Show us the game--and by that I mean one game

I decided to watch some MLB pennant chase action last week, and I first turned to MLB Network so I could see ongoing coverage of all the games. Then I saw that one game was in the eighth inning, much closer to the end than the other big one, so I decided to go to ESPN--a reasonable move, I think you will agree, since it was its game to show.

As soon as I got there, I saw that both games were side by side on a split screen. Strike one. I would have tolerated that as a temporary thing, but it was like that the whole time--well, until I got driven away by...

Well, before I get to that, ESPN had a huge HUNT FOR OCTOBER banner at the top and similar "screen dress" at the bottom of the screen. This significantly reduced the amount of space available for the actual baseball, which was already less than it should have been because of the split-screen deal.

I might have tolerated even that for more than a few minutes. However, ESPN couldn't resist treating audiences to a little "jocularity." The crew calling the Brewers game started chatting with the crew covering the Rockies game, which wasn't yet on the main ESPN because the FIRST game was still in progress.

Not just in progress, mind you, but in the eighth inning and still very much in play.

So the "gang" in game 1 starts chatting up with David Ross, who I guess was at Game 2, and they all start chumming it up. "Hey, guys, this is great. Baseball should be like this all the time!" or something to that effect was Ross' comment. No, it isn't! Competitive games and pennant races are great, but shrinking the games so that you can't follow any of them is not.

"Rossy, was it like this when you were on Dancing with the Stars?" It was only a matter of time before someone brought up Dancing with the Stars, but I didn't expect it to be so soon. Then they showed a pic of the game 2 announcers waving. All this is going on while the Brewers and Cardinals are in a tense showdown, a showdown hard to follow because of the horrible visual presentation and the inane chatter.

So I turned it back to MLB Network, where rights issues forced them to show 4 or 5 guys standing around in front of a TV and watching a local feed which we could see in the background. That was superior to what was going on over on the other channel because at least those guys were focused on the one game and commenting on it.

This is the kind of thing that has killed Sunday Night Baseball--misguided efforts to lure fabled "casual viewers" with gimmicks, bells and whistles, and an abundance of goofy chitchat in the booth. There was a degree of jocularity on MLB network from the jocks, but it didn't feel forced, and it was in service of explaining the game to the viewers.