Fox went off the air briefly during game one between the New York Mets and Kansas City Royals. Buckner, then playing for the Boston Red Sox, allowed a slow roller off the bat of Mookie Wilson to roll through his legs in a tie game in the bottom of the tenth inning, with his team leading the series 3-2.
Advertisement
“Fox Sports said an electronics failure caused the primary and backup generators inside Fox Sports’ production compound to lose power”. Eventually, FOX switched the broadcast to the worldwide feed, though FOX noted that the “technical difficulties” continued.
Criticism of the broadcasters and technical issues be darned, Fox will obviously take this news.
There’s a five-minute delay in the game because of the FOX-TV Broadcast truck losing power. As for the Wednesday plan, Fox Sports rerouted generators that were heading to a college football game for the weekend to Kansas City.
Buck said that given Fox’s technical issues, Major League Baseball did not have access to replay temporarily. “The on-field delay was due to replay capability being lost in both team’s clubhouses”, the statement said. I just sent those guys a text a half an hour ago saying, “hey, you should’ve locked the door and the world would’ve been fine with you guys doing the game instead of us but that’s what we were told to do and that’s what we did”.
That’s a good excuse, but it’s also very possible that Fox wanted the game stopped since they have a ton of money invested in the broadcast of the World Series.
And that’s the problem: Even past year, the national pastime’s premier event required a Game 7 to draw more than 15 million viewers, and the 23.5 million who watched that game were outnumbered by the 23.8 million who tuned in to a mid-October matchup between the San Francisco 49ers and Denver Broncos – and less than 1 million more than the audience of the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Dave Webster had a hunch before the 2014 season that the Royals might have a special year, so he came up with the idea of posting a large “W” in left field after each home win.
Advertisement
The Kansas City Royals 5 to 4 victory over the New York Mets in 14 heart-stopping innings brought in an average viewership of 14.9 million, according to the network. Now, viewers were watching the Major League Baseball worldwide signal of the game, which was being called by Matt Vasgersian and John Smoltz.
