The Schenkel Tournament ended after the 1989 event when it was discovered that the golf club hosting the tournament was all-white, but was revived in 1999 as the E-Z-Go Schenkel Invitational. "I don't care who wins," said the ESPN play-by-play announcer. [163] Although due to a separate arrangement with the Pasadena Tournament of Roses Association, ABC retained the broadcast rights to events in the series that were held at the Rose Bowl stadium, such as the Rose Bowl Game and the 2010 BCS Championship. The games that were broadcast were a hodge-podge of conference matchups even after the ESPN on ABC brand change, with SEC and Big East match-ups occasionally being shown alongside frequent ACC, Big 12 and Pac-10 match-ups. Schenkel appeared (along with Bo Burton) as the bowling announcers in the final match in the 1979 movie Dreamer. King described the timing of the contract with ABC as "the passing of the sun and the moon at the right time for Calgary. (Warner Wolf, Al Michaels and guest analyst Tom Seaver worked the NLCS.) Roone Arledge won broadcast rights for his network and began a relationship with the "five rings" that would last over two decades. He hit upon the idea of broadcasting track and field events sponsored by the Amateur Athletic Union. As we all have biases based on our age, where we live and what teams we followworking on the sideline and in a press box for a decade in Big East country, my personal list might include the name John Congemi 25 timesI've asked for some help in this particular endeavor. [174] Ratings increased significantly for the second match,[175] but they declined rapidly after that,[176][177] and the event was initially cancelled after the 2005 edition, with Woods also wishing to take a break from the event. If the three bowlers each split their matches to go 1 and 1 in the round-robin, total pinfall would decide which man would advance to the final match to face the tournament leader. WebIn 1971, Frank Gifford became available after his contract with CBS Sports concluded; Arledge brought him to ABC to serve as play-by-play announcer, replacing Jackson (who (Fans of Chris Spielman or Matt Millen, if he has any, might be super mad with this particular choice.). Christopher Eugene Schenkel (August 21, 1923 September 11, 2005) was an American sportscaster. So ABC Sports producer Chuck Howard did play-by-play on this game. This was the famous 1010 tie. Cosell's book was seen by many as a bitter "hate rant" against those who had offended him. ABC filled the void left by losing the NBA by counterprogramming Wide World of Sports on Sundays against CBS' NBA coverage. These assignments were not permanent and many different combinations were used[165] ABC locked its broadcasting teams in mid-season. Gifford: (after a pause) Indeed, it is.[75]. He says he saw the trend of analysts taking over came back in the 1970s, when he was asked by ABC producer Chuck Howard if hed be interested in becoming Gifford would once again call the play-by-play when Michaels was busy calling the World Series in 1987 and 1989 and the National League Championship Series in 1988. As a sophomore at Yale University, Ms. Denny had been a student in a seminar that Cosell taught on the "Business of Big-Time Sports in America", and was selected by the Director of Monday Night Football to join their production crew. Schenkel had attended then named Georgia Teacher's College (1930-1958) while in the service near Statesboro during WW II. (Note: Tom Hammond, who worked with Haden and Mayock as well as a host of other analysts, did not make the list but should be mentioned somewhere, so here he is.). [citation needed]. He was the voiceover talent for the first NFL Films production ever made, the 1962 NFL Championship Game between the Green Bay Packers and the New York Giants. This was because ABC gave back the Sunday afternoon schedule to its affiliates four months later. During the early 1960s, NFL Commissioner Pete Rozelle envisioned the possibility of playing at least one game weekly during prime time that could be viewed by a greater television audience (while the NFL had scheduled Saturday night games on the DuMont Television Network in 1953 and 1954, poor ratings and the dissolution of DuMont led to those games being eliminated by the time CBS took over the rights in 1956). Ratings went up after the package was centralized. One man who wasnt too far away was Roones chief Other events that have made its way to ABC include: F1, the UFC, middle weekend Wimbledon matches, Australian Open highlights, the NCAA Women's Gymnastics Championships, the NCAA Division I softball tournament, the XFL, which previously aired on ABC in 2020, and the Premier Lacrosse League. Beginning in 1999, ABC aired a series of match play golf challenge matches on Monday nights. [76] At the time, ABC SportsBeat was the first and only regularly scheduled network program devoted solely to sports journalism. Also in 1992, the Pro Football Hall of Fame presented Schenkel with its Pete Rozelle Radio-Television Award. Often, Wide World of Sports would show full-length replays of the fights a week or two later; these replays were usually called by Howard Cosell, who became one of the best-known (and possibly most controversial) sportscaster in American television history. If a flight was canceled, ABC had a tape of a U.S.-Romania hockey game, played the day before the Opening Ceremony and shipped over, ready to play. Parseghian will not be the last person on this list to have a connection to Notre Dame. [citation needed] Schenkel was at the microphone for DuMont's last broadcast and its only color telecast, a high school football championship game held on Thanksgiving in 1957. A portion of the Closing Ceremony was televised live via satellite (Telstar, which had to be tracked and allowed about a 15-minute window between the U.S. and Europe when it was zooming over the Atlantic). I didn't even realize this until doing research on Chris Schenkel, but I must have heard his voice 1,000 times as a kid, watching bowling on TV. Subsequently, The Walt Disney Company acquired Capital Cities-ABC in 1995 and began the process of putting more effort into the branding of ABC's sports channel ESPN than of ABC Sports itself. To increase viewership after a disastrous cable-only Wild Card game, ESPN announced that their one Wild Card game for the 2015-16 playoffs would be simulcast on ABC, bringing the NFL back to ABC for the first time since Super Bowl XL in 2006. Games televised on ABC were not subject to blackout. In 2021, with ESPNs new agreement with MLB, a possible, and eventual, postseason expansion and return of the Wild Card Series would see ABC get some games. He also was the lead play-by-play announcer for ABCs coverage of the MLB in the 1970s. [7] Major League Baseball according to Scherick, insisted on protecting local coverage and didn't care about national appeal. "ESPN Outbids Fox Sports and Wins B.C.S. Yes, if you look closely enough, I'm under the goalpost trying to hold back the fans from giving Rutgers a 15-yard penalty before the final play.). Said ABC Sports head Roone Arledge "It'll take something different for it to work - i.e. CBS took over the Saturday Game in 1955 (the rights were actually set up through the Falstaff Brewing Corporation[14]) retaining Dean/Blattner and McColgan/Finnegan as the announcing crews (as well as Gene Kirby, who produced the Dean/Blattner games and alternated with them on play-by-play) and adding Sunday coverage in 1957. A Long Islander, her career began on radio and gained a degree of prominence at WCBS News 880 in New York. In 2005, the network lost rights to most of the BCS games, including the BCS National Championship Game, to Fox beginning with the 2006-07 series, in a deal worth close to $20 million per game. It finished 72nd out of 72 shows that week with a rating of 4.8, the worst prime-time number of the year. I'm admittedly in the minority where casual viewers are concerned, I just want raw info and analysis, and they both deliver.". It happened with Jenn Sterger. 3 Clemson on ABC Saturday Night Football presented by Capital One McDonough, Blackledge, McShay and McGrath return with No. ABC won the NCAA contract from the 1966 season onwards. "The only thing I want to see is the craziest, closest, most outlandish finish we canwith an emphasis on overtime.". WebIn addition to being a College and Pro Football Hall of Famer, Gifford enjoyed a stellar second career in the broadcast booth. - ABC elevated Jackson to #1 announcer replacing Schenkel (who moved to anchor the studio show). [4], In 1956, with DuMont exiting the network television business, he moved to CBS Sports, where he continued to call Giants games, along with boxing, Triple Crown horse racing and The Masters golf tournament, among other events. "[136] At that moment, the feed from Candlestick Park was lost. Here's why", "Antonio Tarver Speaks on Fight Postponement", "Tarver fight on ABC might revive boxing on network TV", "Dennis Miller a surprise addition to MNF", "Without Showing Games, ESPN Leaves a Mark on the N.B.A. ABC's final boxing card occurred on June 17, 2000[203][204] with Jos Luis Castillo upsetting Stevie Johnston in the lightweight championship bout in Bell Gardens, California.[205]. After a four-year-long hiatus (when CBS exclusively carried the over-the-air Major League Baseball television rights), ABC returned to baseball in (again, alongside NBC) 1994. [citation needed] During the 1960s and early 1970s, the race was filmed and an edited highlight package aired the following weekend. To accommodate ABCs primetime lineup, the game will move to an afternoon start, similar to ESPNs Pro Bowl coverage in 2018. Herbstreit, in a relatively short amount of time, has become the best in-game analyst in college football and, when compared in his role to similar personalities at the NFL level, perhaps the best in-game analyst in all of football today. fans never showed up in force. [217], Despite the rebranding, George Bodenheimer's official title remained "President, ESPN Inc. and ABC Sports" until his retirement at the end of 2011, upon which the "ABC Sports" portion of the title was retired. The $120 million per year that ABC and ESPN paid for rights dwarfed the $5.5 million that the NHL received from American national broadcasts in the 199192 season. Like Enberg, Gowdy is a member of the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame, inducted in 2005, after calling the game 14 times in his career. Fox showed all BCS championship games the first three years of the contract, while in 2010 the Rose Bowl stadium was the location of the BCS Championship game, and ABC televised it. An early bid by the league in 1964 to play on Friday nights was soundly defeated, with critics charging that such telecasts would damage the attendance at high school football games. Monday Night Golf proved to be an initial success, drawing more viewers than the final round of the U.S. Open,[173] and being second only to the final round of the Masters Tournament in terms of golf broadcasts. The final play of the ABC era was a Patriots kneeldown by 44-year-old reserve quarterback Doug Flutie. The Saturday afternoon lineup outside of football season typically features airings of ESPN Films documentaries or other studio programs under the banner ESPN Sports Saturday, while Sunday afternoons usually feature either brokered programming, or encore and burn-off airings of ABC programs. The Wide World of Sports name remained in use afterward as an umbrella title for ABC's weekend sports programming. "I saw the need for someone with better depth than I," he told The New York Times in 1993, alluding to a roster of partners that included Bud Wilkinson on college football. This will be the first time since 1995 that the Tournament Final will air on broadcast television. - ABC used many active coaches (who were on off-weeks) His ability to handle the insanity of College GameDay on location each week is unrivaled in the business. Who, then, are the best? In later years, with the rise of cable television offering more outlets for sports programming, Wide World of Sports lost many of the events that had been staples of the program for many years (many, although not all, of them ended up on ESPN, a sister network to ABC for most of its existence). Cosell, who had interviewed Lennon during a Monday Night Football broadcast in 1974, was chosen to do so but was apprehensive of it at first, as he felt the game should take precedence and that it was not their place to break such a big story. ABC however, still had rights to the SEC title game. When I heard a few years back that Pat Haden was taking the job as athletic director at USC, my first thought was, "The Notre Dame color guy?". ABC has been airing college football since acquiring the NCAA contract in 1966. Chris Schenkel and Bud Wilkinson were the number one broadcast team through 1973. This in return, was a way to avoid union contracts which require that 100% of network shows had to use crew staff who were network union members. Blacked-out cities had 32% of households. If you have a daughter who likes college football and you know Musburger is calling a game that night, it might be smart to keep her at home. (Note: There are some studio personalities on this list, but they are ranked solely by their work in the booth, not behind the desk. The Browns defeated the Jets, 3121 in a game which featured a 94-yard kickoff return for a touchdown by the Browns' Homer Jones to open the second half, and was punctuated when Billy Andrews intercepted Joe Namath late in the fourth quarter and returned it 25 yards for the clinching touchdown. McKay's honest curiosity and reporter's bluntness gave the show an emotional appeal which attracted viewers who might not otherwise watch a sporting event. ABC carried 30 minutes of live coverage of the start of the race, then switched to the Olympics for 90 minutes to carry taped coverage of the final two competitive events (a cross-country ski race and the final runs in the bobsled), held earlier that day. [3], In 1952, Schenkel was hired by the DuMont Television Network, for which he broadcast New York Giants football and hosted DuMont's Boxing From Eastern Parkway (1953-1954) and Boxing From St. Nicholas Arena (195456), replacing Dennis James as the network's primary boxing announcer. During this period, ABC acquired the rights to several non-major PGA Tour events, mostly important events such as the Memorial Tournament and The Tour Championship. Beginning in 1982, ABC adopted its most well-known format of the Wide World of Sports era. From 1974, while still head football coach, through 2007, Broyles served as Arkansas's AD, meaning that during his entire tenure as the lead analyst for a major network television outfit covering SEC football, Broyles was running the athletic departmentfor one of the teams. Really, there would be no other choice. It happened with Katherine Webb. [106], The Calgary Winter Olympics were the first winter games to earn a significant television revenue base; where the 1980 Lake Placid Games generated only US$20.7 million worldwide, OCO'88 generated $324.9 million in broadcast rights. Patriots linebacker Mike Vrabel set a record of note during that last ABC telecast, becoming the first player to catch two touchdown passes and record a quarterback sack in the same game. The owners in the league walked away from what averaged out to $67 million per year starting in 1986 to pursue their big picturemerger with the NFL. Schenkel appeared as himself in the 1996 film Kingpin. For most of its time on ABC, the Monday night games were held on "dead travel days" when few games were scheduled. In addition, Arledge realized that the broadcasts needed to attract, and hold the attention of women viewers. It should also be noted that Mike Gottfried, Franklin's partner for years at ESPN, did not make this list, which probably (and deservedly) should anger at least one of you. Young announcers have always strung together multiple gigs, but Neal took the conceit further. Jackson was bigger than the game itself in many ways, helping to introduce the sport of amateur football to millions and millions of fans across two or three generations. Fowler is, without a doubt, one of the three or four best game announcers ESPN has for any sport, and he barely gets to call any games with his heavy studio load. Sure, Verne has dropped a few steps as he's gotten older, but there are not many more announcers in any sport better at telling a story from the start of a game to the end. Coverage was normally timed to begin when the race was halfway over. [citation needed]. ABC then negotiated with the College Football Association for its game package. WebDave Marr ABC 19701991, BBC Sport 1992-1997; Stephen McAllister BBC Sport 1999; Gary McCord CBS 1986present; Mark McCormack BBC Sport 1967-1995; Sean And yet, Enberg is one of just a select group of mediaalong with the next announcer on the listto be inducted into the Rose Bowl Hall of Fame. As a result of the 1982 television contract signed by the NFL with the three networks, this game was the first Super Bowl to be televised in the United States by ABC, as they earned their first turn at the Super Bowl, with a new alternation process started for the 1983 game. The game, called by Jim Lampley and Bill Russell, marked the first time Duke University's Blue Devils basketball team played on national television. The other issue with Danielson is that he seems not to care about the resonance of his own words. From 1999 to 2006, the game aired on ABC as part of its BCS package, where it had also been televised from 1969 through 1998. Jack Buck[20] and Carl Erskine[21][22] were the lead announcing crew for this series, which lasted one season. From a 2005 obituary inThe New York Times by Richard Sandomir: "It was Chris Schenkel who put ABC Sports on the map," said Dennis Lewin, a former ABC executive. This was slightly better than the network's coverage of the first American Football League football season back in 1960. Everything Musburger does has a big-game feel to it, helped by the fact that since moving to ESPN and ABC from CBS, he's been tapped for mostly the biggest games on the weekly slate. This format continued through 1978. The guy is only 44 years old! [citation needed] Previously, network sporting broadcasts had consisted of simple set-ups and focused on the game itself. Watch more top videos, highlights, and B/R original content, Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. ABC paid $5.7 million for the rights to the 28 Saturday/holiday Games of the Week. Cosell continued to draw criticism during Monday Night Football with one of his offhand comments during the September 5, 1983 game, igniting a controversy and laying the groundwork for his departure at the end of that season. After NBC was finished with their post-1994 All-Star Game six-week baseball coverage, ABC (with a reunited Al Michaels, Tim McCarver, and Jim Palmer as the primary crew) then picked up where NBC left off by televising six more regular season games. WebSchenkel went on to broadcast many more huge games, including the celebrated Nebraska-Oklahoma match on Thanksgiving Day 1971, as well as the Sugar Bowl As predicted, NBC's offer to the league was lower than the previous agreement's amount. Announcers: Mark Neely, Barrett Brooks, Tori Petry 2 PM: North Alabama @ Memphis (ESPN+) Announcers: Ted Emrich, Leger Douzable 2 PM: UIW @ Northwestern State (ESPN+) Announcers: Patrick Netherton, Gary Reasons, Tyler Moody 2 PM: Murray State @ Southeast Missouri (ESPN+) [4] Four of the BCS bowl games were on FOX: the Orange Bowl, Sugar Bowl, Fiesta Bowl, and a new fifth game, the BCS National Championship Game. Arledge had tried to draw in Curt Gowdy and then Vin Scully to ABC for the MNF play-by-play role, but settled for Jackson after they proved unable to break their respective existing contracts with NBC Sports and the Los Angeles Dodgers. By 1997, ABC's presenting sponsor was Paine Webber. On November 19, 1966, ABC showed a regional doubleheader. Strangely, he was away on assignment for the first three of the PBA's televised 300 games. On the evening of December 8, 1980, English musician John Lennon, formerly of the Beatles, was fatally shot in the archway of the Dakota, his residence in New York City. With ESPN producing 100 games a season, ABC will air about a tenth of the games under a brand new ABC Hockey Saturday package. ABC-affiliated stations owned by Hearst Television (such as WTAE-TV in Pittsburgh; WCVB-TV in Boston; WMUR-TV in Manchester, New Hampshire; WISN-TV in Milwaukee and KMBC-TV in Kansas City) have the right of first refusal over the local simulcasts of ESPN-televised Monday Night Football games involving teams within their home market, which are very rarely waived to other local stations in their market areas. He would eventually call a televised 300 game on January 31, 1987 when Houstonian Pete McCordic bowled one in the first match of the Greater Los Angeles Open. Also in 1960, ABC returned to baseball broadcasting with a series of late-afternoon Saturday games. ESPN also gained rights to a Divisional game, which is also expected to be simulcast on ABC, and two Super Bowls, both exclusively on ABC. From 2010 to 2014, ABC only broadcast three Sprint Cup races with only one Chase race (held in Charlotte, North Carolina) to the outrage of many NASCAR fans and sponsors. As exciting as Gus Johnson is calling college football games for Fox, he's buoyed by his booth partner, Charles Davis. Peter Alliss became sole anchor of the second anchor team. These were the networks first MLB games since the 1995 World Series. "[128], Game 3 of the 1989 World Series[129][130][131] (initially scheduled for October 17[132]) was delayed by ten days due to the Loma Prieta earthquake. In that capacity for Monday Night Football from 1971 to 1985, Gifford was often criticized for his see-no-evil approach in regard to discussing the NFL, earning him the dubious nickname "Faultless Frank." Special honors to Parseghian include his 1980 induction into the National Football Foundation's Hall of Fame and his 1984 induction into the Indiana Football Hall of Fame. All the matches have involved World Number 1 Tiger Woods, and the first seven were run by his representatives IMG. On December 15, 1973, ABC aired what is considered to be the first[37] telecast of a regular season college basketball game by a major broadcast network (between UCLA and North Carolina State in St. Louis). Mikes nine-year (1962-1970) playing career was cut short by a kidney disease and he joined the Cardinals front office in 1971 as assistant director of promotions and sales and entered the broadcast booth in 1972, where he remained for 50 years. Several other events such as the Rose Bowl, the Citrus Bowl and The Open Championship, have also been moved from ABC to ESPN. ), I'm going to age myself for a moment. Action Is the Battle Over TV Rights", "Sports TV get pricier and pricier. ABC first broadcast regular season National Football League games in 1953. Michaels had to pickup a POTS phone in the press booth (phones work off a separate power supply) and call ABC headquarters in New York, at which point they put him back on the air. Is a game close and late? In 1953,[5] Scherick broached a Saturday Game of the Week,[6] TV sport's first network series. All coverage since has aired on cable or Spanish-language networks. The reported cost of the contracts varied the L.A. Times said that ABC had paid $28m for two years, and USA $25m. He became widely known for covering professional bowling, mainly for the Professional Bowlers Association (with the program becoming known as the Professional Bowlers Tour). There is no denying Ara Parseghian's impact on the game of college football, but it wasn't just limited to his work as the Notre Dame head football coach. Michaels added that "baseball was such an early stepchild at ABC and had come such a long way. At the time, they only broadcast Chicago Bears home games and Chicago Cardinals home games. In the 199293[179] and 199394 seasons, ABC televised six[180] weekly regional telecasts[181][182] on Sunday afternoons beginning in March[183] (or the last three Sundays[184] of the regular season). ABC is the broadcast television rightsholder of the National Basketball Association (NBA), with its package (under the NBA on ESPN branding) traditionally beginning with its Christmas Day games, followed by a series of Sunday afternoon games through the remainder of the season, weekend playoff games, and all games of the NBA Finals. In his mind, Monday Night Football is what elevated the NFL in popularity over Major League Baseball. ABC wondered how exactly the Game of the Week would reach television in the first place and who would notice if it did? 1 Alabama vs. No. On September 23, 1967, Chris Schenkel and Bud Wilkinson were scheduled to announce the Penn State-Navy game. In February 1996, The Walt Disney Company purchased Capital Cities/ABC for $19 billion, and assumed the latter company's 80% stake in ESPN at that time. Given these factors, as well as the rise of ABC's ratings on Sunday night, and the network's wish of protecting its Desperate Housewives franchise (which they knew would be costly), on April 18, 2005, ABC and the NFL announced the end of their 36-year partnership, with the Monday Night Football broadcasts being moved to ESPN starting with the 2006 season;[211] the move was criticized by some of the Disney shareholders (as well as NFL fans and purists). 25. To put things into proper perspective, in 1969, Major League Baseball's television contract with NBC was worth $16.5 million while the National Football League cost CBS about $22 million. ABC's final IndyCar telecast was the second race of the Detroit Grand Prix on June 3, 2018. Highlighting the 1968 Winter Games was a dramatic sweep in men's alpine skiing by Frenchman Jean-Claude Killy, while the major highlight of the Summer Games was a world-record long jump by Bob Beamon of the United States, which happened to air live in the US. However, ABC got approval from the NCAA to show this game on tape delay in the late timeslot in the regions of the country which got Kentucky-Tennessee in the early timeslot. He's great at calling golf, he's great at calling college basketballI have said for years that Lundquist and Bill Raftery should get the Final Four over Jim Nantz and Clark Kelloggbut Verne's bread and butter is definitely college football. CBS obtained rights to Big 10 and Pac 10 home games while ABC obtained rights to the College Football Association (essentially home games for all schools other than the B10 and P10). I came to my senses a bit but still kept CBS' lead play-by-play man in the top three. His work calling games could go up against anyone else on this list, as he offers a far more conversational style than some of the more rigid down-and-distance announcers of the past. In 1979, ABC Sports began covering the NASL in a deal that called for 9 telecasts of league games, including the playoffs and Soccer Bowl. In 1976, Schenkel was inducted into the PBA Hall of Fame in the "Meritorious Service" category and in 1988 was inducted into the American Bowling Congress (now United States Bowling Congress) Hall of Fame, also in the "Meritorious Service" category. This is the lead analyst for a major network going on radio (a corporate affiliate network, for whatever that is worth) to talk about an opinion he gave on national TV about a local head coach and brushing it off by suggesting his opinion doesn't matter. An October 5, 2001, Sports Business Daily article cited The New York Times sports columnist Richard Sandomir regarding the possibility of ESPN joining with ABC in obtaining a portion of the contract: [it would be] difficult to imagine the NBA being so overwhelmed by an ESPN offer that it would let [ESPN] team up for a broadcast deal with ABC that would yield fewer games, promotion and exposure. Everything else was videotaped and flown to the U.S. via a Munich-London-New York route. While western European nations paid US$5.7 million combined. Known to many as more of an NFL announcer, Jones had that perfect inflection and sound to call football games, and he led NBC's coverage of the Fiesta Bowl for decades. Since the game was played in Los Angeles, there was no network telecast of the 1951 NFL Championship Game because at that time there was no way to send live TV programs from the West Coast to the East Coast and vice versa. I'm going to go on as long as my mouth works and the airlines don't conspire to drive me insane. Think about this: Herbstreit started with ESPN in 1995, joining the College GameDay crew a year later. Calling his own son's games when Brian, an up-and-coming analyst in his own right, played for Michigan was actually some of the best work he ever did in his career. ABC held the rights to the event from 1962 to 1964 and again from 1999 to 2006. The lawsuit, NCAA v. Board of Regents of the University of Oklahoma, made it all the way to the Supreme Court, who in 1984 ruled in favor of Oklahoma and Georgia and declared the NCAA's forced collective contract a violation of antitrust law. The last of its 265 Cup telecasts (that number includes some on ABC Sports) was the 2000 Atlanta fall race (now the Folds of Honor QuikTrip 500). Schenkel had three children, Christina, Ted, and John. Both networks figured that as the delayed 1995 baseball season opened without a labor agreement, there was no guarantee against another strike.