by Eve Stenson

It’s the top of the ninth inning in the fifth game of the American League Championship Series. The Anaheim Angels are three outs away from making it to the World Series for the first time in the team’s 41-year history. Everyone in the stands at Edison International Field is on the edge of their seat.

So are all the baseball fans at home . . . at least, all the ones who consider Coors Light commercials suspenseful. Anyone interested in the baseball game, though, is out of luck.

In an even more blatantly greedy decision than usual, last Sunday Fox network decided against showing the first two outs of this historic ninth inning. Disappointed viewers, of course, had nowhere to turn, since Fox owned exclusive broadcasting rights to all the games in the ALCS, including this one.

They also had the rights to the National League Championship Series (St. Louis Cardinals vs. San Francisco Giants), whose fourth game was scheduled to be played right after the fifth game between the Angels and the Minnesota Twins. This was, in fact, the very excuse the anchor solemnly offered for switching coverage away from the final minutes of the first game.

"We now go to Pacific Bell Park for the first pitch," she lied through her oh-so-even teeth, adding that coverage would of course return to Anaheim for the final out. Now, this seems like a rather silly idea to start with (the first of more than 100 pitches in the second game pales in comparison to the last few in the first), but I suppose that’s one of the unforeseeable complications with broadcasting potentially conflicting games on the same channel.

The trouble was, the Cardinals/Giants game wasn’t starting yet. Apparently, Fox Network was so utterly confused by this that they didn’t know what to do . . . so they showed about 15 seconds of San Francisco crowd shots and then cut to a 10-minute commercial break. The thought of switching back to the Twins/Angels game must not have crossed their minds – or if it did, the idea had already been bound, gagged and assaulted by the troupe of dollar signs defending their home turf.

As charming though the Angels and their rally monkey are, I can’t help but feel it’s a shame that the Twins didn’t make a miraculous comeback from their eight-run deficit during Fox’s negligent dismissal and put the network executives to shame.

That’s what happened in the November 17, 1968, "Heidi game," between the New York Jets and the Oakland Raiders (coincidentally, these are the same cities Anaheim and Minnesota eliminated during the American League Division Series this year, respectively). The Jets were beating the Raiders 32-29 with 65 seconds remaining, and had just sent the kickoff to the Raiders’ 23-yard line. After the following commercial break, 7 p.m. rolled around and NBC, as planned, switched to showing the movie Heidi.

While goats and Alps filled the screens of the network’s viewers, the Raiders moved up the firld and proceeded to score a 43-yard touchdown, putting them ahead. But that wasn’t the last of it. The Jets’ kick returner fumbled, the Raiders got the ball back, and they managed a second touchdown, only nine seconds after the first. Oakland beat New York 43-32, fans found out about it afterward and were outraged, and the game was voted the 10th Most Memorable NFL Game of the Century more than 30 years later. It was dubbed "the greatest game you never saw."

But on Sunday, unfortunately, the Twins didn’t score any touchdowns in those last few moments of the game, and therefore couldn’t come close to challenging the 5-13 spread they faced. And Fox did indeed return for that last out as promised, despite preempting the previous two.

Yet, their clumsy slight-of-hand for the sake of milking a few more million from their advertisers can’t help but leave a bad taste in your mouth. Much like Coors Light itself.

(published in The Ram, 17 October 2002)