Starting Saturday: Dock Ellis in Mexico
My latest mock lament: Leave it to me to come up with the one baseball story that fathers are reluctant to share with their sons.
It’s actually just dawning how much the subject of Dock Ellis & the LSD No-No alienates certain media members, thereby driving it underground. They can’t really connect with the story, due to a lack of experience. Hence a lack of coverage.
Word’s come to me that Major League Baseball would like to see the piece come down from its YouTube perch. That’s laughable, and not just because youngsters could really use something to connect them to the great, illustrative and domestically withering game — more ever than before.
The “take it down” notion is fundamentally a joke ‘cuz, even if my folks were to remove that post, there’s no stopping the story. The No-No has not only been downloaded to more computers than one might be able to realistically count, it’s in the ether. And on more film festival stops than one can accurately quantify.
(BTW, anybody see the No Mas influence on this Zito & Lincecum short?)
For example, Dock makes its debut in San Miguel, Mexico on Saturday. And the short’s not showing in a bowling alley, as it did in neighboring Texas. Our film screens at Bellas Artes, a credible, mighty fine venue. ‘Cuz ours a mighty fine work of art.
(Just wait until we hit Taiwan. Baseball’s screwed in the U.S., but it’s the stuff of life in Asia and Latin America. No definitive word yet on those regions’ takes on hallucinogens. But here’s a prospective look.)
Ain’t no stopping fine, newsy art in the Internet era. The genie is out of the bottle. The antidote to old ideas is on the table. Partake, don’t hate.
July 22nd, 2010 at 1:26 pm
Agree with ya on Doc, but you should stop sayin’ baseball’s in trouble. MLB attendance has averaged about 75 mill (!) a year since 2000, a figure that dwarfs other pro sports in the US and is well above MLB’s totals for previous decades. In terms of game attendance and actual participation (ie, little league, softball tournaments, etc) baseball’s doing great. It’s just TV ratings where the NFL rules the roost.
July 22nd, 2010 at 1:47 pm
Really? I just heard that this year’s numbers are very much down.
The trouble with baseball is that it lacks casual fans, not to mention national audiences. It’s local to a fault, not to mention skewing older.
I’ll concede that TV ratings don’t tell the whole story. So many of my friends who are fans watch games on the Internet. How are those eyeballs factored in?
July 28th, 2010 at 3:15 pm
Dunno if the numbers are down from last year, but they’re pretty good! A quick google finds 24 of 30 MLB teams past the 1 million mark at the all star break, and five teams (including the Dodgers) already past 2 million. (Angels are 1.985. CA teams have already drawn more than 8 mill!) No NBA team drew more than 850,000 all last year (and half of NBA teams lost money.) No pro football team drew more than 718,000.
The trouble with baseball, if it’s trouble, is that it doesn’t work very well on TV, and especially not for casual fans. NFL and NBA can make for pretty good TV, even for people who have no idea what’s going on. Baseball, not so much.
July 28th, 2010 at 3:42 pm
Local live attendance only count for so much. The All-Star Game had the worst ratings of all time —
http://digitalsportsdaily.com/sports-business/tv/2340-mlb-all-star-draws-worst-tv-rating-ever.html
It’s not a matter of debate. I think baseball can be an indisputable hit again, for what it’s worth.