Baseball, You Are Killing Me!

It wasn’t really that long ago that the World Series was one of the most-watched television events of the year.  As recently as 1986, 50 million people tuned into the deciding Game Seven of the series.

No so today.  A World Series game will still generally win the night but not overwhelm the week.  And this year was no different, with lackluster ratings despite games featuring the Red Sox and Dodgers – two of the sport’s most popular teams.

The fact that I even began this piece with a discussion of ratings shows how badly we’ve all become afflicted with behind-the-scenes-ism.  In a world where the average movie-goer scans the weekend box office results on Monday and then opines on what kind of movies the studios should green-light in the future, it’s not surprising that sports radio hosts and fans want to weigh in on what match-up Major League Baseball “really” wants for the World Series.

It is widely understood that MLB not-so-secretly prays for a showdown between two big market teams with national followings and compelling story-lines. At the beginning of October, sports Twitter knowingly predicted how bad it would be if the Milwaukee Brewers ended up playing the Oakland As.   And the conventional wisdom was probably correct, if even Dodgers/Red Sox can’t draw a crowd.

The emphasis on World Series ratings seems a little misplaced, however, because baseball’s real cultural impact is at the local – not national – level.  For half a year, as spring morphs into summer and summer into fall, nightly baseball is the soundtrack for day-to-day life.  This results in high local ratings, which, because that are fragmented across 30 markets receive little national attention.

Regrettably, in the 21^st Century baseball is increasingly unsuited for national prime time programming.  Most devastatingly, baseball skews toward those unwanted older viewers.  Almost as bad, baseball has failed to create national stars on par with NFL quarterbacks and NBA power forwards.  Indeed, the New York Times recently published a whole piece outlining how no one from baseball has been among the best-known sports celebrities since the retirement of Derek Jeter, Alex Rodriguez and David Ortiz.

And then there’s the length.  Baseball, you are killing me!  I watched a nine-inning playoff game two weeks ago that didn’t get over until 1:22 a.m. ET.   Then on Friday night I watched almost all of an 18-inning game that lasted until 3:30 in the morning! When you consistently keeping your most loyal fans up this late you are driving them into an early grave.

Play-off baseball is like regular baseball on steroids – virtually every pitch is a life or death event.  This results in pitchers staring in at the catcher for half a minute before finally throwing the damn ball.  For their part, the batters are now taught to foul off as many pitches as possible to wear down the starters.  All this prolongs the game and increases the viewing anxiety.

Those fatigued starters are on a short rope anyway, thanks to a strategy known as “bullpenning.”  That’s the game-lengthening practice of taking out starters early and calling in multiple relief pitchers from the bullpen.

Yet even with these shortcomings, baseball is arguably the most compelling and anxiety-producing post-season sport.  TheRinger.com had an interesting essay that argued that although play-off baseball amplifies what’s most annoying about the sport, it still delivers thrilling games (see here).  When you have a strong rooting interest in the outcome there is no sport that delivers such sustained high-pressure suspense.

At some point during a post-season game, each pitch becomes a walking heart attack.  With a man or two on base, and the pitcher tossing over to first, and the batter fouling off good pitches, the stress rises because you know that the very next pitch could be the one that transforms the game for good or ill.

For the past three years, as soon as the World Series is over, I’ve been posting the same message on Facebook: “Baseball is the greatest game.”  I am always surprised that regardless of the late hour and ultimate winner, there can be a dozen or more “likes” and comments on these posts.  The ratings might not show it but social media amplifies that people are still passionate about baseball.

But yes, baseball is killing us.  It leaves us sleep deprived and stressed out after a roller coaster of emotions.  We are “depressed” when our teams lose or suffering from “withdrawal” when a successful season ends.  Even the end of the season feels like death, with nothing but colder and darker days to look forward to until the spring.

And yet, when your team does win it all, you don’t really care that the experience has taken years off your life.  It’s well worth it.  I already can’t wait for the 2019 season.

 

“Better Call Saul”– ‘S All Good, Man

I don’t know whether Season Four of “Better Call Saul” will turn out to be the best show on television this year, but for the ten weeks this fall it provided a uniquely gripping and hypnotic viewing experience. TV needs more shows like this.

“Better Call Saul” is a TV rarity – a prequel that’s as good as the series that spun it off, in this case the acclaimed “Breaking Bad.”  It tells the origin stories of many key “Breaking Bad” characters, with a special focus on the sleazy lawyer Saul Goodman and the mob hit man Mike Ehrmantraut.  And then finally, in the last spoken line of this season we learn how the main character gets his name when he says, don’t worry, “It’s all good man.”

I was never a fan of “Breaking Bad,” which was too violent for my weak nerves. Moreover, I never found the transformation of Walter White from a meek chemistry teacher into a master drug dealer very credible.  No one changes THAT much.

Like “Breaking Bad,” “Saul” depicts the moral disintegration of its two main characters, except on a much more believable scale. We learn that “Saul Goodman” is actually Jimmy McGill, the brother of New Mexico’s most respected lawyer and a one-time screw-up who’s trying to go straight and use the law to help people.  Meanwhile Mike is a dirty ex-cop grieving his dead son – an inexperienced police officer who fatally tried to follow his father’s path into petty graft. (It’s worth noting that contrary to most TV shows, the most intense relationships on “Saul” are among blood relatives, not romantic interests.)

At the beginning of the series, Jimmy and Mike are already ethically compromised, but not excessively so.  They have consciences and are full to the brim with empathy.  It’s not predetermined that they will also “break bad” in a major way.  On “Better Call Saul,” characters don’t consciously decide to pass over to the dark side.  Instead, as in real life, their path involves a series of decisions – some of which involve attempting to do the right thing and discovering that being honest and humane can actually hurt you.

Be forewarned, though, that watching “Better Call Saul” takes a lot of work.  It’s the ultimate lean-in show, featuring a lot of ingenious schemes that require your total concentration.  I would almost recommend not watching with a spouse because at least once an episode there’s a conversation that goes like this:

“Why did he do that?”

 “I don’t know anything more than you do.”

 “But what’s he trying to accomplish?”

 “I just said: we’re both getting the same information at the same time.”

The pacing of “Better Call Saul” is also unique on TV.  Hardly an episode goes by that doesn’t slow down and demonstrate step-by-step how some mundane task is accomplished – even something as basic as assembling loose-leaf binders.  It’s like learning how to fish by reading early Hemingway. And a lot of this serious attention to detail involves the law.  I’ve learned more about the nuts and bolts of being a lawyer from this one show than from all the legal procedurals in television history combined.

There are two main mysteries at the heart of “Saul,” both involving the ultimate fate of fully developed characters who don’t exist in the “Breaking Bad” universe. One is Kim Wexler, the best character on the show and arguably one of the best characters currently on TV.  She’s Jimmy’s tightly wound girlfriend – a legitimate lawyer who likes to walk on the wild side and who’s reluctant to give up on the guy she loves.  The other is Nacho – a foot soldier in a local drug gang who risks his life to protect his sweet and innocent father from being drawn into the crime world.

Over four seasons we’ve come to care deeply about both Kim and Nacho and it’s hard not to speculate on and feel anguish over their coming fate – whatever it is.  In particular, this scene of Kim confronting a lawyer who has consistently screwed over Jimmy is my favorite scene on TV this year.

“Better Call Saul” is not a huge ratings hit and doesn’t get much buzz, but TV still needs more shows like it.  It sets the bar high for what network TV and basic cable can accomplish in an era where the momentum seems to be moving to streaming services.  With all due respect to “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel” or “House of Cards,” neither Amazon not Netflix have yet developed a series as visually stunning or intelligent as “Better Call Saul” (or “The Americans” for that matter.)

More important, we need more appointment television – more shows that we think about during the week.  TV needs to have people dying to watch the next episode of their favorite series.

Commercial TV can’t thrive on reality shows, cooking competitions, lazy sitcoms, obvious procedurals, and movie reruns.  We’ve got the streaming services for that. Traditional TV needs to widen the enthusiasm gap among viewers who can turn to Netflix anytime to see a pretty good show but would really prefer to see an excellent one on a weekly basis.  If TV doesn’t keep coming up with the occasional great show, it will wither away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rewatching “The Beverly Hillbillies”

Whenever I look back at number-one-rated shows from the past, there’s always one that puzzles me – “The Beverly Hillbillies.”

I can understand why “I love Lucy,” “Gunsmoke,” “All in the Family” and “Happy Days” were all massive hits.  But why was “The Beverly Hillbillies” such a huge blockbuster?  In the 1962-1964 era about a third of all households were tuned to the show.  That’s the modern equivalent of 30 Super Bowls a year for two years.

The popularity of this series has perplexed because I actually remember when it came on and knew even then it was kind of dumb.  As an adult I been wondering if perhaps my memory was wrong – maybe it was better than I remembered.  After all, when I now watch its contemporary “The Andy Griffith Show,” I appreciate it in a way I never did as a child.

Well, thanks to the miracle of Amazon Prime I am now able to watch all the old “Beverly Hillbilly” episodes I want.  But be careful what you wish for because when I recently streamed a few shows I realized it was even worse than my recollection; I had to turn it off after a handful of episodes.

The premise of the series is that a family of simple Appalachian mountain folk (the Clampetts) strike it rich when oil is discovered on their land and move to Beverly Hills, where they experience culture conflict with their more traditionally wealthy and snooty neighbors.

Jeffrey Melton an associate professor of American Studies at the University of Alabama points out that this is a “one joke” show and boy is he right.  In episode after episode the alleged humor is derived from the Clampetts’ extreme naiveté and lack of understanding of modern cultural norms.  Thus the swimming pool is called the “cement pond” and the pool table in the billiards room is construed to be some kind of special dining table – complete with bumpers to prevent spillage and a glued-on felt table cloth. Ha ha.

A secondary source of humor on the show is that the young characters – the daughter Elly May and the nephew Jethro – are ideal specimens of physical beauty but have no sexual desire themselves and don’t pick up on the va-va-va-voom impact they’re having on others.  Elly May, a country girl who’s lived among animals all her live, supposedly doesn’t know “the facts of life,” and Jethro is about the only virile twenty-something in the United States who is consistently obtuse when beautiful women are coming on to him.

Professor Melton makes the case that the “Beverly Hillbillies” was so popular because it embodies “The American Joke,” that has preoccupied American humorists for centuries – the gap between the ideals of equality espoused by politicians since the Declaration of Independence and the reality of how American society has turned out.  The joke is we purport to believe that all men are created equal and yet strive mightily to enhance our status and climb a ladder that theoretically doesn’t exist.

To that end, “The Beverly Hillbillies” mixes together the very lowest socio-economic class with the very highest. And lo and behold, the rich are as clueless as the Clampetts, with stuffy uncomprehending butlers, vain wives and their own ridiculous behaviors.  This would have resonated in the more egalitarian sixties, when the U.S, boasted a vast middle class; in a monoculture worshipping the new suburban lifestyle, people could laugh harmlessly at both their social inferiors and their nominal social betters.

The problem in a one joke show, though, is that the inability of the characters to understand each other goes on and on, episode after episode.  No matter how many years the Clampetts live in Beverly Hills they never learn a thing and are always surprised by the most basic aspect of modern life. And their neighbors never seem to be able to explain anything to them – like how a gas stove works.

My real frustration with the Clampetts is that they aren’t the sly country bumpkins of most rural humor.  It’s much funnier when a hayseed is underestimated by a snob and then turns out to be wiser than expected.  Not here. The humor always depends on Clampetts being dumber than expected.

Once you know about the theory of “The American Joke” you can see it everywhere – in soap opera dramas like “Dallas,” “Empire,” “Gossip Girl,” and “Billions” and comedies like “The Jeffersons,” “Arrested Development,” and “The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.”  As believers in the American dream, we long to be rich ourselves but gratified to see that wealth doesn’t bring happiness.

What we will not see today, however, is a show that outright mocks hillbilly culture.  Ever since the movie “Deliverance,” hillbillies have seemed dangerous.  On “Justified” and “Ozark” for example, they are outright frightening.  And knowing what we know now about that culture from J.D. Vance’s “Hillbilly Elegy,” it would be kicking a vulnerable population in crisis while they’re down to make fun of hillbillies these days.

Nope, it’s always safer to mock the rich.  Let’s watch “Succession.”

 

Please Watch More Sports on TV

Sports programming, the bedrock of the television business model for the past decade, has fallen on hard times.  That’s not only bad for television, it’s bad for American culture in general.  (Now that’s a sentence I never thought I would write!)

The fate of televised sports is important to the health of the broadcast industry because it’s one of the last bastions for live viewing.  Advertisers love shows in which viewers can’t fast-forward through commercials.

But after years of growth even televised sports is faltering, suffering from trends affecting the rest of the television landscape, especially the migration of younger viewers to the Internet.  Ratings for TV mainstays like football and baseball are declining, as they are as well for global events like the Olympics and the World Cup.  Meanwhile, ESPN is downsizing, with online platforms like YouTube, Deadspin, The Bleacher Report, and Yahoo Sports providing the immediate access to highlights and commentary that used to be the cable network’s bread and butter.

As dismal as declining interest in sports is for the television business, it’s even worse for America’s mental health.

I say this as a long-time critic of American sports culture and the monomaniacal fans, coach potatoes, gamblers, and travel team coaches who let sports take over their lives.  One of my proto-Marxist college professors used to call sports the “modern opiate of the masses,” claiming it distracted workers from appreciating how exploited they were.  That professor might have been a whack job about a lot of things but he was right that Americans could spend their Sundays more profitably than watching football game after football game on TV.

Unfortunately the cultural brain space freed up by the eroding interest in sports  has been filled with a surge of divisive political consciousness.  This is not good.  If the people who used to watch ESPN all day switch over to Fox and MSNBC I don’t think that’s an improvement.

Sociologists and anthropologists have long recognized that humans are a tribal species, finding protection, validation, and meaning as members of groups.  For thousands of years, a human’s key group was an actual tribe (and still is in many parts of the world).  But as society became more complex, humans came to identify themselves with newer institutions: their country, church, college, union, fraternal organization, or community.

The rise of television weakened many of the traditional ties that people had built locally.  They started staying home to entertain themselves in front of the TV instead of attending lodge meetings, joining in bowling leagues, or going to church. And as their identification with neighborhood groups waned, Americans increasingly started to identify themselves instead with local sports teams.

Although people can go overboard on sports, it’s usually a relatively benign form of group identity.  Each major pro league has about 30 teams and each state has its State U, creating a diverse range of smallish fan bases.  This means that fans of even the most popular sports brands – the Yankees, Lakers, and Notre Dame – are in a small minority and have to comport themselves accordingly.  If 90 percent of the country has a different sports loyalty than you do, then you have to tread lightly and accommodate yourself to differing opinions.

The beauty of rooting for a sports team, no matter how passionately you care in the moment, is that the stakes are low.  As much as it hurts, it doesn’t REALLY matter if your team loses.  Win or lose it’s a consequence-free catharsis.

But as people have transferred their allegiances from their sports to their political teams, the results have been disastrous for our national cohesion.  For one thing, there are only two political “teams,” which means a citizen can spend an entire day never being exposed to a fan of the other team and never learn how to get along with an opposing view.

Worse, political fans actually feel morally superior to the other side in a way that only the most rabid sports fans do.  A Yankee player eating in a Boston restaurant would not be chased out by opposing fans, which has now become a common practice in politics.

Moreover, the obsession with politics is not limited to election season any more.  It’s all-politics all-the-time.  Fox and MSNBC ratings soar as mouth-foaming commentators egg on their viewers like unhinged sports-radio hosts.  Almost every day seems like the political equivalent of a play-off game, except that the play-offs eventually end and political intensity never lets up.

Before the rise of professional sports in the late 19^th Century, politics occupied the overwhelming presence in American life that it again does now.  From about 1830 to 1860, Americans were obsessed with politics, which provided both entertainment and a group identity for a vast majority of American men.  Voting participation reached 80 percent in the elections of 1840 and 1860 (compared to 58% in 2016).  That period also culminated in the Civil War because voters developed such intense and unwavering political principles that they couldn’t compromise on anything.

Instead of launching a new civil war, maybe we can all take a chill pill and channel our aggression back into sports.  Turn off the cable news channels and wall-to-wall political coverage and focus those tribal instincts back on your childhood team.  You’ll feel better — even if they don’t win the World Series or Super Bowl. There’s always next year.