Thursday, July 10, 2008

Thom Loverro: George Will, strippers and 'Animal'... oh my

If the Washington Nationals aren't complaining about the report that just 9,000 households in the area are watching their team on television, I certainly can understand why.

Would you really want anyone to watch what has been happening? Better they come to the ballpark and be surprised at the futility. No use giving them a sneak preview.

This is what movie studios do when they have a dog to release - they don't screen it for the critics. With the worst record (34-57) in baseball going into Wednesday night's game against Arizona, if I were Nationals management, I would want to be even harder to find on the dial.

The last thing you want for someone who might come to the ballpark and drop a couple of hundred dollars is to watch this disaster on television - unless, of course, you are trying to sell advertising on your regional sports network in the D.C. area. But that's not the Nationals' problem. They are getting their check, as per the agreement with Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos. That's a MASN problem.

How do you sell advertisers on a product that is setting record-low viewing numbers in the game and draws worse than every other sports team in town?

Pay no attention to the 9,000 households. That number can't be right. Buy a 30-second spot and we'll throw in an appearance by a Racing President.

The most obvious way for the number of television viewers to increase, of course, is for the Nationals to be a better and more entertaining team to watch. But that's not going to happen anytime soon, so someone has to come up with creative ways to bring eyes to the tube.

Of course, I have some suggestions:

1. A pledge drive. This is what they do in public television - beg people to watch. The Nationals should ask people to pledge to watch so many games every month on MASN and offer to throw in a Doo-Wop CD or a George Will baseball book.

2. Show the 2005 season instead. If you really want to spin this, there are a lot more D.C.-area households watching the Nationals in 2008 than there were in 2005. Remember, the team wasn't even on television in the District in 2005 and half of 2006 because of the dispute between Comcast and MASN. But they still were broadcasting, Mel Proctor and Ron Darling, to the handful of viewers that could see them and to whatever aliens will pick up the signal in space light years from now.

Most Nationals fans, then, never got to see the best year the team has had since moving from Montreal, that 81-81 season in 2005. So dig up those old tapes and run those games instead.

3. Add a third member to the Bob Carpenter-Don Sutton television booth - George "The Animal" Steele. Animal lives in Cocoa Beach, Fla., near the Nationals' spring training complex and goes to their games, including one this past spring as my guest. He went into the clubhouse and met the players, who loved him.

Animal knows baseball - he was a high school player and said two teams were interested in him, the St. Louis Browns and, of course, the Washington Senators. Imagine the Animal on the telecast during Tuesday night's game, when umpire Angel Hernandez called two balks on Odalis Perez - "Hernandez ... break!"

4. Speaking of Perez, with all due respect to Johnny Holiday and Ray Knight, the "Odalis Perez Post Game Report" could be a ratings bonanza. His postgame analysis after being tossed by Hernandez was the most entertaining thing to come out of Nationals Park in weeks.

Perez called Hernandez an "idiot" and "stupid" and said, "That's the third or fourth time he called balk on me. I lost the game twice. It's like he's got something personal against me. And I hate that. I'm a professional. ... I know I'm going to get fined, but I don't care. I want to protect myself and protect my teammates, too, because he's been [expletive] the whole year. When people call balk on me, I've been doing the same [expletive] move the entire year. So why does he have to call it twice in the same inning?"

Now that would be good TV.

5. Sex. I don't know how - inning card girls, strippers in the booth, whatever - but you know what sells on television, and it's not balls and strikes.

Meanwhile, it's July 10, with nearly three months left in the season, and there are questions like this in Manny Acta's pregame news conference Wednesday: "Is anything new with Johnny Estrada?"

Unless he goes after manager John Stearns in his rehab start in Harrisburg - and it's on TV - who cares?