It will be a series of firsts:

  • First World Series appearance by the Kansas City Royals in a generation (this reporter was three weeks old when the ‘85 Series began).
  • First potential three-time winner in a 5-year span since the dynastic Yankees of the late 90s.
  • First time two teams with less than 90 regular season wins will meet in a fall classic.

On the media side, there are firsts as well, both for consumers and in the broadcast booth. For the first time this year, the World Series will be available to stream on mobile devices via the Fox Sports Go app. It will also be the first World Series broadcast on Fox without longtime analyst Tim McCarver, as Harold Reynolds and Tom Verducci settle into the booth alongside veteran play-by-play man Joe Buck.

“Tom and I talk about it all the time,” says Reynolds on a conference call with reporters Monday afternoon. “‘Can you believe we’re doing the playoffs? Can you believe we’re doing the World Series?’”

“It’s worked out exactly as I had hoped,” Buck says about the chemistry of the trio. After a full season of games on cable channel Fox Sports 1 and the flagship Fox, executives seem to agree.

“This is what you hope for when you get to know a group of guys,” says Fox Sports President and Executive Producer Eric Shanks. “[Executive Producer] John [Entz] and I and everyone at Fox kind of high five after every game.”

Not surprisingly, the network is rolling out all sorts of technological bells and whistles for the Series, including a 1,000 frames-per-second 4K camera, which delivers close ups of the pitcher and batter, and two Phantom Cams, which deliver 3,000 frames-per-second replays in dazzling detail. The games will be captured through 38 cameras, including 20 in standard HD and eight robotic cameras.

Pregame and postgame coverage will be handled by Kevin Burkhardt and current and former big leaguers Nick Swisher and Gabe Kapler, respectively, along with Hall of Famer Frank Thomas. Last year’s World Series MVP and human sound byte David Ortiz will join the coverage for the first two games. Ken Rosenthal and Erin Andrews will once again serve as sideline analysts.

Fox Sports 1’s first year was a mixed-bag but MLB playoff games have buttressed viewership, with more than 5 million tuning in to Game 4 of the NLCS, making it the most-watched program in the nascent network’s history. In fact, MLB playoff games now account for FS1’s top five most-watched programs. Executives hope those numbers will elevate its visibility.

“Significant numbers of those viewers probably hadn’t watched anything on Fox Sports 1 before,” says Shanks.

The introduction of Fox Sports 1 will continue throughout the Fall Classic, with World Series editions of America’s Pregame and Fox Sports Live.

While diehard baseball fans are likely to be excited by seeing a small-market team like the Royals play for the championship, the matchup doesn’t inherently lend itself to huge ratings. While San Francisco is a top 10 market, it isn’t New York or L.A. Plus, the Giants participated in the least-watched World Series ever in 2012 and it wasn’t due to a lack of competitive baseball (even though San Francisco swept Detroit, the final three games were decided by two runs or less). That series averaged a 7.6 rating and an average viewership of 12.7 million. By contrast, nearly three times that number tuned in to the last World Series the Royals appeared in back in ‘85.

Baseball isn’t helped this year by the fact that Game 4 Saturday night will go up against a marquee college football game (Ole Miss vs. LSU) on ESPN and Game 5, if necessary, would go head-to-head with the Cowboys/Redskins on Sunday Night Football.

“There’s a lot of competition when it comes to the fall,” Shanks says. “I’d be lying if I said I didn’t look up on the monitor wall and check every score [of competition games]...it’s not really anything new.”

Still, there’s no shortage of interesting story lines. Reynolds points out that fans will be treated to a historically great catcher, in Giants back stop Buster Posey, who is on his way to a Hall of Fame career, and a coming-of-age star in pitcher Madison Bamgarner. Buck looks forward to seeing young players in the midst of breakout seasons like Royals outfielder Lorenzo Cain and Giants rookie Joe Panic.

“It’s a juggling act,” Buck says, about catering to both diehards and less-knowledgeable fans, “but you can’t assume everyone knows who these guys are.”

Verducci says both teams are compelling because of their enthusiasm. “They look like little-leaguers,” he says of the Royals. “They hit a single and they’re up on the top step jumping up and down…it’s infectious to see the way these two teams play baseball.”

This spring, when Fox announced that Reynolds and Verducci were being added to the booth, Buck told reporters “I don’t think there’s a more criticized or picked apart role in major television sports than doing the World Series on network television…I think these guys can handle it.”

We’re about to find out.

Photo courtesy of mlb.com.

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