Hoerner a Fall Star, Ratings Crater, Amazing Uniforms, and Other Bullets

Sorry for the late weekday Bullets. The Parents came into town and treated me to a very nice birthday breakfast, so I took my time enjoying it. At my age (now 37), you never know how many big, beautiful breakfasts you have left. I kid. I know that I have exactly 143 left. I can see the future.

  • Cubs infield prospect Nico Hoerner is headed to the Fall Stars Game! He wound up winning their version of the final vote this week:
  • World Series ratings were incredibly low given the teams involved and their markets, which tells you that just having big-time teams in a given televised match-up is not going to be enough to carry ratings anymore. Sure, ratings for everything on TV are trending down, but you do wonder about the impact of having all the postseason games on cable channels. It doesn’t really give people an opportunity to build up their interest over the course of the postseason to want to see the World Series on Fox. So you’re left with a World Series watched by only three groups: (1) Red Sox fans, (2) Dodgers fans, and (3) HARDCORE baseball fans. Worse than not pulling good ratings: you’re not really attracting casual fans to watch your marquee event and maybe help them become hardcore fans eventually.
  • Cubs dropping World Series highlights, because there’s never a bad time to remind folks that the ratings are much better when the Cubs are involved:
  • The ratings next year will totally be just as enormous as in 2016, when the Cubs are trying to end their hellacious three-year drought.
  • RIP Willie McCovey:
  • McCovey raked in an era when few guys were raking, and, at his peak, he was not only ripping the ball, he was registering nearly twice as many walks as strikeouts.
  • I am seeing the release of the city jerseys for basketball – impressive work by the Bulls – and I’m reminded of my position on wanting to see the Cubs diversify their uniform portfolio a bit in the coming years, even if it means just using some sweet throwbacks:
  • Beer is good, but beer is not so good that it’s worth chucking it to someone standing next to the World Series trophy:
  • Amazon has opened up Early Black Friday Deals, so you’re gonna want to head over and check it out.
  • written by

    Brett Taylor is the Lead Cubs Writer at Bleacher Nation, and you can find him on Twitter at @BleacherNation and on LinkedIn here. Brett is also the founder of Bleacher Nation, which opened up shop in 2008 as an independent blog about the Chicago Cubs. Later growing to incorporate coverage of other Chicago sports, Bleacher Nation is now one of the largest regional sports blogs on the web.

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