LITTLE ROCK — Ask around for a World Series prediction, and many baseball fans forecast a November classic: Albert Pujols and his St. Louis Cardinals vs. Derek Jeter and the New York Yankees.
Until then, a good chunk of that crowd wants to see something else. Like Monday Night Football.
An Associated Press-Knowledge Networks poll released Friday found that two out of five baseball fans say they would rather watch a regular-season NFL game than a major league playoff matchup.
"That's kind of a bitter pill to swallow for a ballplayer," Seattle Mariners infielder Josh Wilson said. "The NFL is booming right now. I'm sure that question 15 or maybe even 10 years ago, an overwhelming majority would have rather watched baseball playoffs."
While the poll didn't delve into why a baseball fan might prefer theNFL - say Cardinals-Seahawks instead of Cardinals-Dodgers - it could be that baseball has expanded its playoffs too far. More than half the fans in the survey said they wanted a shorter postseason.
Or it could simply be the calendar. The NFL is just heating up, meaning more of its fans can still dream of the playoffs.
Texas Rangers infielder Omar Vizquel suggested that if the poll were conducted in the middle of the grinding football season, the results might be different.
"I really believe baseball is the No. 1 sport in America," he said.
The survey also showed:
When fans were asked to pick the World Series winner from all the likely playoff contenders, both National League and American League, the Yankees were the choice by a nearly 3-to-1 margin over the Cardinals and Boston Red Sox.
More than 80 percent said thereis no need to add extra teams to the playoff mix.
While NBA and NHL fans live for round after round in postseasons that go on for two months, 55 percent of baseball fans said they would prefer a longer regular season and a shorter postseason.
Baseball's playoffs start Oct. 7, and Game 7 of the World Series would be played Nov. 5. This will be only the second time the World Series has been played in November - the first being 2001, when the 9/11 attacks caused a one-week delay.
As for TV habits, the survey asked: If you could watch only one sporting event on a particular night this fall, an NFL regular-season game or a baseball playoff game, which would you choose?
More than two in five - 41 percent - chose football.
"There's only one NFL game a week," Oakland Athletics Manager Bob Geren said. "Even in theplayoffs, unless it's a pivotal game, they probably think they can watch tomorrow."
Asked to pick who would have the greatest impact in the postseason, Jeter and Pujols nearly tied at the top, doubling up the Dodgers' Manny Ramirez and far ahead of David Ortiz of the Red Sox.
The Yankees were a runaway choice to win the championship, at 37 percent.
The AP-Knowledge Networks poll was conducted Sept. 14-21 and involved online interviews with 559 adults who said they were interested in Major League Baseball. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.1 percentage points.
The poll was conducted by Knowledge Networks, which initially contacted people using traditional telephone and mail polling methods and followed with online interviews. People chosen for the study who had no Internet access were given it for free.
Sports, Pages 22 on 09/26/2009