Welcome back to your late week, late night, indie pop-up shop where we’re chatting about the World Series until the wee hours of the morning. Whether your beverage of choice is caffeinated or designed
to generate a different type of buzz, we’ve got you covered. Try one of our festbeers before the season is over or indulge in a bit of pumpkin spice. Whatever your preference, we’re going to spice things up with some takes from the World Series.
The baseball has been spectacular so far. In Game 1 Addison Barger hit the first pinch hit grand slam in the history of the Fall Classic. In Game 2 Yoshinubo Yamamoto became the first starting pitcher to throw back-to-back complete games since Curt Schilling in 2001. It’s going to be hard for the atmosphere at Dodger Stadium to compete with what we just witnessed at the Rogers Centre, but something tells me Los Angelenos are ready to try [VIDEO].
But it hasn’t all been brilliant baseball. During Game 2’s “Stand Up to Cancer” moment The Jonas Brothers performed their song “I Can’t Lose.” This resulted in an extended break.
I want to be very clear: The Stand Up to Cancer moment is great. It’s been part of MLB’s big games since 2009. I’ve participated a time or two at Wrigley, always filling out a card for my madrina through tears. It extends a commercial break mid-game by approximately two minutes, as you can see below. It’s impossible to watch without remembering your friends, loved ones and relatives who battled the pernicious disease whether they were successful in that fight or not. You can see Game 2’s SU2C moment below.
This post is not about MLB’s partnership with Stand Up to Cancer.
But on Saturday night, that slightly longer break was extended even more to include a musical act, leading to tonight’s question: Does the World Series need a halftime show? We’ll discuss more after some tunes.
With all due respect to The Jonas Brothers, they are not tonight’s musical interlude. That said, I couldn’t help but think about halftime shows given tonight’s content and you know where this is going:
Purple Rain is an unbelievably beautiful song all on its own:
I never meant to cause you any sorrow
I never meant to cause you any pain
I only wanted one time to see you laughing
I only wanted to see you laughing in the purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
I only wanted to see you bathing in the purple rain
But there is something hauntingly beautiful about watching this song, in the rain, during one of the most American of American moments: the Super Bowl Halftime show. In fact, until that moment in 2007 I don’t think I had any concept of how much I needed this moment, with this song:
Honey, I know, I know, I know times are changin’
It’s time we all reach out for something new, that means you too
You say you want a leader, but you can’t seem to make up your mind
And I think you better close it and let me guide you to the purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain
Purple rain, purple rain (ooh!)
If you know what I’m singin’ about up here, come on, raise your hand
Purple rain, purple rain
I only want to see you, only want to see you in the purple rain
There is a non-zero chance that Prince would have delivered the greatest Super Bowl Halftime Show of all time all on his own. The man was electric. The Hall of Fame musician was a prodigy with an eye for grandeur and a knack for showmanship. But as one of the Reddit commentors mentioned in the above post “That was God being very cool.”
The whole show is beyond epic and well worth a little more than 12 minutes of your time. Prince opens the festivities on a dark stage shaped like the symbol he once adopted as a name. As the symbol lights up he says: “Dearly beloved, we are gathered here today to get through this thing called life.” These are words I’ll be taking with me as I begin my week.
Back to the question at hand, though. What exactly was MLB doing with a musical interlude during the middle of a pitchers’ duel in the World Series? The traditional NFL halftime is 13 minutes, the Super Bowl extends that break to 25-30 minutes in order to set the stage. It’s barely noticeable between the spectacle on stage. Afterall, a once a year extended break in an NFL game that doubles the length of halftime barely registers.
Besides, it’s not like one song added 30 minutes to Game 2. Additionally, MLB reports that The Jonas Brothers are Stand Up to Cancer ambassadors and that this song is inspired by cancer survivors and those who love them:
Earlier this year, the musical group Jonas Brothers, partnering with Mastercard, released a new single and video dedicated to the fight against cancer. As Stand Up to Cancer ambassadors, Jonas Brothers helped elevate awareness of the cause with “I Can’t Lose,” honoring everyone affected by the disease and celebrating the triumph of beating it.
On Saturday, Jonas Brothers performed “I Can’t Lose” after the fifth inning of Game 2 of the World Series at Rogers Centre in Toronto, adding a special new layer to the long-standing SU2C moment that is a signature of Major League Baseball’s big events.
I went back to the video to get a better idea of how much time The Jonas Brothers added to the break. On MLB’s video of Game 2 the bottom of the fifth wraps up an hour and 28 minutes and 42 seconds into the feed. That is followed by the standard commercial break and the Stand Up to Cancer moment and we’re back in the Rogers Centre one hour 30 minutes and six seconds into the game. The MLB tweet above misses some of the transition, so it’s actually a touch longer than two minutes, but at one hour 32 minutes and 20 seconds we’re transitioning, not to the booth, but to The Jonas Brothers. Trust me, I also thought they played for an interminable amount of time, but it was actually just 97 seconds. However, no one is warming up during this time, so at one hour 33 minutes and 57 seconds, we’re finally back to the standard commercial and warm up break. John Smoltz and Joe Davis vamp a bit while Kevin Gausman (you know, the guy who’s throwing a one-run gem in the World Series) warms up. The game resumes at the one hour, 36 minute and 12 second mark, basically seven and a half minutes since we last saw baseball action.
It definitely felt much longer than seven and a half minutes.
MLB has a number of options for how to feature a song during the World Series. For example, they could have worked it into the pregame, or the postgame. It isn’t too difficult to squint and see that by adding a musical moment in the middle of the game, MLB is at least playing around with a concept that many would call Halftime Show adjacent.
It did not go over well with the very online baseball knowers (my apologies for the appearance of some game thread words in the screenshot, but well, this technically did happen during the game):
The groan-worthy reactions weren’t limited to Bluesky, social media commenters across platforms seemed to have the same reaction: Stand Up to Cancer moment — good! Musical performance midgame — bad!
So I ask you Cubs fans, does the World Series need a Halftime Show?
