Center Field Shot 

                                 The Game in the Box

     In an end of the millennium feature on "The Top 100 Things That Impacted Baseball in the 20th Century," Baseball Weekly listed television as 2nd only to Jackie Robinson’s signing. Television was cited for exposing MLB to a much larger audience, generating a financial windfall for owners, increasing the value of franchises exponentially, and, with the development of cable, changing "the way Americans followed the game."

     We agree with Baseball Weekly’s analysis. And today, a few years into the twenty-first century, television’s impact on each of these elements--team revenue enhancement, franchise values, and ways we follow the game—have become even more prominent. More importantly, Major League Baseball owners finally may have learned how to partner with, rather than fight television, making its dysfunctional "marriage" to television more harmonious.

     Perhaps the greatest impact of television on Major League Baseball was to make MLB a common synonym for "baseball." Although the major league game had a privileged position before the video medium, the U.S. television industry has focused most of the nation’s attention on the MLB version of the game.