ESPN’s telecast of the 2011 State Farm Home Run Derby earned a 4.7 rating and averaged 6,686,000 viewers.

Compared to last year’s numbers, ratings and viewership were up two (4.6 rating) and four percent (6,418,000), respectively.

Monday’s telecast peaked from 9:30-10 p.m. ET with a 5.1 rating.

Locally, the top five metered markets were Boston (10.3), Milwaukee (9.3), Providence (8.4), St. Louis (7.8) and Hartford/New Haven (7.5).

Brian Parks of the Village Voice interviews Morning Joe’s Willie Geist, who gives some behind-the-scenes secrets of the MSNBC morning show.

“People assume there’s some FCC rule that says you can’t drink alcohol on television,” he says when asked if “more alcohol consumed on your show” than other morning programs. “Nonsense. No such rule exists. Actually we haven’t checked the rules, but there probably isn’t one, right?”

He jokes that regular contributor Pat Buchanan “has a ‘Thug Life’ tattoo across his stomach,” in honor of Tupac Shakur. But he also reveals something real that people would be surprised to know about the conservative commentator. “If you talk in private to Upper West Side lefties who pray five times a day in the direction of Barack Obama‘s birthplace of Honolulu, they’ll confess that they’ve come to love Pat Buchanan. They hate themselves for it, but they love Pat,” he said.

Click continued for Geist’s story of meeting Jose Canseco in a nightclub a couple years ago (he compared himself to the steroid-slugger)…

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