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SPORTS WATCH: ESPN's historic task

Neil Best

September 19, 2008

The game doesn't matter, except that it does. That will be ESPN's challenge Sunday night as it seeks to chronicle the Yankees' final appearance at the big ballpark in the Bronx.

So yes, there will be booth guests, including Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra. But no, Jon Miller and Joe Morgan will not ignore the goings-on below.

"We need to be on top of everything that happens for the historic nature of it," Miller said, pointing to milestones such as the final home run hit in the building, whenever that comes.

"If there had been television on the day the stadium opened in 1923 and you were sitting there talking to Jack Chesbro about his 41st win \, then the Babe hits the first home run, that would have been kind of regrettable."

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Tim Scanlan, an ESPN vice president for event production, said, "The game almost serves as the narrative to get all of that other storytelling into that window."

New York fans will be keeping a close eye on how ESPN handles all this.

In a simpler world, the game against the Orioles would be at 1 p.m. on YES, with local announcers and a sane bedtime for fans.

That's not the world we live in. ESPN exercised its right in early July to move the game to prime time, and struck gold when the Yankees' flop ensured it definitively would be the Stadium's last game.

Feel free to complain if you wish, but with all due sensitivity to inconvenienced ticketholders, this is an event of interest far beyond New York and should be on national, prime-time TV.

(Having said that, it is certain to lose the ratings race to NBC's Cowboys-Packers blockbuster.)

So that leaves Miller (a Californian) and Morgan (a Texan) to tell this New York story, and both have been targets of criticism for their work in doing so in the past.

(In May, Miller followed Carlos Delgado's controversial non-home run off the Stadium leftfield foul pole with a strange assertion that the pole was misaligned. In fact, he was viewing a misleading camera angle.)

No worries, I think. Miller understands and appreciates the magnitude of the event, and will have help from guests such as Berra (who will narrate a piece to open the telecast), Ford and Billy Crystal.

YES' Michael Kay and Paul O'Neill have been invited to stop by, but Kay will not call the last inning, a bold suggestion from Miller to make the final frame "a Yankees telecast for Yankees fans."

Said Scanlan: "We believe as we get to that ninth inning it's really about the Stadium and the teams on the field. We will have an understated approach to that whole ninth inning."

Miller said he hopes to educate viewers about the Stadium beyond the Yankees' history, hence a planned visit from Negro League star Mahlon Duckett.

ESPN2 will devote an hour to pregame coverage starting at 7 before ESPN joins at 8. The network has been told ceremonies should be over around 8:12, with a first pitch at 8:25, 16 minutes later than a normal Sunday night game.

Miller has been at the final games for the Orioles at Memorial Stadium, the Giants at Candlestick Park and the Astros at the Astrodome. But this is different.

"Yankee Stadium has so much more history and tradition to it," he said.

ESPN had to pass on a Red Sox-Yankees game this season to avoid reaching its Yankees limit. The payoff is a dramatic finish for the network's Sunday package.