World Series Game 1 will be remembered for a few things like being the longest game in Fall Classic history, but one of the early storylines was the Fox outage that had Americans talking for a half-hour on Tuesday. It was one of the more bizarre moments on any live sports broadcast which not just affected the network, but also the MLB replay system back in New York.
Joe Buck was front and center in the whole thing, calling the play-by-play and reading a promo for the Fox series, The Grinder, when the power went out in the production truck outside Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City. Fox had to scramble first tossing to a surprised Dan O’Toole in Los Angeles, then took MLB International’s worldwide feed, eventually taking over the booth until things got back to normal by the 7th inning.
Buck described the outage from his point of view on the Rich Eisen Show on DirecTV/Fox Sports Radio on Wednesday:
By mentioning The Grinder, it led stars Rob Lowe and Fred Savage to tape their own “reply” which aired during Game 2 on Wednesday.
The other storyline for Fox was the holding of the death of Edinson Volquez’s father until after the Royals pitcher was taken out of the game. While other outlets had reported and social media was abuzz with the story, Fox’s Ken Rosenthal decided not to make the information public on the network broadcast because the telecast was being shown in the Royals clubhouse. Buck also discussed that decision with Eisen:
In his day and age, we want to know the explanations of the machinations and Buck certainly provided them to Eisen.
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