Tonight marks the debut of Four Days in October, the latest addition to ESPN’s critically acclaimed “30 for 30” series. It follows the Boston Red Sox as they fight back from a 3-0 deficit against the New York Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series. The Bloody Sox Game. The “don’t let us win tonight” quote. Etc., etc.
There are plenty of reasons to believe it could be the best-rated debut so far. The current record holder is The U, which earned a 1.8 rating and had 2.3 million viewers on its first airing. (By comparison, the documentary’s have averaged a 0.9 rating and last week’s Into the Wind had less than a million viewers.)
Roughly 4.5 million people live in the Boston Metropolitan area. A massive number of them will watch, especially since the Sox’s 2010 season ended with an unceremonious whimper over the weekend. Elsewhere, the country is gearing up for postseason baseball and is ready for some drama in the form of a tightly edited, one-hour documentary. Parts of the country might be – justifiably – sick of the Sox and their fans, but there are a ton of supporters who want the inside scoop on what happened in those four days. They’ll get it tonight, in record numbers.