is what any good business would do,” Commissioner Rob Manfred said at a National Press Club luncheon in July 2018, when asked about bringing back World Series day games on weekends. “We try to put the game on at the point in time that we are going to attract the largest audience — the point in time that we get most people watching the game. That will continue to be our guidepost.”
Translation: MLB will not be playing World Series day games. You can put them in the pile with sacrifice bunts, pitchers batting ninth and the knuckleball. .
And while that reality feels as reliable as four-hour game times and fans waving towels under the lights, the onset of World Series night games arrived with controversy and dissent — and without a clear mandate. In fact, a torrential midsummer storm in Washington in 1969 helped convince baseball to start shifting its championship round into prime time.
Baseball started playing the All-Star Game at night in 1967, and the change was an immediate success — with excellent TV ratings in 1967 and 1968. But when a rainout at RFK Stadium the next year caused MLB to stage the ’69 All-Star Game the following afternoon, the ratings crashed, only to bounce back in 1970 when the game was played at night in Cincinnati. That gave MLB all the ammunition it needed to try a World Series game in prime time, too.
Six months later, in January 1971, Commissioner Bowie Kuhn announced that Game 4 of the 1971 World Series would be played at night.
“This innovation will make it possible for millions of additional fans to see baseball’s postseason classic. I feel the television audience will be of the same dimension that watched the 1970 All-Star Game from Cincinnati,” Kuhn said.
It was and then some: The Oct. 13, 1971, World Series game between the Pittsburgh Pirates and Baltimore Orioles drew 63 million viewers, the largest TV audience for a prime-time sports broadcast.
So the following year, MLB expanded to two night World Series games — both on weeknights — but it sparked a backlash. As the Associated Press wrote a month after the 1972 World Series: “‘Television is calling the shots,’ argued some critics. ‘Baseball has sold its soul to the tube.’”
Kuhn pushed back on that narrative, telling the AP that he was “deeply disturbed at insinuations that baseball now jumps to the whip of television interests and that we have surrendered control of baseball.”
On the contrary, Kuhn said, it was baseball, not the networks, that had pushed for night games.
“I broached the subject to NBC,” Kuhn recalled. “They were skeptical and resistant. The World Series comes in the first 13 weeks of the new season for the TV networks. It is a time when they are trying to establish viewer habits. They didn’t want to interrupt their regular shows with a one-shot deal like the Series. We worked on them; they didn’t work on us.”
And, Kuhn bragged, “We beat out ‘All in the Family’ and other established shows on rival networks.”
Meanwhile, Oakland Athletics owner Charlie Finley, who had pushed for World Series night games since the early 1960s, argued that playing after dark gave working people the chance to watch baseball’s showcase event. “I’m the working man’s greatest friend since that guy who invented time-and-a-half,” he crowed, according to the Baseball Hall of Fame.
‘Baseball TV’s producer’
Still, critics continued to complain about World Series night games, relying on two main arguments. One is that with postseason games often dragging on for three or four hours, kids on the East Coast have to stay up past 11 p.m. or midnight to watch a full game — and baseball risks losing the next generation of fans.
The other is that October baseball is often too cold to play at night — and this year’s World Series between the Philadelphia Phillies and Houston Astros might prove challenging. Although weather won’t be a factor in Houston, where the Astros play in a stadium with a retractable roof, up to two games will be played in Philadelphia in November, when nights can be chilly.
Weather became an issue at some of the early World Series night games, such as Game 2 of the 1976 World Series between the New York Yankees and Cincinnati Reds in Ohio.
“When the second game of the World Series should have been played, at 1 o’clock in the afternoon, the temperature was a chilly 49 degrees — hardly ideal but acceptable,” New York Times columnist Dave Anderson wrote at the time. “By the time the game began tonight in Riverfront Stadium, a ‘freeze warning’ had been forecast and the temperature was dropping toward the 30s — absolutely unacceptable for what is known as the summer game.
“But baseball’s TV producer, Bowie Kuhn, demanded that the show must go on. Bowie Kuhn was more interested in a Nielsen rating than in championship conditions, a betrayal of his commissioner’s responsibility.”
In its 2007 obituary of the former commissioner, the Times observed, “When Kuhn sat in the stands without a topcoat, seemingly in denial while everyone else was shivering, during Game 2 of the 1976 World Series on a frigid night in Cincinnati, he became the object of ridicule.”
Baseball continued to mix in day games for the rest of the 1970s, usually on weekends. But in 1985, Kuhn’s successor, Peter Ueberroth, announced that every game of that year’s World Series would be played at night — and indeed TV was calling the shots.
“The contract predates me,” he said. “ABC has the right to do that under the contract, and I told the owners I’ve been informed that we’re going to have all night games.”
The last daytime World Series competition was Game 6 of the 1987 World Series between the St. Louis Cardinals and Minnesota Twins — and it was played indoors in the Metrodome, meaning there was no sunshine to make it feel like an afternoon game.
As baseball writer Joe Sheehan observed, “It’s something when you see how quickly it happened. As of October 12, 1971, there had never been a World Series night game. Since October 24, 1987, there has never been a World Series day game. It took 16 years for baseball to turn its crown jewel into just another television program.”
An East Coast issue?
When MLB went to all-night for good in 1988, Sports Illustrated writer Ron Fimrite made a plea for a return to day games — with a nod to viewers staying up late.
“Night baseball in October just doesn’t make sense to anyone outside a network boardroom,” he wrote, adding that it robbed baseball of what made it special. “Baseball’s premier attraction became just another prime-time miniseries, and in the process it lost much of its magnitude and charm.”
Noting that some of the 1988 World Series games finished close to midnight in the Eastern time zone, Fimrite added: “It’s tough enough for schoolchildren to watch games that go this late on TV, but what East Coast parent, in good conscience, could have taken his youngster out to the ballpark knowing that the little nipper wouldn’t make it back to the sack until after one o’clock in the morning? And chances are, if the kid went to the game, he would have come home sniffling and hacking after spending half the night in a near-arctic chill.”
Fay Vincent, who was baseball commissioner from 1989 to 1992, the early years of all-night Fall Classics, said in a telephone interview that East Coast fans are primarily the ones who have pushed for World Series day games.
“I remember all the frustration and talk about why are the games on so late? Why aren’t they on earlier in the day?” he recalled. “And I’d always say: ‘Look, the people who are moaning about the game being on too late are people who live on the East Coast. If you live in California, the game starts at 5 in the afternoon, and the parents are saying to me: ‘Why is it on then? Kids are just getting home from school, and if they have activities after school, the baseball game will be over by 8 o’clock.’ ”
Vincent also dismissed the concern about losing young fans.
“The advertising dollar decides how to maximize the profit and maximize the audience — and it works,” he said. “It just works to the detriment of some people who wish that the world is focused on New York or Washington. There are lots of ways to attract young people.”
At his National Press Club appearance, Manfred, who appeared a bit exasperated at the question of World Series day games, noted that the sport stages many playoff games during the day. And he pushed back on the narrative of baseball missing an opportunity to draw young fans.
“I understand that there is a romantic notion out there about a World Series game played during the day and that children will be flocking from everywhere in order to watch that game,” he said. “The fact of the matter is we know who watches. We play day games during the postseason. We do not, in fact, attract more children to those games, and given that fact, we will continue to put games on at the point in time when we can get the biggest audience we can possibly draw because we feel that’s how we serve our fans.”
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2022-10-27 12:00:00Z
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