A thrilling, seven-game conclusion to the World Series between St. Louis and Texas turned baseball’s annual championship into a winner for Fox. Nielsen said the series averaged 16.2 million viewers, well above last year’s five-game contest between Texas at San Francisco, which had 14.3 million viewers. Through five games this year, the Cardinals-Rangers contest was watched by fewer people than all but the 2008 Tampa Bay-Philadelphia series, with none of the games even reaching 15 million viewers.
But World Series ratings get better the longer a Series goes. Going back to St. Louis was a boon for Fox: the multi-comeback sixth game drew just over 21 million viewers. Game 7, the first do-or-die World Series game since 2002, had more than 25 million viewers, Nielsen said.
Even with the sixth game already regarded as one of the best Series games ever, a run-of-the-mill Sunday night football matchup on NBC had a bigger audience. That’s probably because the late-game turn of events that made Game 6 special didn’t happen until midnight and beyond on the East Coast.
Fox’s Game 7 ratings may have been better if the game didn’t take place on a Friday, traditionally one of the least-watched TV nights of the week. The 2011 World Series was the 107th edition of Major League Baseball’s championship series. The “best-of-seven” playoff was played between the American League champion Texas Rangers and the National League champion, St. Louis Cardinals yet the Cardinals defeated the Rangers in seven games to win their 11th World Series championship. In the cliff-hanging Game 6, the Cardinals twice erased two-run deficits when the Rangers were one strike away from their first championship, and won it in 11 innings, 10–9.
Cardinals’ players celebrated after winning their franchise’s 11th World Series title. The Series began on October 19, earlier than the previous season so that no games would be played in November. The Cardinals enjoyed home-field advantages for the series because the National League won the 2011 All-Star Game in July. The 2011 World Series was the first seven-game World Series since 2002.
Josh Hamilton and Michael Young had RBI (Runs Batted In) doubles in the first inning against Chris Carpenter, who became the first pitcher in a decade to make three starts in one Series. David Freese had a game-tying two-run double in the bottom of the first, breaking the post-season RBI record, and Allen Craig hit a go-ahead homer in the third. St. Louis added two runs off the Texas bullpen in the fifth inning without getting a hit. Yadier Molina walked with the bases loaded and Rafael Furcal was hit by a pitch, forcing in another run to make it 5–2. In the seventh inning, Lance Berkman scored on a Molina single to make it 6–2.
