I was talking to my roommate and overhead a guy talking about the playoff situation and said “I really think it’ll be bad for baseball if the Yankees lose this game, since then it’ll be two west coast teams playing in the world series and nobody in the midwest or east coast will care about it.”
Growing up in the west and then moving to new york for school has been weird, but it gives me a different perspective from most of the kids here, and this is certainly a blatant case thereof. Did you forget that just last year two teams from the same fucking city played in the world series? I distinctly remember people up here getting angry when they heard people elsewhere didn’t care about the game. Now suddenly it’s on the other side of the country but somehow its worse? Give me a break.
I’m curious; HOW could you rig a baseball game without getting the player in on it? And when the players are all making $3 million a year, what the heck could you bribe them with?
I assume you wre kidding about a Yankees-Mariners World Series, of course, that being impossible (they’re playing each other in the league championship series, starting tomorrow.)
Although the networks do prefer East Coast teams, their major preference is for teams with large TV markets, and they’ll take a big TV market out West over a small East Coast market. U.S. networks hated Toronto’s World Series appearances because they didn’t get any local coverage boosts for them, (although Canadian networks made out like bandits) while a West Coast team would be fine by them if it’s L.A. or Anaheim.
Having said that, except for the Yankees’ well-deserved run, recent history has not been kind to large TV markets. Many pennant winners have been from relatively mid-to-low sized TV markets, (or Toronto, which is a big market but U.S. networks get screwed anyway.)
Yes, indeed, it was a joke. I was trying to play off the annual cry that the NBA and NBC fix their playoffs (I don’t buy it, but it is more likely since officials play a much greater role).
Besides, I’m an A’s fan, so I have to fall back on cheating as the only likely explanation. It can’t be that my team choked! (But at least I get all that money I spent on playoff tickets back)