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Baseball has been beddy, beddy good to me!!

A new script for Fox, ESPN as baseball playoffs begin
NEW YORK (Hollywood Reporter) – It’s a postseason with all the elements: big-market teams, some of the game’s greatest stars, a Chicago White Sox team trying to end its own curse and a possibility for a rematch between the Boston Red Sox and New York Yankees.
Eight teams — also the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Houston Astros, St. Louis Cardinals, San Diego Padres and Atlanta Braves — will vie in the Divisional Series that begins Tuesday on Fox and ESPN.
“We’ve been saying for years — you can’t script October,” Fox Sports president Ed Goren said. “For two years going into three, baseball has provided sports fans, I think, with memories for a lifetime.”
Fox and ESPN, which have TV rights to the postseason, see plenty of possibilities that could boost ratings. There’s the curse of history that has denied the White Sox a World Series win since 1917 as the South Siders are hoping for some Red Sox magic this year. There’s the redemption sought by the Cardinals, who were swept by the Red Sox in last year’s Series. And there’s the always potent ratings combination of the Red Sox and Yankees, the two teams with arguably the most national appeal.
“You could write so many story lines on October 3,” Goren said. “We’ll just see how they play out.”
“It probably worked out in terms of ratings and interest the way it did,” said Tim Scanlan, senior coordinating producer of ESPN’s Divisional Series baseball coverage. ESPN’s telecasts begin Tuesday at 1 p.m. EDT with the Cardinals-Padres; it continues at 4 p.m. with the Red Sox-White Sox.
Fox’s primetime game will be the Yankees-Angels from Anaheim. Fox has the choice to pick its primetime game.
“Both games are outstanding matchups,” Goren said Monday. “We will have the Red Sox and the White Sox on our air moving forward, but it was pretty much a tossup. Market size is a factor, but again, you can make an argument that it’s a wealth of riches, whether it’s Yankees-Anaheim or Red Sox-White Sox.”
Not that there aren’t nightmare ratings scenarios even with this crop. Fox and Major League Baseball can’t be happy with the possibility — however small — of a San Andreas Fault Series: the Angels vs. Padres, a small-market team with the worst record of any team in the playoffs.
After the lowest-rated World Series in history between the Angels and San Francisco Giants in 2002, baseball rebounded to score big ratings in 2003 and ’04, particularly built around the thrilling seven-game Yankees-Red Sox series that sent the Yanks to the World Series in 2003 and the greatest comeback in baseball history in 2004 that sent the Red Sox to their first World Championship since 1918.
The postseason rights deal between MLB and Fox ends soon; Goren said he’s interested in getting the deal done as soon as they can. But he didn’t think that another year of big ratings will have an effect on the negotiations.
“There are a lot of positive things happening with baseball,” Goren said. “We have a 10-year history. I don’t see one year making a difference.”