We’ll get to the chunky octopus in a bit, but we want to start with the golden ticket.
Baseball’s golden ticket, that is. Major League Baseball has a once-in-a-lifetime player in the World Series, a once-in-a-generation clash of the titans as the matchup, a blessed chance to reclaim at least some of the verity behind the phrase “national pastime.”
Shohei Ohtani steps onto baseball’s grandest stage for the first time, after becoming the first player in the league’s 148-year history to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in the same season.
Ohtani! Aaron Judge! The Dodgers! The New York Yankees! In the previous century, this World Series would have sold itself.
Read more: Dodgers vs. Yankees World Series tickets have reached Taylor Swift level prices
Today? Skepticism abounds, even from one of the most observant former players, Brandon McCarthy, who pitched for the Dodgers and Yankees.
McCarthy’s X post on this World Series: “Yankees/Dodgers. Ohtani&Betts/Judge& Soto. MLB better be ready to market its ass off. This has to be the national conversation.”
I ran that by the MLB marketing guy.
“I agree wholeheartedly with his tweet,” said Noah Garden, MLB deputy commissioner for business and media.
You’ll hear a lot about improved ratings during the World Series. Pay no attention. Of course more people will be watching this year. The competing teams represent the two largest cities in the United States.
In this century, as football has ruled our sporting lives, baseball has retreated to local dominance. You’ll watch the home team, day by day and all summer long, yet the casual fan pays little interest to the other 29 teams, or the stars on them.
Baseball isn’t dying. But, if MLB cannot leverage a World Series featuring its two most valuable players and its two most iconic teams, the national conversation might continue without baseball.
“Every station that I turn on in the morning, they’re talking about this,” Garden said, “whether it’s radio stations, whether it’s TV stations, whether it’s news programs.
“This has clearly broken through. This is part of the national conversation. Whether it’s the crazy ticket prices or the excitement of watching Ohtani for the first time on the national stage,…