Beeston’s mess; weekend audiences
November 2, 2009 · 12 Comments
Paul Beeston will find his second act in Toronto completely unlike the glory days and quite possibly very uncomfortable.
For starters, the newly re-minted Toronto Blue Jay president doesn’t have Pat Gillick in the organization to build him a championship team.
And, this time, Beeston will find the Toronto media less patient, perhaps even hostile.
Hiring Beeston as the club’s permanent president was, of course, a bad decision, a point he helped make himself when he gave Cito Gaston another season as manager (after which Cito slides into semi-retirement as a well paid consultant.)
This was wrong-headed in so many ways that even Beeston must have had doubts about it.
For starters, he denied his new general manager Alex Anthopoulos the opportunity to hire his own manager.
What’s more, Beeston returns Gaston to a clubhouse that he couldn’t control last season and where he feuded with at least one coach.
And he makes Gaston a lame-duck — a guy on his way out, a manager who’s there only for the short term.
The Toronto Star’s Garth Woolsey argued yesterday that Cito might do well despite the fact his clout with the players will begin slipping away as soon as the first pitch is thrown on opening day.
Woolsey wrote that “Gaston will certainly try to embellish his managerial legacy not tarnish it. He’ll still try to win as many games as possible.
“Who knows, his players may even get on the program.”
They may, but given the events of 2009, maybe not.
From TSN The Reporters, we heard plenty of skepticism about Beeston and Gaston.
Damien Cox said it was a mistake to make Beeston president.
“This is an organization that desperately needs some fresh air,” he said. “This is spinning your wheels. This is permanent Flashback Friday. This is not a change in the least.”
Mike Farber described Beeston, who had been the interim club president commissioned with finding a permanent president, basically hiring himself, like “O.J. searching for the real killers.”
Steve Simmons said Anthopoulos should have been allowed to choose own manager.
Not surprisingly, the fans aren’t getting restless as much as just plain angry.
Over at The Tao of Stieb, the reaction to Gaston’s deal went this way: “And to think….I was set to post about ‘turning the page’ this weekend and embracing the new Blue Jays front office regime.
“Instead – unless I can bottle my rage – I think I’m taking the rest of the weekend off. It’s better for all of us this way.”
If Beeston did pull rank on Anthopoulos, it wouldn’t be the first time he interfered with a general manager to Gaston’s benefit.
In the early 1990s, he stopped Gillick from firing Gaston, when Gillick felt he wasn’t able to get the job done.
The Star’s Richard Griffin described that move last week as one of Beeston’s accomplishments, because Gaston went on to win two championships. But with the powerhouse lineups Gillick gave him, how could he have not won?
Beeston’s undermining of Gillick would have been one of the reasons for Gillick “retiring” from the organization in 1994 and moving on to the Baltimore Orioles a year later.
Consider what might have been: If, in 1994, it had been Beeston leaving the Jays and Gillick staying, who knows what the past 15 years would have been like? It could not have been much worse.
Notes:
Toronto Maple Leafs Joe Bowen is a good hockey announcer, but on some nights he just seems to mail it in. In a span of two minutes during the game last Friday against Buffalo Sabres, Bowen told us that Sabre rookie Tyler Myers plays for the U.S. national team, when in fact he’s a Canadian citizen and is part of the Hockey Canada program. And he described Leaf Nik Hagman passing the puck to his “countryman” Rickard Wallin. Unless Finland and Sweden are one and the same, they aren’t countrymen.
– In the Leafs-Montreal Canadiens game on Saturday, Canadiens forward Mike Cammalleri interfered with Leaf defender Francois Beauchemin in front of the net, cross checking him to the ice, just a split second before Hal Gill’s point shot went in to give Montreal a 3-1 lead. Beauchemin, incensed, went after Cammalleri. Arguably, Cammalleri should have penalized and the goal disallowed. Hockey Night In Canada’s Craig Simpson missed it all (as did the referees apparently). He certainly didn’t discuss it. Announcer Jim Hughson finally explained what happened.
— ESPN’s John Saunders on how Shaquille O’Neal can improve his weak defensive play: “This week, Shaq applied to become a sheriff’s deputy in Cleveland, which would allow him to make arrests and carry a gun – a good idea if you’ve watched his defense lately.”
The weekend audiences
Hockey: The new BBM Canada measurement system continues to report huge audiences for Hockey Night In Canada’s 7 p.m. ET game.
Hockey Night drew 2.453 million for Toronto Maple Leafs-Montreal Canadiens, matching the Oct. 24 audience for Leafs-Vancouver Canucks.
That’s a jump of about one million viewers per game over last year’s average, a remarkable increase that’s attributable to a measuring system that seems to be more accurate.
Respondents carry a devise called the Portable People Meter which takes into account groups watching a TV show. The 7 p.m. game is clearly watched by groups.
Hockey Night’s second game (Detroit Red Wings-Calgary Flames) was watched by 809,000, about the same as last year’s average.
The 6:30 p.m. ET pre-game show drew 781,000. After Hours was watched by 222,000.
Regionally, Sportsnet Ontario pulled in 692,000 for Leafs-Buffalo Sabres on Friday night. Sportsnet Pacific had 345,000 for Vancouver Canucks-Anaheim Ducks.
Football: TSN drew 537,000 for Winnipeg Blue Bombers-Montreal Alouettes on Sunday afternoon.
On Saturday, Saskatchewan Roughriders-Hamilton Tiger-Cats was watched by 775,000. Calgary Stampeders-B.C. Lions drew 519,000.
On Friday, Toronto Argonauts-Edmonton Eskimos pulled in 515,000.
CTV had an audience of 786,000 for its regional NFL telecasts of early games on Sunday afternoon.
Baseball: Sportsnet drew 840,000 for Game 4 of the World Series (New York Yankees-Philadelphia Phillies) on Sunday night. Fox Television earned a 15.6 overnight rating (percentage of potential households tuned in). That’s the best WS overnight in the United States since Game 4 of the Boston Red Sox-St. Louis Cardinals Game Four in 2004. The 15.6 rating marks a 45.8 per cent from Phillies-Tampa Bay Rays Game Four last year, SportsBusiness Daily reported.
Basketball: Orlando Magic-Toronto Raptors on CBC Sunday afternoon drew 190,000. TSN2 did better with its Raptors-Memphis Grizzlies telecast on Friday: 240,000 viewers.
Soccer: Sportsnet’s English Premier League game on Saturday morning pulled in 150,000 nationally.
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the completely unprofessional circus surrounding trading Halladay falls squarely in Beeston’s lap as well. I can’t imagine any well run organization would allow their lame duck GM publicly discuss each step of the process of trading the best player in franchise history. whatever chance the Jays had in keeping Roy went out the window with the way that was handled, and rightly so. Roy deserves to be with a 1st class organization.
the unfortunate thing is that the people who interview Beeston (Bob and Torchy) don’t ask the obvious baseball questions. the hostile media is limited to bloggers and columnists. Beeston pontificated about how excited he is about the farm system and the ownership, and about the team’s chances at winning the world series. none of these baseless bits of puffery were challenged.
lastly, the GM’s approach and the manager’s approach are diametrically opposed. how is this a recipe for anything other than a 75 win season?
Based on the disaster of this past season, and the atrocious in game managing decisions Gaston makes, he certainly did not earn the right to come back this year, and the game and today’s players seems to have passed him by. Whether the so called players revolt actually did occur or not, the fact is it came during Cito’s watch, and there was obviously some internal problems with communication. Bringing Cito back is a huge step backwards for this team, and gives fans little hope for improvement next year.
I agree with Mike K, Beeston gets way to much slack from TO media. He talks a good game, but this team needs a fresh direction with new ideas and acheiveable goals to provide fan optimism.
Maybe it boiled down to the fact that Rogers was not willing to increase payroll and compete in their division, and therefore, nobody was interested in re-building a team with little valuable assets.
Hello from Russia!
Can I quote a post “No teme” in your blog with the link to you?
Hmm. Zed, as Willliam Houston like to call him, had the explaination of the new ratings system back in September. Does this mean he gets to slam William Houston in his column and refer to him as H while saying he ripped off his column?
Maybe it’s just that we don’t have that many channels in this country, and because there’s not much to report, there’s going to be overlap from time to time.