You can make the argument that major-league baseball has rarely been so bereft of compelling stories or personalities as it is today. How short on sizzle? New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner - the purveyor of glitz and glamour - steals Tuesday's all-star show by passing away. No wonder Washington pitcher Stephen Strasburg is getting so much hype - and they didn't even bring him to Anaheim. When Toronto's Jose Bautista leads the post-steroid major leagues in home runs it speaks volumes about the inert state of the sport.
The latest proof of baseball's tepid draw comes in the TV numbers from Tuesday's game in Anaheim. The 3-1 snoozer (won by the National League) had a 7.5 rating, the lowest-rated All-Star Game in history and, at 12.118 million viewers, was the least-watched game since at least 1981.
(Of course it was up against America's Got Talent.)
While all TV numbers have seen erosion in the Internet age, no other All-Star Game had even dropped below a 8.0 rating. The previous low was in 2005, which drew an 8.1 rating and 12.330 million viewers.
How The Tiger Has Fallen
Tiger Woods shot a 67 on Day 1 of The Open Championship. In the past, that would have produced hosannas from the TV talking heads. That was then. Today, it doesn't spare the chastened one from the wrath of ESPN's Curtis Strange: "I don't think he played as well as everybody gives him credit for. He missed a couple of shots early, he came out of some shots. He knows what he did wrong ... I'm going to make him prove it to me. He hasn't been playing very well, he knows he's been struggling with his swing, he knows he mentally can't be 110 per cent into every shot. I'm going to make him prove it to me. He did it today. It's a long golf course and it's a long championship." Strongly worded memo to follow.
Tiger Fallout
Greg Norman - whose near-win as a senior in 2008 was eclipsed last year by Tom Watson's miraculous flirtation with the Claret Jug - says the PGA Tour is getting its just deserts with Woods's collapse. "The PGA Tour put all their eggs in one basket," he told the Wall Street Journal. "They built the tour around Tiger, sold the television contracts around Tiger, so it made the other players feel insignificant, which is a sad way of doing business because they have a responsibility to all of their constituents. The PGA Tour is a one-man, one-vote operation, and nobody is bigger than the game of golf. The exact same thing happened in basketball with Michael Jordan and look at the dead time that basketball went through when Jordan went."
Norman added that the decline in golf revenues and ratings since Woods's downfall is "a testament to how quickly the money can be turned off, when people start pulling out and the multimillion-dollar endorsements dry up very quickly."
Repeat After Me
Not sure why Tom Weiskopf is on ESPN's broadcast of The Open. "The sincerest form of flattery is often copied," Mr. Malaprop said. And haste makes biodegradable byproducts. Clearly, veteran British wit Peter Alliss was miffed with the former PGA star Thursday. After Alliss deftly described Phil Mickelson accepting his lumps with a high iron out of a fairway bunker, Weiskopf burst in to say that Mickelson was just going to play it back into the fairway. "That's what I thought I said," replied Alliss tartly.
Island Hopping
Finally, Live with Regis and Kelly in PEI must've been a big deal. Why? New Toronto Maple Leafs captain Dion Phaneuf - whose family's from the Island - was front and centre on the show with girlfriend Elisha Cuthbert. Even though Regis Philbin didn't seem to know him from a potted plant, Phaneuf got more face time than Brian Burke on Hockey Night in Canada's GM cam. But then nothing says big time more than a Burke trade acquisition.