Good Thursday morning to you all!
It is just the first step, but NFL owners have approved the sale of its network to ESPN. I break it down in the above video:
Here are some other thoughts as I ponder the San Francisco Giants making history:
The San Francisco Giants have hired successful Tennessee baseball coach Tony Vitello to be their next manager. He becomes the first coach to ever go directly from college to the major leagues to manage a team. If he is successful, expect other clubs to follow suit.
Let’s have some fun. And I am sure you could add to the list, but the Toronto Blue Jays have not been to the World Series, which they won that season, since 1993. So what was the landscape 32 years ago?
Derek Jeter had not played in a MLB game
Don Mattingly, now the Blue Jays bench coach, was playing first base for the New York Yankees
Blue Jays manager John Schneider was 13 years old, growing up in New Jersey with a Don Mattingly poster on his bedroom wall
20 of the 26 players on the Blue Jays active roster had not been born
Max Scherzer, the winner of Game 4 of the ALCS for the Blue Jays was 9 years old
George Springer, the Game 7 hero, was 3 years old
Aaron Judge was one-year old
Shohei Ohtani had not been born
The Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Rays were not in existence
Roger Maris held the single-season HR record with 61
Hank Aaron was the all-time home run champ
There was no interleague play
Each league was made up of two divisions
There was no DH in the National League
The World Series averaged 24.7M viewers compared to a 15.74M viewers in 2024
Broncos coach Sean Payton says he was not trying to insult former Broncos QB and current Giants backup Russell Wilson, when he offered praise of Jaxson Dart, following the Broncos comeback win Sunday.
Game 7 of the ALCS between the Blue Jays and Mariners on Monday night, garnered 9.03M viewers in the U.S. (Fox) and 6M in Canada (SportsNet), 15% of the entire Canadien population. The numbers in the U.S. were the highest for a championship series in the U.S. since the Astros-Yankees in 2017.
Overall the seven-game ALCS averaged 4.99M viewers in the U.S., while the Dodgers four-game sweep of the Brewers in the NLCS averaged 4.7M on TNT.
Buster Olney of ESPN is reporting that former big league pitcher Curt Schilling, he of the bloody sock, is interested in becoming the next Tennessee baseball coach, now that Vitello has gone to San Francisco.
Reports are Dodgers bench coach Danny Lehmann is on the Braves radar screen to be their next manager.
These networks will do anything to promote ratings. ESPN blared out that it had the most viewers to ever watch a Monday Night Football game, that is until you read the entire headline. Turns out it was the most viewers to ever watch a MNF game in Week 7 of an NFL season, as 18.7M tuned to the Bucs-Lions first game of the NFL doubleheader that night. Still the 18.7M number is staggering and will more than likely top by a substantial margin any World Series game.
That is going to do it for today’s newsletter. As always, thank you for subscribing and have a terrific day.
DAN
