Fantasy Football and Black Baseball

             Two very diverse readings this week. In John Fortuato’s The Relationship of Fantasy Football Participation with NFL Television Ratings, we get a thoroughly numbers based study on a very modern subject, while in Brian Carrol’s A Perfect Baseball Day, we are treated to a passionate recounting of an older story. A study in contrasts for sure, and one that will certainly divide the stat people from the heart people, depending on which article you like better.

            In Fortunato’s article, he studies the ways in which fantasy football participation has expanded interest in the National Football League, specifically if it drives up television ratings. For his study, he looked at the ratings of every Sunday and Monday night football game. He then attempted to determine if higher percentages of fantasy starters in a matchup led to higher ratings. His somewhat confusing results determined that he did indeed find a correlation between fantasy players starting percentages in a matchup and the resultant TV ratings. However, that did not at all appear to be any kind of determining factor in the scheduling of games, as playoff implications are what drives a network to flex out a game late in the season- not potential fantasy owners.

            In the much more interesting Carrol article, he talks about the history of the East-West Classic. Originating in the same year as the MLB All-Star Game, the Classic was a cultural institution for the Black American community as it was a showcase of the very best colored players on the grand stage: in Major League ballparks. By 1933, the relationship between the Black Press and the Negro Leagues was beginning to deteriorate, but the Classic re-kindled the relationship with the Pittsburgh Courier and the Chicago Defender and they featured them coverage of it heavily. The Classic often outdrew big league ballgames held in the same day and city and, during World War II, outdrew the MLB All-Star Game. By the time the Negro Leagues had dwindled into the twilight in 1955, with MLB well on its way toward integration, the Classic was laid to rest. As Kansas City Call sports editor John Johnson put it “Negro baseball has served its purpose.”