RATINGS FOR BASEBALL PLAYOFFS RISE

The numbers don’t compare with those for professional football, but in baseball a post-season contest between two teams stretches over several nights — so the combined audience may exceed the number for a single football game. Sunday’s National League Division Series double-header on TBS — Pittsburgh vs. St. Louis and Los Angeles vs. Atlanta — averaged 3.17 million viewers, up more than 18 percent from a year ago. Broadcasting & Cable reported on Monday that the first 11 telecasts of the MLB postseason have averaged 3.48 million each. Actually, football drew a smaller audience than baseball on the NFL Network Sunday when the baseball playoff game in Oakland (Oakland vs. Detroit) the night before forced the football contest between San Diego and Oakland to be postponed from 1:25 in the afternoon to 8:35 at night so that the grounds a O.co Coliseum could be properly prepared. That put the football game on the air in the East Coast at 11:35 p.m. and resulted in a total national audience for it of just 2.5 million viewers.