Fox Sports.com and MLB.com have teamed up for an online pregame show for the American League Championship Series, just like TBS and MLB have for the past two weeks for the League Division Series and the NLCS.
For “ALCS Live”, Fox Sports has tapped Chris Myers to host. The man is a pro having done work with ESPN and hosted NASCAR for Fox. MLB has provided the great Harold Reynolds and Jim Leyritz for analysis. Fox also has Ken Rosenthal for interviews. I didn’t see the first day as I was quite busy running home from work. In the first ten minutes, I already like what I see.
Fox has plenty of experience in producing good shows and this works well. Fox has everyone at Fenway Park where TBS has the Hot Corner crew in Atlanta. Anytime you have HR as part of your crew, you already have won half the battle. The man has won Emmy Awards for studio analysis so this is old hat to him.
Plus, Ken Rosenthal is the heir apparent to Peter Gammons for Best Information Reporter in all of Baseball. He’s a good writer and has good contacts, plus he interviews well.
The show flows well and HR and The King, Jim Leyritz have a good chemistry. It’s not like HR and John Kruk from Baseball Tonight, but it’s still pretty good.
Perhaps Fox can do this every Saturday before its MLB coverage. But to rival TBS’ promos for Frank TV, Fox has to give us promos for The Alternative with Jay Mohr. Jay can be funny, but his Fox Sports.com “columns” (I put them in quotation marks because … well, you’ll see) are horrible and notice I won’t link to them. Anyway, asides from Mohr, the Fox online show is good and works well. There’s no need for me to do another post on the pre-game show, but I will probably do one on the postgame sometime around 11 p.m. ET. Check back later.
