|
|
|
The Mets were forced to move yesterday’s game from 1 pm to 8 pm to accommodate ESPN.
After last night’s game, the Mets then had 
to pack up and fly to California around midnight EDT to play a game in San Francisco tonight at 10 pm EDT, which is not right.
The Mets are currently in the middle of 21 straight games without an off day, which will end next Monday following a four-game series with the Padres.
During the 21 days, the Mets will have traveled to Atlanta from New York, from Atlanta to Colorado, from Colorado to New York, from New York to California and back to New York.
Following the game, Willie Randolph told reporters:
“I’ve always been an advocate of more off-days and shortening the season, if possible. It’s a grind, man, and that’s why you see a lot of injuries and why you see subpar performances at times. They need to look at that, really look at the way TV is taking over, when you play at certain times, changing time zones rapidly. You’d get better baseball and a healthier product and probably a better game.”
…travel is part of the game, and every team has to do it…so, it probably all comes out fair…however, the last-minute ESPN and FOX edicts are a bit much…in the case of the Mets today, it’s a bit unfair to force them to adjust their schedule given the cross-country flight that was awaiting them…in these cases, the team’s should have the right to refuse, especially when it forces the team to cancel the Mets DynaDash, as it did…
For more on the team’s travel schedule, and the role it may be playing in their performance, check out reporters for MLB.com, the Journal News, Bergen Record and the Daily News.
From a fan’s point of view this was really bad. I would have liked to have gone to this game but it became impossible with school the next day. For a playoff game I will do it (I won’t like it), but not for some Sunday game at the beginning of June.
I was at the game last night…and when the Mets canceled the Dyna-dash, echos of boo’s could be heard. I agree it was not fair to those that wanted to see the afternoon game, especially the kids. Hopefully, MLB will get it through their skulls that the fans should factor into game time decisions.
did anybody else notice the nonsense that the MTA pulled last night? I Swear that they said the express 7 would run after the game, so I stayed till the end, but there was no express. I didn’t get home until 1, which has not been ideal at work so far.
WHAT?!?!? I was fuming about that…funny thing…they used the weekend as an excuse for not running the express. I, too, arrived home after 130 this morning. Commuting to Jersey is no joke. LOL. Despite all the controversy surrounding the time switch and transportation, I had a great time.
Hey…we even booed Joe Morgan. How great was that?!?!? LOL.
that was even sweeter than the 5-4-3 DP
I agree… :0)
MTA=Ineptitude
DOWN WITH THE MTA! LOL
my first thought exactly when i heard the game was being moved to ESPN. In that case, ESPN should be forced to accomodate the Mets so that they are guaranteed like first class style seats for every player and manager. Let the guys get some rest.
Nice extra point there though about the DynaDash. SHAME ON YOU ESPN.
Isn’t the Padres series a four gamer?
When they change the time, especially 1pm to 8pm, the Mets ought to give ticketholders the option to trade in their tickets for another game. It’s just ridiculous that folks, particularly if coming from out of town, spend $$$ on a 1pm event which would allow you to drive or fly or whatever home that evening, just to have it changed to getting out of Shea no earlier than 11pm.
Why can’t ESPN decide on their schedule when the schedulemakers set the schedule? I’m glad I didn’t have a child all geared up to run the bases, just to have to tell them its not happening and neither is going to the game on a school night.
ESPN hates the sports fan. Thanks to ESPN, if aliens landed on earth, they would think that basketball consists only of the slam dunk, baseball only consists of the home run, the only two players in the NFL are TO and Brett Favre, the only golfer is Tiger Woods…..
I swear, at three times a week ESPN has a story about Brett Favre coming out of retirement. It’s so pathetic.
SportsCenter is occasionally good (when they don’t resort to shtick which is rare), and Baseball Tonight is good when Steve Phillips and Fernando Vina have the night off.
Other than that, it’s 24 hours of shilling on behalf of ABC, Disney and Brett Favre…and no, this is not Phil Mushnick posting….
Don’t worry…..ESPN also likes the Web Gems and “That’s Nasty!”
lol on the mushnick reference. he makes valid points frequently, but jeez he is a cranky old bag.
I’m sure people with kids bought tickets for a day game — only to have it changed to a night game, on a school night! I agree, you should definitely have the option to trade in those tickets.
Do whichever teams featured on espn receive additional revenue? Or is it just part of MLB’s contract with espn/fox?
i don’t care about the travel (i travel a lot for work, so i know how tough it is on the body and all, but it is part of the game). what i care about is the impact it has on the kids that had aniticpated for so long their running of shea’s bases.
boo espn.
Agree, how do you explain that to a little kid?
I’m worried about a possible travel let down for tonight’s game.
Maybe hopefully they sent OP ahead to get a good night’s rest…
they did
I think if it did affect all teams equally, then it would be less of a big deal. But for obvious reasons, ESPN is going to pick certain teams far more often than others.
I have no idea what teams get picked the most, but I’m willing to bet that the Mets get picked much more often than their competition in the NL East, because of the TV audience they will presumably draw. If that’s the case, then that’s unfair–especially when they have to immediately hop on a plane and fly across the country at midnight.
The world MUST see Joe Torre back in NYC…That was the reason this game was in primetime…
it was nice to see Joe looking so miserable all weekend
;)
well, also, a team that plays in the middle part of the country is far less impacted by travel to either coast. it’s also easier for a team that plays on the west coast to play on the east coast than an east coast team to play on the west coast.
I really don’t see the East-West logic.
A West-coast team loses 3 hours coming over for an East-cost road trip, then gets them back going home.
An East-coast team gains the 3 hours going out, then loses them coming back.
It’s a scratch, because either way, you have one flight westward and one flight eastward. And you have to play games before, between, and after the flights.
“The Mets were forced to move yesterday’s game from 1 pm to 8 pm to accommodate ESPN.”
Glad to see that ESPN is a greater priority for MLB than two actual teams.
Let’s not forget, the Dodgers had to endure this as well and go to LA last night. Not like they just had to drive down to Philly or a flight to Atlanta.
ESPN is to sports as MTV is to music.
Marketing, promotion, and profit has completely overtaken what’s got them to the position they are in…content.
The last moment rescheduling of games is as absurd as having to endure XGame promo’s and highlights during Sportscenter, and bowling commericals.
MTV airs MUSIC? Since when? LOL
MTV2 does about 1/2 hour a day…
and ESPN used to show sports, now they show news with sports clips. Even during a game they can’t resist some breaking 6 hour old news.
Completely agree. MTV has ruined music and ESPN has ruined sports.
I agree with the MTV claim: I stopped watching to protest their lack of music years and years ago…but ESPN has not destroyed sports. ESPN brings sports fans more sports than they could ever imagine! You can gripe about story bias as much as you want, but people throughout America care deeply about Brett Favre, the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry, etc. Those stories are compelling and frankly, they draw ratings, If you still have a complaint just remind yourself of how many colleges gain exposure through television (not just Division I, hello D-III Appalachian State). Televising events such as the NFL, NBA, and MLB drafts, the college and little league world series, and promoting the world’s sport, soccer, by televising MLS, European Champions League, The European Championships, and the World Cup give viewers insight into sports that is UNPARALLELED and the breadth of sports and sports information should go unquestioned.
You can fault ESPN for being a corporation, but then any of you who post on this site and work for a company owned by a parent corporation are hypocrites. They may not be perfect but they certainly go out of their way to bring all of us fanatics as many angles and as much information as possible. In fact, I am sure websites like this would not exist or would not be as interesting without the information provided by ESPN journalists. So please keep the griping to indiviudal circumstance, before we scare off the likes of Gammons, Olney, and Crasnick. Broad unfounded complaints about the world’s best sports channel (which, I must say after just having spent time in London, does not have competition anywhere else in he world, ESPN is the only channel I am aware of that brings us sports in this way) are unnecessary
Shill.
The bottom line is that teams, players and managers don’t complain when FOX and ESPN negotiate the right to move these games by throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at them so they can’t complain when it comes back to bite them.
I am sure it’s tough but everyone involved with the team gets money from these contracts so nobody on the team has a right to whine now.
It’s tough for the fans, though but it’s no secret ESPN has the right to move these games and they target marquee matchups.
Would you consider last nights game a marquee matchup? Joe Torre returning to NY was the storyline.
Yes…. which is why it was moved. It’s also the two largest TV markets in the country.
The only thing that worked against is that sometimes ESPN would rather not have two big market teams because each team can only appear a maximum of 5 times a year on Sunday night. So instead of using a Mets and a Dodgers appearance in one game, they could have chosen to separate the appearances to cover 2 games.
can you believe Joe Morgan trying to say that the reason the Mets drew over 200K this weekend was because of Joe Torre?!?!
Like anyone would make a special trip to Shea just to see Torre stagger his way to the mound like John Wayne with the gout.
There’s two things I can’t believe:
1) You actually listened to Joe Morgan
2) You were surprised when he said something mind-numbingly stupid.
That is the travesty here, having to listen to the worst broadcasting crew in all of baseball, if not all sports period. Fav Morganism from last nite: (Talking about Manny’s 500) Bradford dropped down to sidearm, and Manny crushed it. (*Note to Joe Morgan, Chad Bradford is a SIDEARMER*)
It’s so bad, it’s funny. But so bad, you can’t even laugh at it.
Love watching a game, and hearing the broadcasters speak of everything else but the game they are supposed to be calling. Damn ESPN and their cross promotions. They talked more about the NBA finals then the game they were covering. And the delay bothers me trying to listen on WFAN and watch. If I mute the TV, my wife thinks I am not paying attention to the game… so rock, meet hard place right?
Bingo!! The players want to get every cent they can from the owners so the owners are going to get every cent they can from the networks. So if everybody else is just worryng about what’s best for themselves, why shouldn’t ESPN only worry about what matchup works best for them regardless of teams’ travel issues.
This is what I don’t understand….Mets v. Dodgers yesterday has been on the schedule for 6 months now…why couldn’t ESPN decide then, before tickets went on sale???
ESPN and TBS picked the first couple months of national Sunday games prior to the season but once the season starts MLB gives them the flexibility to select the games for the rest of the year with a minimum number of days’ notice.
It’s much like the NFL and their flex scheduling with NBC and the way many nationally college football games are scheduled. ESPN wants to wait to ensure they pick up games that have the best current storylines.
For example, I am sure we will start to see a Rays’ game or two moved to Sunday if they continue to play well. If ESPN were forced to pick their entire schedule prior to the start of the season, then they most likely would not consider any Rays games. Now that they have become a story, ESPN can showcase them one night.
BTW, Tom Glavine won his 300th win,
Pedro Martinez won his 200th win,
Johan Santana won his 100th win,
Oliver Perez, if he wins tonight, will win his 50th.
Maine is 2 away from 30.
Pelf is 2 away from 10.
Vargas is 5 from 50.
Interesting mini- milestones.
Isn’t it amazing that Pelfrey, considering how many starts he has been given, is STILL 2 away from 10 wins/
that’s crazy, I hadn’t ever thought about that
He should be there already really – his last three quality starts have resulted in 2 losses and a no-decision.
actually, i so preferred going to the game last night. it was a gorgeous, perfect night, and i’m so happy that it was changed. my guess is that for the millions or hundreds of thousands they are making, the players can deal with overnight travel. i do hear willie tho … shortening the season some would really improve the game.
For all the millions of dollars the team makes, they need to deal with the “difficult travel schedule”.
um, how long has this been going on? and people are just noticing? tv(media in general) has been controlling the sports world for the last 3 decades… the players? the fans? who cares about them? obviously not fox sports or espn… the good of the game? nah… they’re just in it for the money… then they have the audacity to rant and rage against players who are just in it for the money… what hypocrites!
most importantly, sunday baseball is supposed to be played in the day time… sunday night baseball is blasphemous imho… just another example of the way espn has ruined sports over the last quarter century…
also… be careful willie… you know what happened the last time you “criticized” the precious media… all the people at sny got their panties in a bind… yet another example of media hypocrisy… they can certainly dish out the criticism but they can’t take it
It’s absurd that with the billions of dollars baseball makes, that they have to squeeze out every last dollar from the product at the expense of the game.
Though as long as they don’t increase the number of teams that make the playoffs in order to increase playoff revenue, I’ll be happy.
(IMO, it’s much worse in the NBA–they make the regular season almost meaningless by playing way too many games, letting more than half of the teams in the playoffs, and then having a marathon playoffs. )
WOW! How the times have changed. When players/managers complains about the travel that this game requires, you know we’re not playing the same game anymore.
Give me a break! It’s not like these guys are flying coach with the little people. They’re flying in luxury! Have they forgot what it was like in the minors where you had to take the bus!?
And do they even compare themselves to what we have to go through? Some of us didn’t get home til 1:30am last night and most of us have to be at work 9am EASTERN TIME this morning whereas these guys gets on a private plane at midnight, sleep for 6 hours, go to the hotel at 4am PACIFC TIME, sleep some more, and then have to play a game at 7pm PACIFIC TIME.
Do they even stop for a minute and think about how good they have it compared to 99.9999% of all people on earth? No, of course not! Let’s just shorten the season to 62 games so travelling don’t take a toll on them. Better yet, let’s just cancel the season and allow them to play only if they feel like it. BABIES!
And you wouldn’t complain if you had to do the same thing for your job? Baseball players do have a rather grueling schedule. Sure it’s luxury, but it’s still an airplane, it’s still a jetlag situation, it’s still a long flight in a moving plane, followed by a hotel room which isn’t exactly like sleeping in their own bed.
They’re not complaining about it in relation to us, and why are you complaining, since most fans were complaininga bout the time change too? You’re on the same side in this. They have their situation, and they want to try to make it better/easier. That’s life.
Of course, it’s not like 80 years ago when it took over 24 hours to go to St. Louis from New York by train. With stops inbetween to play random exhibition games against the other league or amateurs.
Them complaining about travel is like me complaining about working 9-5pm 5 days a week (which is a dream to me at this point). They’re not exactly sitting in seats that don’t recline more than 3 inches and they’re not exactly sleeping at Motel 6s.
And to say playing baseball for a living, correct that, to say playing MLB baseball for a living is a “situation” is like saying being King of Saudi Arabia is a nightmare.
It is nice to be travelling to San Fran and San Diego though. Two of the worst teams in the NL this season.
Seems like the Phils have played San Fran 9 times already this season. While we are playing on the road, Philly will be in Atlanta and Florida.
They also have to fly from San Fran to San Diego, that’s like a two hour flight. I know it’s a 8 hour drive.
at the risk of being flamed, ESPN moving the game wasn’t bad for all the fans.
Keep in mind that the vast majority of the fans didn’t go to the game. And those are the ones that ESPN cares about (well, the advertisers do!)
I know it sucked for adults that got home late, and any kids that got scratched from going (or at least running the bases). But it was actually better for many people that weren’t going to the game anyway, and either weren’t hoe to watch during the day, or like me, are out of market and got the treat of watching them play in HD.
I do agree that they should decide much earlier (like when the schedule is made) what the night games are going to be, and at minimum the Mets should offer to exchange the tickets.
The Mets should destory the plane a la 86 to further boost their team chemistry
I agree with the criticism of ESPN. It has transformed from a sports fan’s dream channel to a shameless, self-promoting unlikeable monster. What they’ve done to baseball is bad, but waht they’ve done to college football is even worse…inane in-game phone interviews, idiotic guest starting lineup introductions and endless babble about too many things other than the game we are trying to watch. Sadly, they have the rights to so many properties –exacerbated by their ABC situation– that real sports fans have few other options. They clearly are far more interested in expanding their empire since they already have te rest of us by the nuts. Shame on them.
Tim McCarver is a creep!
DynaDash Rules!
GO METS GO!!!
In the second half of the season the Mets leave the Eastern time zone twice for a total of six games.
The Mets get to play the Yankees, Mariners and Rangers in IL play.
They have a ton of games left against the Phillies, Marlins, and Braves so they have a great chance to make up games against the teams ahead of them.
I’d say the schedule is overwhelmingly in the Mets favor this year.