Pastime past my bedtime

Here’s a quick checklist for those (of us) in age denial:

UIt shocks you when “friends” comment on your changing natural hair color.

UYou still believe that Bon Jovi, The Eagles and the one from E Street are contemporary bands.

UYou can remember when the Major League Baseball postseason was relevant.

Once upon a time, postseason baseball games were an event that earned “American Idol”-like television ratings.

Today, ABC’s “Dancing With the Stars” (competition or results) is more likely to spark office talk than the teams fighting to get to the World Series.

In the dark ages, some of us took radios to school to listen to baseball playoff games. (It didn’t hurt that the Pittsburgh Pirates were in a glory decade and local interest was tremendous).

Today, try finding a local station that carries ESPN’s baseball broadcasts. (At night, AM listeners can pick up a Chicago station at 720 that carries Cubs games and another one at 1000 that has ESPN coverage — that’s about it.)

How did it happen? What made baseball irrelevant to most Americans?

For one thing, excessive television money that dictates starting times that favor the West Coast.

During the July All-Star break, Commissioner Bud Selig was dumbfounded to explain why so many inner-city children aren’t interested in playing baseball. MLB, to its credit, has been trying to revive baseball with donations to urban programs that have been dying.

Selig neglected to mention the most obvious symptom — MLB treats fans east of the Mississippi River like dirt when October rolls around.

Unlike the extremely popular NFL which plays most of its important games at reasonable hours, baseball owners don’t get it. They end their showcase games at an hour that is long past reasonable for students and day workers.

So while the Super Bowl is annually the most popular televised event of the year, postseason baseball is becoming more and more cultish. (We’re not talking the level of the Stanley Cup playoffs, but the numbers are diminishing.)

If children don’t watch the sport’s most important games, why should they want to grow up to be baseball players? How do you emulate what you don’t see?

Friday night, the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim and Boston Red Sox played a terrific game that ended Saturday at 1:28 a.m. Outside of Boston, how many fans in the Eastern Time Zone were tuned in to cable station TBS until the game’s end? (Sportswriters arriving home from a football Friday night at the office are an obvious exception.)

Saturday night, did anyone in Ohio really care that the Chicago Cubs (the National League’s best team) were fighting for their postseason lives against the Los Angeles Dodgers of Los Angeles? Not when Jim Tressel’s Buckeyes were playing Wisconsin on ABC.

Today, there could be four Division Series games on TBS beginning around lunch time and ending past midnight. Meanwhile, FOX, CBS and NBC will combine to present a NFL tripleheader capped by the Pittsburgh Steelers-Jacksonville Jaguars game at 8:15 p.m. Which do you think fans here will be watching?

Selig also claimed that baseball has never been more popular than it is today. He was referring to attendance which appeared to be on target to top 80 million customers for the first time.

Selig’s claims were puzzling here in that the Cleveland Indians were playing home games in front of a sea of empty green seats (except on select promotion nights). Attendance at Pittsburgh Pirates’ games was anything but brisk in their 16th-straight losing season.

At season’s end, MLB announced that attendance declined by about 1 percent in 2008. Considering the economy, it’s hard to imagine MLB selling more tickets next season even though the New York Yankees and New York Mets will open new ballparks.

Not long ago, World Series games were so dominant in the TV ratings that opposing networks scheduled reruns and movies during the last week of October.

Today, probably because World Series games begins after 8:30 p.m. and often end around midnight, the other networks aren’t intimidated. They’ll show first-run programming with little fear of competition.

“Glory Days,” indeed.

X Tom Williams is a sportswriter for The Vindicator. Write him at williams@vindy.com.