Lows And Highs

The Cardinals beat the Braves in a must win game by the score of 4 - 3 in 10 innings.

There were many highs and lows in this game.

Low - The Cardinals were behind 2 - 0 after the top of the first inning.

High - The Cardinals scored a run in the bottom of the first inning and were behind 2 - 1.

Low - The score stayed 2 - 1 until the top of the ninth when, after the first two batters made outs, the Braves scored a run to go ahead 3 - 1.

High - The Cardinals tied the score in the bottom of the ninth after there were two outs.

Low - The Cardinals ran themselves out of the inning with a baserunning mistake.

High - The Redbirds won the game in the bottom of the 10th inning with a bases loaded sacrifice fly.

This telecast was spot on.

Our iso's in the bottom of the 10th inning captured the moment in quality fashion.

The mantra of a professional athlete is to never get too high and never get too low.

The same may be said for the TV baseball production team. Don't let the "lows" affect the coverage of the "highs". It can be easy to get down when your team is not succeeding. But this attitude will affect the quality of the coverage.

There were many highs as well as lows for our TV production team tonight. We didn't get too "down" with the "lows" and we didn't get too "up" with the "highs".

Great show!

A Sales Interruption

Chris Carpenter beat the Brewers tonight with a complete game shutout.

This wonderful game, this well-played, well-pitched, and well-paced game took 2:05 as the Cardinals prevailed 2 - 0.

Our telecast had a great pace the whole evening.

Until the top of the ninth inning that is.

We planned on doing our closing billboards after the first batter.

Billboards are an element of each telecast that helps pay for the telecast and are thus necessary.

The first batter of the top of the ninth inning, Nyjer Morgan, struck out after an 11-pitch at-bat and we went to our closing billboards.

During the billboard read, Morgan began cursing at Chris Carpenter and the benches cleared. We finished the billboard read and joined the fracas on the field.

Sometimes live television coverage does not go as smoothly as one would hope. We rejoined the action on the field and showed replays that clearly explained what happened on the field. Morgan was ejected which we showed live. The game ended with three more pitches and one of our best game/telecasts of the season was over.

Sales elements are a necessary function of every telecast.

Sometimes sales interrupts the game/telecast.

It did tonight.

Shot Of The Night

The shot of the night during tonight's game/telecast occurred in the bottom of the third inning. Matt Holliday hit the second homerun of the inning for the Cardinals into the right field seats. The fan who caught the ball was seated next to what we surmised to be his father who we guessed was holding his grandson.

The crowd was already pumped by the first homerun of the inning by Jon Jay and Busch Stadium was rocking.

What was so amazing was that the grandson was sleeping.

The crowd was going crazy and the toddler slept right through the noise even while his father caught the Holliday homerun ball.

We kept going back to the shot throughout the game/telecast and the young boy was asleep the whole game.

Our announcers would periodically say "I wonder if that kid is still sleeping" and sure enough he was.

This shot was a wonderful sideline to the game and never distracted from the game coverage.

This was one of our most enjoyable telecasts in the past few weeks.

Thanks to the shot of the night.

Respecting

The Cardinals season is slowly coming to an end.

They are 10 1/2 games out of first place with 21 games to play.

As the season continues to move to the "meaningless" games stage, the telecasts become increasingly difficult to direct. Cutting meaningless games becomes tougher to do because, like the team, the telecast crew can lose the "edge" needed to deliver a quality product.

As I write in my book Cutting The Game, Inside Television Baseball From the Director's Chair (now available on the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes and Noble Nook) the TV baseball director, in order to deliver a quality product, must respect the game, the players, the fans, and the TV crew.

By respecting these different facets of the telecast, the director is able to maintain that edge to a certain degree.

Just as the best players in the Major Leagues are the ones with the highest respect for the game, their teammates, and the visiting players, the most successful TV baseball directors are the ones with the highest respect towards the aforementioned facets of the telecast.

This respect is absolutely needed as the baseball season winds down and the games become meaningless in the win/loss column.

Game Times

The Reds beat the Cardinals 3 - 2 in 10 innings today in a game that lasted 3:26.

I was talking with a friend of mine a week or two ago and he told me that he was listening to a radio baseball game from the early 1970's and the announcers started complaining because the game was taking longer than 2 hours and 30 minutes.

I realize that the game has changed in the past thirty years and there are many reasons for the length of games today.

Certainly television plays a big role in the length of games because of the commercial time between innings.

Also, I believe, the umpires could speed up the game by calling the strike zone the way it is meant to be called.

Pitching is the name of the game when it comes to the pace of the game. There are just too many pitchers who do not or cannot throw strikes.

"Specialty" pitchers also contribute to the length of the game time.

You have a 7th inning guy, an 8th inning "set-up" pitcher and a closer. Just look at the difference in the number of complete games in the 1970's compared to the complete games of today.

I know I am complaining about this wonderful game and the way it is played today, but I am complaining because I love the game of baseball and I don't like it when this beautiful game is disparaged because of it's pace.

A 3- 2 game in 3:26 shouldn't happen.

Emotions

The Reds beat the Cardinals tonight by the score of 11 - 8.

There was plenty of action in the 3:15 contest as there were six homeruns swatted during the game.

Tonight's game was our "This One's For You" telecast where we honor our brave men and women fighting for our freedom in the military. We had a hook-up with troops from Missouri who were watching the game from Bahgram Afghanistan.

This was one of those telecasts where the game becomes secondary.

It is an honor to be part of our "This One's For You" telecast and I am proud to be a part of our TV production team during this wonderful event.

At one point during the telecast, we had the wife of one of our Missouri troops live in the booth. We surprised her and her husband who is stationed in Afghanistan as neither knew they would be able to talk to each other.

I put the in a two-box so that they were on the air at the same time. This woman, who was celebrating her 50th birthday, was so wonderfully surprised that she started crying on the air.

This was one of the most touching moments that I have ever been involved with during my career.

With my eyes watering and a huge lump in my throat, I tried to cut this most memorable moment interspersed with game action. I could barely talk and, in fact, was whispering my commands to the technical director (TD).

I will never forget this telecast.

I fought with my emotions but they won.

Fun.....Again

The Cardinals beat the Brewers 8 - 4 in 2:57 today to complete a three game sweep and thus keeping their slim playoff hopes alive. The Redbirds are now 7 1/2 games out with 25 to play.

As I wrote in my book Cutting The Game, Inside Television Baseball From the Director's Chair (now available on the Amazon Kindle and the Barnes and Noble Nook), cutting the homerun is great, great fun for a baseball TV director.

This game had seven homeruns!

Homeruns are a good deal more fun to cut when the production team is not in the back end of a dual feed as we were today, but cutting the homerun is still fun indeed.

With 7 homeruns and 23 strikeouts, the pace of the game will suffer. This most certainly accounts for the 2:57 time of game.

I worked with a TD (technical director) for the first time and he was excellent! I especially liked his Minnesota Twins cap.

All in all, this was a pleasurable day in the director's chair.

That's right.....cutting a baseball game was fun.....again.