The day after the All-Star game Major League Baseball issued a news release declaring a 3 percent increase in the overnight television ratings for the game on Fox. Considering the negative history of the game’s declining ratings, this development appeared to be something worth celebrating.

In my last column I reported the ratings rise but cautioned that M.L.B. should wait for the final ratings before celebrating anything. I’m not a ratings expert; I frankly don’t care about ratings. In terms of interest to me, they are the television version of WHIP and WAR. However, from scrutinizing All-Star ratings I have learned that final ratings are often lower than overnights.

And indeed that was the case here, except you might have missed it in the blizzard of statistics Fox included in its news release. M.L.B. let Fox do the spinning on this one.

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In their build-up to the All-Star game, Fox and Major League Baseball used everything but the fire-eater, the sword-swallower and the bearded lady. They were intent on turning the game into a sideshow, a carnival, anything that would induce people to watch and thus increase the ratings.

They flooded their programs – the network – with commercials featuring a series of players as pitchmen, or carneys, as they were called in the sideshow habitat.

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In the latter third of the 1948 season a huge Pirates fan, my father, wrote a letter to Rosey Rowswell, the team’s lead radio announcer, and included a check for World Series tickets. The Pirates, surprisingly, were threatening to win the National League pennant, and with the letter and the check my father was expressing confidence in the team and its chances of playing in the World Series for the first time since 1927.

Rowswell, however, returned the check, writing in a note, “Brother, you’re too optimistic for me.”

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