The MLB Network is venturing into a field that hasn’t been very popular lately: the sports-related game show. Baseball IQ will be premiering on January 24th at 9 PM, and will probably result in fans across the country screaming answers at their TV like your parents did with Jeopardy!
The format of the show closely resembles Stump the Schwab, with a back and forth list-based game going on for eight “innings” and each inning being worth a designated number of “runs” depending on how deep they go into the category. The final inning is a wagering/bidding type of system, with each player bidding on how many answers in a given category they can get, with that bid corresponding to the amount of runs at stake.
But who are the contestants? Well…. they’re random employees from MLB teams. The season of Baseball IQ will feature a 32-man tournament, with one person from each MLB team (plus one representing MLB.com, and one representing the Hall of Fame) competing in a NCAA-style bracket, with the ultimate prize being a grand total of $45,000 for charity. The actual competitors are interesting, because none of them have the same job. Some of their jobs include video coordinator, account executive, museum curator, and statistical analyst, so as you can tell, they really picked people from every field on the team.
The initial premise seems pretty cool, especially for a pretty boring time of year for baseball, where it is constantly getting overshadowed by all the other sports in season in the winter. The format seems like a blatant ripoff of Stump the Schwab though, but hey…I liked that show. Matt Vasgersian will be hosting, and we can only hope he’ll be wearing a throwback jersey during each episode like Schwab did on his ESPN show.
The show will run from January 24th until February 23rd, with two episodes airing a night starting at 9 PM on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Here’s a link to the competitors on the show, and more information about the format and prizes.
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