An October That’s Once in 100 Years, Twice Over

So, what could possibly be a bigger October baseball story than the Boston Red Sox staring into the abyss, with a pennant on the line, tackling their own personal demons -- sometimes also known as the New York Yankees -- inside the House That the Bambino Built?

How about the Chicago Cubs threatening to crash the World Series?

As postseason baseball story lines go, this is pretty much the clash of the titans: the often-considered-cursed Red Sox, bidding for their first World Series championship since 1918 with the hated Yankees in their way, going head to head against the often-considered-worst Cubs, bidding for their first World Series championship since 1908.

So much history under the bridge, over the ivy-covered walls and around the center-field monuments.

So many ghosts converging around the old haunts of Yankee Stadium, Wrigley Field and Fenway Park.

Choose your poltergeist:

Babe Ruth ... or Charlie Root.

Harry Frazee ... or Harry Caray.

Bucky Dent ... or Billy Sianis’ billy goat.

‘78 ... or ’69.

More practically, media outlets outside New York, Boston and Chicago have been faced with the hard choice of which plot line to play above the other. If you’re going to give the people what they want, which developing saga gets priority?

The latest melodramatic turn in baseball’s oldest rivalry?

Or this once-in-two-lifetimes twist to baseball’s oldest joke?

So far, Red Sox Nation has yielded the floor to Cub Country.

Fox came clean on the issue very clearly Wednesday night. First, the network tagged Game 1 of the Red Sox-Yankees series and Game 2 of Cubs-Florida Marlins with the same starting time -- 5:15 p.m. locally. It was a very clinical experiment: Which game airs on Fox and which gets farmed out to cable affiliate FX?

Fox, keeping to tradition, opted for the bizarre reality series. The Cubs knocking on the World Series door could be seen on Fox throughout 58% of the country.

That same 58% saw the Red Sox and the Yankees on FX, also keeping to tradition. FX is where Fox archives its reruns, and can you name a longer-running rerun than the Yankees over the Sox in an important series?

In the East, that ratio was flipped -- 42% of the country saw Red Sox-Yankees on Fox.

Combined, the split telecast on Fox drew a 12.9 overnight rating with a 20 share, according to the network. That represented a 48% increase from Fox’s 2002 split telecast for Anaheim-Minnesota and San Francisco-St. Louis, which drew overnight numbers of 8.7 and 14.

Sports Illustrated’s offices are in New York, but its readership is national. This week, the magazine devoted most of its cover to Cub pitcher Kerry Wood and the miracle-at-work headline, “Do You Believe?”

Pictured inside a miniature inset next to Wood’s left foot is Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez along with much smaller type that reads, “Can Boston Finally Take Down the Yankees?”

It’s a spin on the old journalistic axiom: “Dog Bites Man” is not major news, but “Man Bites Dog” certainly is.

The Cubs pulling to within three victories of the World Series? That’s “Man Bites Dog.”

The Red Sox versus the Yankees for the pennant? That’s “Man Gets Ready to Kick Poor Dog Again.”

“They’re both compelling stories,” said Fox Sports President Ed Goren on Thursday. “The reason the Cubs are more compelling is that the Red Sox, before the season started, they had a shot. People figured, well, maybe this is the year. I don’t know if people figured the Cubs in that same vein....

“I heard somebody tell a joke the other day that if the Cubs win the World Series, we may lose a lot of people. The reason is that people have been saying for years, ‘Please Lord, just let me see a Cubs’ win in the World Series before you take me away.’ ”

Earlier, when Fox and ESPN mapped out the schedule for the first round of the playoffs, Fox gave its first prime-time slot to Game 1 of the Cubs-Atlanta Braves series. Game 1 of the Yankees-Minnesota Twins series began in the afternoon and was shown on ESPN -- much to the dismay of Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, who released a statement saying, “The Yankees are the biggest draw in baseball, and tied for the very best record. Who else should be in prime time?”

Fox’s answer: The long-hapless Cubs, that’s who.

“If I had the decision-making process,” Steinbrenner said, “I’d put the Yankees in the night game. We’re the best-known team and that’s where we belong.”

That’s the kind of talk that pushes the Cubs ahead of the Yankees-Red Sox in the minds of network executives and neutral fans. Steinbrenner calls the Yankees “the biggest draw in baseball.” Ben Affleck, in the opening moments of “The Curse of the Bambino,” HBO’s study of the suffering of Red Sox fans, flatly declares that “For the last 100 years, the Boston Red Sox, my team, has been the most interesting in baseball.”

East Coast arrogance and self-absorption don’t play well across the country. In 2000, when the Mets and Yankees played in the World Series, one New York newspaper, in typical understated fashion, described the confrontation as “Armageddon.” The rest of the nation yawned. The Mets-Yankees series drew the lowest national rating, 12.4, ever for a World Series until last year’s Angels-Giants series checked in at 11.9.

In fact, the Yankees have been involved in four of the five lowest-rated World Series of all-time -- all of them during the last five years.

Quipped Goren, “I thought everybody hated New York until last year. And then I realized they don’t like the West Coast, either.”

But Middle America loves the Cubs. Game 5 of the first round, featuring the Cubs winning their first postseason series since 1908, drew a 9.8 rating with a 15 share -- equaling the Fox record for the highest-rated first-round telecast. Tuesday night’s Cubs-Marlins opener, also on Fox, drew a 10.1 rating, the best for a league championship series opener in a decade.

Goren compares the current Cub bandwagon to the exponential growth of coast-to-coast Cheeseheads when the Green Bay Packers, after decades of mediocrity, appeared in consecutive Super Bowls during the 1990s.

“Until about five, six years ago, the Green Bay Packers had a bad run,” Goren said. “Then all of a sudden, the Packers started winning. And all of a sudden, people started going into their closets getting their Packers gear out and wearing it.

“I think there are certain teams that people just follow, but until they show you something, it’s tough to admit.”

Cub fans are out of the closet, so to speak. Unlike Red Sox fans who wear their near-miss angst on their sleeves, Cub fans seem happy just to be here, in only the team’s third appearance in the National League championship series, bidding for their first pennant since 1945.

Goren believes that baseball fans in the Midwest, relegated to the World Series sideline in recent years, are rallying around the Cubs’ cause.

“I had a feeling the last few years that Middle America had gone away from baseball,” Goren said. “I mean, you had the Yankees and the Mets and the Angels.... It seems advancing in the postseason, you really haven’t had a lot from the Midwest. And it’s a great, great baseball part of the country.

“I mean, kids used to grow up on farms throwing baseballs at the barn door or whatever. I think part of what’s going on is that the whole central part of the country has come back in to this postseason, when we didn’t have it in past years. And I know the Cards were in for a bit last year, and the Twins. But it’s not quite the same.”

And still out there, still mathematically possible at this late date, is a potential World Series between the Cubs and the Red Sox. Can you imagine those television numbers?

Goren can, but he stops short of stating his rooting interests on the record.

“You know what?” he said. “I went to the synagogue the other day and I said, ‘Lord, I’ve asked a lot this year. You have delivered. I will ask no more. It is in your hands.’ ”

Better keep that “Armageddon” headline handy. It might be accurate this time around, if the Cubs and the Red Sox somehow manage to keep winning.