World Series needs an update, and he has a plan

I'm skipping what should be the most important sports event of the year, and I'm sick about it.

I'm ditching the World Series.

And it's the World Series' fault.

As a writer groomed on the baseball beat, I will always be in love with the Fall Classic, its two-minute duels, its exhausting dramas, its suffocating pressure, a tobacco-spitting metaphor for the human condition.

Since my first World Series 25 years ago -- remember Rick Dempsey? -- I embraced it, supported it, sold it, through strikes and sweeps and Detroit snow.

But as a general interest sports columnist, I must sadly admit that the World Series is no longer an event of great general interest.

OK, this year there is big interest in Tampa -- at least for the last couple of days. During a three-game home stretch this season, the Rays drew 26,798 fans combined .

And, yes, there is big interest in Philadelphia for the Phillies -- at least as long as the Eagles have a bye. A couple of weeks ago, when both were on TV at the same time, the Eagles drew nearly twice as many viewers even though the Phillies were in the playoffs.

For the last several years, I've worked the World Series amid a nagging feeling that I should be somewhere else.

And so now, mournfully, I am.

The Lakers are opening a season, USC football is walking a tightrope, Brett Favre is a big whiny baby, and those last seven words will probably generate more e-mail than our entire World Series coverage combined.

With television ratings that have dropped by 50% over the last four decades -- cable has cut into all ratings, but holy cow -- the World Series is no longer one of the sports world's big four, must-see events.

The Super Bowl is four times as big. The BCS championship football game is bigger. The Final Four basketball championship is bigger. And the Masters golf tournament is bigger.

"As related to baseball's regular season, the World Series is actually viewed as less important," said Marc Ganis, president of Sportscorp, a Chicago-based sports business consulting firm. "The regular season has soap operas. The regular season is an event. The World Series feels anticlimactic."

This World Series features a memorable worst-to-first team against a franchise that has won one baseball championship in 125 years. It should be closely contested, hotly tempered, a true Fall Classic.