Fox, ESPN and MLB mulling more Bonds

The Associated Press

Published Friday, June 15, 2007

Whether they’re rooting for him or against him, fans might get to see a lot of Barry Bonds on television.

Fox and ESPN are discussing the possibility of expanding coverage of Bonds as he approaches Hank Aaron’s home run mark of 755, anticipating viewers will tune in - out of admiration, curiosity or contempt.

"First we have to decide, ‘When can we break in and begin to do live cut-ins of his at-bats?’ and that’s being negotiated now," said Len DeLuca, ESPN’s senior vice president for programming and acquisitions. "Is it within two? Within three? Within five? Where does it become reasonable?"

Fox is broadcasting Bonds’ San Francisco Giants on each of three consecutive Saturday afternoons this month, with 66 percent of the U.S. television households getting this weekend’s game at the Boston Red Sox, the Giants’ first regular-season visit to Fenway Park since June 1915. The Giants also are slated for Fox appearances on June 23, July 14, July 21 and Sept. 8.

Fox Sports President Ed Goren said the debate over whether Bonds used performance-enhancing drugs could be good for TV ratings.

"There are some who would say that in a way it’s a perfect storm," he said. "Those who are rooting for him will watch. Those who are rooting against him will watch. You never know."

Bonds is eight homers shy of Aaron’s record and has hit just two home runs since May 8. Chris Tully, baseball’s senior vice president for broadcasting, said through spokesman Pat Courtney that it was premature to discuss national television coverage of Bonds.

Fox might be interested in carrying Bonds’ games in prime time when he is on the verge of setting the record but adding broadcasts is complicated by rights deals. Fox has an exclusive window on Saturday afternoons and ESPN has an exclusive on Sunday night telecasts. ESPN also televises games on Monday and Wednesday nights.

"We’re a television network. We’re not an all-sports cable operation, so we play under different rules as an organization," Goren said. "The variables are how far out do you have to declare to move a game and can you get a game in time?"

When Mark McGwire hit his 62nd home run in 1998 to break Roger Maris’ season record, Fox was able to acquire the game from FX, a cable network also owned by News Corp. The game drew a 12.9 rating, the highest for regular-season baseball in 16 years, and was seen by 43.1 million viewers.

● FANTASY LAWSUIT: Attorneys representing Major League Baseball argued yesterday that online fantasy baseball companies cannot operate without paying license fees to MLB to compensate players for the use of their names.

A panel of three judges at the 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis seemed skeptical that MLB could take financial control of a game that uses publicly available statistics and widely known names of players.

"MLB is like a public religion. Everyone knows" the players’ "names and what they look like," U.S. Judge Morris Arnold said. "This is just part of being an American, isn’t it?"

MLB’s lawyer Virginia Seitz said online fantasy games exploit players by effectively turning them into game pieces and using their names to draw more customers.

"There’s no way of escaping the fact that players’ names are on the product," Seitz said.

Major League Baseball is appealing a lower court judgment last year that ruled St. Louis-based CBC Distribution and Marketing Inc. does not have to pay licensing fees for MLB players’ names and statistics as fodder for online fantasy league games.

The fantasy league industry generates more than $1.5 billion annually from millions of players. Big media companies like Yahoo!, ESPN and CBS pay MLB millions in annual fees to operate online fantasy leagues.

Players make fake teams comprised of real MLB players. Over the course of a season, fantasy league players crunch statistics to judge how well the players of their fake team are performing.

If MLB wins its suit against CBC, it would effectively give the league monopoly rights over publicly available statistics and other information that is used as fodder for fantasy leagues across the country, said CBC’s attorney Rudy Telscher.

"If we lose this case, hundreds of companies go out of business," Telscher said.

● CALLING IT QUITS: Umpire Bruce Froemming, who has spent a half-century in pro ball and worked more than 5,000 games in the majors, is getting ready to call it a career.

The 68-year-old Froemming is set to retire at the end of this season. He will be the plate umpire at the All-Star Game next month in San Francisco, and Major League Baseball planned to announce it then.

"It’s been a long time," Froemming said by telephone on his way to Fenway Park for last night’s game between Colorado and Boston. "It’s 50 years."

The Rockies-Red Sox game was the 5,079th of Froemming’s major-league career. Bill Klem holds the record with 5,368, working from 1905-40.

Froemming began umpiring at age 18, when he went directly from high school to the long-gone Nebraska State League. He became a big-league ump in 1971 - Expos-Mets at Shea Stadium was his first game, and it was cut short by snow after five innings.

Over the years, Froemming earned a reputation for being able to control even the most pressure-packed games. He’ll be at Yankee Stadium this weekend for the Subway Series. Froemming has worked five World Series, 10 league championship series and a record eight division series. He also did the All-Star Game in 1975 and 1986.