A story in the paper today here in St. Louis is a writer suggesting/complaining that Pujols game 3 record tying outburst has not garnered enough attention. Furthermore, he suggests that if it had been a player from the Yankees or Red Sox, it'd still be top news. I'm just curious as to you guys opinions on this being that there are quite a few of you guys who follow the East Coast teams way more than I do and have your finger on that pulse. Any merit to this story. I've clipped a section of it and pasted it below. I didn't clip the full story because the remainder of the story is nothing but comparing the national and local ratings and talking about how our local TV station made out like a bandit broadcasting the games.
Dan Caesar, St. Louis
This year's World Series will be remembered for the Cardinals' scintillating comeback after twice teetering just one pitch away from being eliminated in Game 6 before rallying to win, then claiming the title the next night to cap a fairy-tale run after being left for dead in late August.
But what has been the most grossly under-publicized aspect of the Series — in fact in all of sports this year, and maybe many years — was Albert Pujols' epic performance in Game 3. He simply turned in the most impressive offensive display in Fall Classic history, when he tied the Series record for homers (three), hits (five), RBIs (six) and had 14 total bases to snap that mark.
It happened on a Saturday night and afterward the biggest story on ESPN and
ESPN.com was Michigan State's victory over Wisconsin on a Hail Mary deflected pass. The next Monday, when the national gabfest circuit was in full voltage, the attention turned to Tim Tebow leading Denver from a big deficit to beat Miami — in a battle of NFL teams that had a combined 1-9 record beforehand.
Could you imagine the massive attention Pujols' night would have received if the Yankees' Alex Rodriguez or Derek Jeter had done that? How about the Red Sox' David Ortiz or Adrian Gonzalez?
It would have been chronicled as not only the best outing in baseball, it would have been compared ad nauseam to perhaps being the best performance ever in sports. But the feat has been relegated to almost footnote status. Little has been made about it nationally even in the Series' aftermath.
Other than the East Coast bias in much of network television coverage, the lack of coverage might have been affected by few people seeing it live. The Nielsen Co. says only 6.6 percent of the nation's homes with a TV were tuned in, making it the second-lowest rated World Series game in records that date to 1971. And it drew the lowest rating in St. Louis of any of the seven contests.
Contributing factors undoubtedly were that the game ended up as a blowout (Cards won 16-7), there was scintillating college football action on TV elsewhere and the game was played on a Saturday — traditionally the least-watched night of programming.