King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Should baseball step aside for presidential debates? Plus: New thinking seeps into the Grand Old Game. And: NFL Week 5 picks.

Oct. 8, 2004 | Friday's second presidential debate conflicts with Game 3 of the Yankees-Twins series, the ballgame starting around 8:15 p.m. EDT and the debate at 9. One reader asks, "Don't you think it's lame that baseball couldn't schedule the playoff games around the presidential debates?"

My first reaction was no, but since this reader was my boss, David Talbot, I figured I should listen further. "Baseball is the all-American game and has particular symbolic significance -- hence all the patriotic displays at games after 9/11," he wrote in an e-mail.

"The country is at war, the war is the focus of the presidential campaign, this is a historic election. This is why the debates, even the vice presidential one, are getting record ratings. It seems to me that it would not unduly inconvenience the league or the teams" to reschedule a game around the debate.

You won't find many harsher critics of Major League Baseball, the company, than this column, but I have to back baseball on this one.

I hate to disagree with the boss, especially since he's been so good to me in the years since the Christmas Party Incident, but why should baseball, of all American businesses -- including Salon -- have to change what it does, surrendering business during its peak commercial season, to accommodate a debate? Should the bars close? Broadway shows? Movies? It's just one night for them. Baseball's on the clock, racing the wet weather.

And anyway, the baseball games were scheduled first. It's been true since 1995 that the first few Fridays in October, there are baseball playoff games scheduled. Couldn't the debate have been scheduled for last Monday, a pre-playoff day off? The third and final debate is Wednesday, when there are two League Championship Series games scheduled. Couldn't it have been pushed back to Oct. 22, a scheduled Friday off before the World Series?

"You know, we have this problem every four years, almost on the same nights," says Rich Levin of the commissioner's office. "We make our schedule pretty far in advance, way before we know anything about when the debates are going to be. But baseball's on a tight schedule because of the weather. Baseball's mostly an outdoor game, and we really can't afford to give up dates."

Levin said the Commission on Presidential Debates did not approach baseball about changing the schedule and he's unaware of any complaints from the public this year despite the high ratings for the debates. In the past, he notes, having playoff baseball has provided a network with a good excuse for not showing the usually low-rated debates.

"It's not only the debates, there's also the Jewish holidays," he says. "But we just don't have enough dates available to accommodate things like that."

Levin didn't want to speculate on what baseball would do if the debate commission did approach with a request to reschedule a night game for the afternoon, say, to accommodate a debate, noting that the response would have to be agreed upon by baseball, its TV networks and its sponsors.

Next page: What do you think? Plus: Sabermetric thinking seeps into the mainstream. And: NFL Week 5 picks