Fox Cancels Yankees-Marlins World Series
Red Sox-Cubs midseason replacement expected to boost ratings
JUNIOR BACON
An empty Yankee Stadium greets the spoilsport New York and Florida teams
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Officials at the Fox network announced last week that despite record ratings for the first two rounds of baseball’s postseason, the Yankees-Marlins World Series will be cancelled due to lack of viewer interest. The announcement stunned and disappointed sports fans, who thought Fox was talking about canceling the World Cup. Executives have since issued a statement assuring the viewing public that the little-watched soccer tournament, which appeals to foreign-born Americans and small children who play soccer, will go on as scheduled.
“Our focus group research indicates that watching the Yankees play in the World Series has the same level of audience appeal as watching the Iraqi National Guard gang-rape Mother Theresa,” explained Fox Sports head Walter Lawrie. “And the Marlins’ name recognition ranks comfortably between one-hit wonder Jim Basnight of ‘Sex Teen’ fame and Secretary of Commerce Don Evans. Frankly, if we hadn’t made this announcement, I doubt anyone would have noticed the change.”
Fox executives originally announced that the Yankees-Marlins series would be replaced with footage of the cast of Malcolm in the Middle playing catch in their backyard, interspersed with thousands of commercials for the upcoming Fox shows Skin, Arrested Development and 24. But after focus group research conducted by opening office windows and listening indicated that baseball fans would still be interested in watching a Red Sox-Cubs World Series, rules be damned, a mid-season replacement series was organized.
“Yankees-Marlins was underperforming in several key markets, most notably the entire United States of America,” said Fox spokesperson Lana Rauch. “We were originally taking consolation in the notion that we’d at least get strong numbers out of New York and Miami, but it turns out fans in New York consider anything short of a four-game World Series sweep by the Yankees an unwatchable travesty, and the three Marlins fans don’t live in Nielsen households. So even in those markets, the numbers stank like David Wells’ burp-up rag.”
Network executives hope a Red Sox-Cubs match up will breathe new life into the flagging World Series franchise, which lost some if its luster after last season’s breakout star Barry Bonds was unable to return for the 2003 season due to the failure of his supporting cast. Fox executives attempted to engineer a trade of Bonds to the Cubs after San Francisco’s first-round exit from the playoffs, but Cubs manager Dusty Baker vetoed the trade on the grounds that the 39-year-old Bonds wasn’t old enough to warrant displacing any of Baker’s trusted veteran players.
Fox had gone to great lengths in the preceding weeks to ensure a Red Sox-Cubs World Series, expected by many to be a ratings bonanza. But after succeeding in bombarding the Oakland A’s lineup with microwave radiation in the ALDS and scheduling ALCS Game 4 during a flash flood to prevent Boston Achilles-heel John Burkett from taking the mound, Fox was ultimately thwarted by the Red Sox and Cubs’ own considerable self-destructive quirks, ending up with an albatross series slung stinky-like around their necks.
Some baseball purists have decried the move, which goes beyond Fox’s usual postseason gametime juggling and bizarre scheduling decisions. But when questioned, all admitted they weren’t actually watching the Yankees-Marlins series, they were just tired of waiting for The Simpsons’ Halloween special to air.
the commune news was personally rooting for a Brewers-Indians World Series, but our hopes for a hilarious drunken Navajo melee were dashed quite early in the season. Mordecai “Three Finger” Brown was available to pitch for the Cubs in the eighth inning of Game 6, but was barred by an umpiring crew with a poor history of making accurate balk calls on long-dead pitching spectres.
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