First road telecast of the year.
Cardinals at Astros.
Great rivalries make great television.
This telecast featured one of the biggest rivalries in all of baseball. The Cardinals and the Astros have basically owned the NL Central Division this century. The games, be it April or September, are usually tight, hard fought contests. These are the games that each baseball TV production team looks forward to televising.
Although the Cardinals and the Astros have each only played three games this season, and each club has failed to win a game, this rivalry ignites the TV production teams because these games usually evoke some kind of memory.
This game was no different.
The Cardinals came through with a 1-2-3 double play on a suicide squeeze.
The Cardinals’ pitcher bare-handed the bunt, flipped to the catcher, the catcher tagged the runner from third base, turned 360 degrees and fired to first base to complete the double play.
The Cardinals’ manager – third on Major League baseball’s all-time list for wins - said he had “never seen this play before”.
It was truly one of the best plays any baseball fan could ever see.
Unfortunately, for the Cardinals viewer at home and for our production team in the truck, this rare, fantastic play was not covered as completely as it could have been covered. Being that the Cardinals and Houston belong to the same network television family, the visiting telecast (Cardinals) share most of the cameras in the telecast. Indeed, the Cardinals’ telecast controls only three cameras with the other eight cameras being controlled by the Houston TV production team.
We are in the back end of a “dual feed”.
The “dual feed” is cost saving measure utilized by the network.
Rather than have the cost of 12, 13, 14, or even 15 cameras on two telecasts, the dual feed scenario incorporates 9, 10, or 11 cameras into the telecast. The idea being that when the ball is in play, all Directors “cut” the action the same way. So, since each Director “cuts” game action the same way – cameras can be eliminated. While, in essence, this may be true – the ball is in play and the Director goes to the high home camera (camera 2 - which follows the ball), cutting to the runner or runners (cameras 1 or 5 – depending on Director preference) as they approach each base and then ending up with the player who hit the ball.
Certainly, every baseball Director follows the ball with Camera 2, but not every Director cuts in runners the same. Runner shots are a matter of preference and, in some instances, a matter of experience. Regardless, it is each individual Director’s “cut” of the game up to the action that “sets up”, creates, and enhances the value of the shots during and after a “play of the game”.
Certainly, as the TV Director of Cardinals’ baseball, this unbelievably fantastic play would have, most certainly, been set-up with shots prior to the actual live play, immediate shots that would have enhanced this wonderful accomplishment and post-play shots that would have covered the magnitude of this athletic endeavor.
I also know that the Producer of Cardinals’ baseball would have shown more than the two angles shown during this telecast and these angles would have been shown in a most effective sequence
The Houston feed of the game covered the 1-2-3 squeeze play double play as good as could be covered by a production team on the wrong end of the double play. Unfortunately, our Cardinals’ TV production team, because of the dual situation, did not and could not cover this rare, fantastic play as good as we could have.
Certainly, if this were a home game and we were in charge of the maximum amount of cameras and tape machines, this play would have elicited the proper amount of replay camera angles that a play of this magnitude warranted.
The St. Louis Cardinals’ TV production team is well aware of the cost of televising this wonderful baseball product.
It begs the question:
What does the cost of televising this wonderful product cost this wonderful product?