King Kaufman's Sports Daily

Fox interrupts its baseball broadcast long enough to show the All-Star Game, and announces we're stuck with it through 2013.

Read more: Sports, Baseball, TV, FOX, King Kaufman, Sports Daily

July 12, 2006 | "You're stuck!" taunted Joe Buck jokingly as he and Tim McCarver announced Fox's new TV deal with Major League Baseball. "You're stuck with us for the next seven years!"

Thanks for understanding, Joe. That's exactly how it feels.

That's how it felt during the as-usual goofy opening to Tuesday night's All-Star Game, which the American League won 3-2 on a two-run ninth-inning triple by Michael Young of the Texas Rangers. There were shooting stars flying over various parts of the U.S. -- stars, as in All-Stars, get it? It was players' mug shots in the middle of star shapes.

I'm guessing those cuties in bathing suits and making out in that convertible were stars of Fox teen dramas, but the idiocy of Fox's approach to baseball coverage makes me so weary I just didn't have the energy to look into it, even though, at 8:02 p.m. EDT, I knew I had a long, long, long way to go before the first pitch of Tuesday's game, allegedly scheduled for 8:20.

First pitch was at 8:43. Man, it must stink to be a baseball-loving kid in the Eastern and Central time zones. When I started caring about baseball my bedtime was 8:30. As late as middle school I was supposed to be in bed by 10. If I'd grown up on the East Coast instead of the West and Fox had existed and had the baseball contract back then, I'd have never seen beyond the fourth inning of a big game.

I don't think my interest would have survived to the age when I could set my own bedtime.

But we're stuck -- stuck! -- with Fox now, for six and a half more years. The extension pays baseball about $250 million a year, down significantly from the current $417 million-a-year deal. It includes eight more Saturday games -- good news for Red Sox, Yankees, Cardinals and Cubs fans, I guess.

And the good news is that Fox has dropped the League Division Series and will only broadcast one of the two League Championship Series per year, alternating leagues.

The four Division Series were picked up by Turner, which will put them on TBS. That network will also carry a new package of Sunday games, and will cease to be a national broadcaster of Atlanta Braves games. The remaining LCS are still up for bid.

Fox dropping half of the League Championship Series is good news because, really, isn't anybody better at broadcasting baseball than Fox? I tried to think of a network that was more annoying in its coverage than Fox during the 43-minute wait for the game, but failed.

Next page: Fox has better things to do than broadcast baseball during a baseball broadcast