View Full Version : MLB's Field of Dreams game delivered its best regular season viewership in 16 years


TMC
08-14-2021, 05:43 AM
https://profootballtalk.nbcsports.com/2021/08/13/on-fox-hall-of-fame-game-draws-1-4-million-more-viewers-than-field-of-dreams-game/

About 5.9 million watched (https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/13/field-of-dreams-mlb-baseball-game-draws-5point9-million-viewers-for-fox.html) the New York Yankees and Chicago White Sox play in the temporary ballpark in Iowa inspired by the 1989 Kevin Costner film. But as ProFootballTalk's Mike Florio points out, the NFL Hall of Fame game a week earlier, played almost entirely with backups, had 7.3 million viewers. "That’s not a knock on baseball; it’s just a statement of numbers-don’t-lie fact," says Florio. "It was indeed the highest-rated regular-season baseball game in 16 years. But when that new high-water mark still falls 1.4 million viewers behind a football games replete with backups, it demonstrates that, when it comes to football, if you build it, a lot more people will come.

Major League Baseball fans go crazy over the Field of Dreams game's unbelievable ending (https://www.mediaite.com/sports/mlb-fans-lose-their-minds-over-unbelievable-ending-to-field-of-dreams-game-greatest-baseball-night-of-my-life/)

MLB promoted their Field of Dreams reboot game in Dyersville, Iowa for two years, with star of the 1989 baseball classic film Kevin Costner on hand. The game between the Chicago White Sox and New York Yankees wound up being perfectly scripted after the teams came out via the cornfields and the game ended with a walk off homer. "Major League Baseball never has been played in a more striking visual (https://www.si.com/mlb/2021/08/13/field-of-dreams-game-the-opener) form than it had Thursday night in the middle of a cornfield. And just as in the movie to which it paid homage, the drama was equal to the beauty of the scene," says Tom Verducci. "Home runs flew into the cornfield by the bushels, the last of which, by Tim Anderson of the White Sox, snatched back a White Sox win just moments after the Yankees snatched it from Chicago with four runs when they were down to their last out. The setting was so perfect, the game so entertaining and the demand for tickets so great that the Field of Dreams game should become a tentpole game for the sport. Like Opening Day, the All-Star Game, Home Run Derby and the Hall of Fame inductions, the Field of Dreams game should give baseball another destination date on the calendar amid the sea of games over six long months."

GentlemanJim
08-14-2021, 10:20 AM
Baseball doesn't seem to be able to capture the imagination of the ever-growing ADHD set.

Once you explain to the kiddies that strategy is involved, they start pulling out their phones, or changing the channel.

Four downs is about as far forward thinking as they care to do.

TJ
08-14-2021, 02:13 PM
It was a great game. They couldn't have scripted it any better. What a magical night. It was cool to see the ball flying into the cornfield. They should make it a yearly event.

There was a guy behind home plate on his phone that missed the pitch on the walk-off home run.

1426016197808693248