Talkin' baseball...

Kluszewski, Campanella!

First, a breakdown of my readers thus far, as I understand them:

Me.
My wife, when I remind her.
Mike and Melissa.
Stephanie.
My mother-in-law.
My Advanced Legal Research professor.
My other Advanced Legal Research professor.

Good group. A small group, but a sociologically and geographically diverse one stretching (well, more like jumping) from one coast of this great nation to the other. And growing at a rate of approximately one U.Va. Advanced Legal Research professor per week (warning: due to sample size issues, data may not be a reliable predictor of future performance). If you're reading this for some (or more likely no) reason and don't appear on the above list, I hope you'll let me know somehow (like by using the "comments" link below). It's fun to hear.

Right. So, as one who is hopelessly addicted to the complex, often frustrating, and ultimately pointless world of Major League Baseball, and in particular to the very out-of-market Minnesota Twins, I'm now entering my third year of subscribing to MLB.TV, which allows me (subject to certain restrictions, which are the subject of this portion of the entry) to watch essentially every game through my dying laptop and the miracle of the internet. This year, I even shelled out the extra thirty bucks for their premium package: you get a much higher resolution picture, and access to a software program that allows you to watch and shift seamlessly among the audio streams for up to six games at once (and may even function someday soon).

All in all, I'm happy with it. The picture quality is very good, and streams much more smoothly than a few years ago. I don't have digital cable, so I can't get the Extra Innings TV package, but I don't think the difference is such that I'd be willing to pay the extra $50 per season.

But here's the problem: local and national blackouts. First, each team has a set of zip codes, viewers within which are banned from watching any of that team's games over the internet. The idea, I suppose, is that there's about a 50/50 chance that you'll end up watching the other team's broadcast, and thus miss out on all those critical local commercials. And I'm fine with that. The real problem is that the zip code 22901, wherein I reside, is on the banned list for both the Baltimore Orioles and Washington Nationals, whereas both teams have contracts with the Mid-Atlantic Sports Networks (MASN) to carry their games locally, and Comcast Cable doesn't currently provide access to MASN in said zip code. So I can't get the games on TV or over the internet. What's worse, ESPN has contracts to black out its nationally televised, non-premium (i.e. any night but Sunday night) games when those games are also available locally, presumably covering the same overly expansive lists of zip codes. So while the Twins' opening-night game against the Orioles last Monday was theoretically available on local TV, national TV, and the internet, I had none of these sources available to me. The bottom line is that lawyers ruin everything.

In a similar vein, ESPN and Fox both have exclusivity contracts with MLB that provide that no other games will be made nationally available in competition with their national broadcasts (Saturday afternoon for Fox, Sunday night for ESPN). This makes sense and is completely above the board, etc., etc. The problem is that their definitions of both what qualifies as a national broadcast and the time range of what qualifies as being in competition are ridiculously broad. To take them in order: an internet "broadcast" of what is intended to be a local telecast, made available only to paying subscribers to a website, should not be subject to these blackouts. I'm sure that the language of the contracts explicitly states that they do qualify, but that is true only because, as mentioned, lawyers ruin everything.

Second, Fox has gone and moved the first pitch of its Saturday broadcasts from about 1:00 p.m. EST to about 4:00. This is great in that it allows Left Coast viewers a few more hours to sleep it off and gives pitchers the decided advantage of pitching through really awkward late afternoon shadows, but it's terrible for MLB.TV and Extra Innings subscribers. Games that start at the ordinary start time of 1:00 p.m. Eastern, of which there are several (especially in the colder-weather months), continue to be blacked out, despite very little (if any) overlap with the Fox broadcast. Of course, West Coast afternoon games will also be blacked out, as will games that start in the early evening (say 6:00 EST), which occasionally happen on Saturdays. When one considers that at least half of all local broadcasts are carried on a regional Fox Sports channel, and that Fox is effectively then keeping viewers from choosing not to watch its broadcasts in favor of watching...its broadcasts, these contracts start to seem senselessly restrictive. I'm pretty sure the whole point is to annoy me.

Speaking of annoying things and baseball, the Twins seem to have latched onto the idea that one sticks with what works. Which, in ordinary circumstances, is a fine idea. The problem is that what "worked" for them last year was starting the year with among the least talented lineups that could possibly have been formed of all the talent available to them: Tony Batista and Juan Castro manned third and short, while Jason Bartlett toiled in the minors; Francisco Liriano started in the bullpen. They recovered from this to win 96 games and the division. So, this year, why not give spots in the starting rotation to Ramon (or is it Russ?) Ortiz, Carlos Silva and Sidney Ponson instead of Matt Garza, Glen Perkins, Kevin Slowey and/or Scott Baker? The problem, of course, is what saved the Twins last year is that they recognized these mistakes, come about May, and rectified them. That might need to happen even earlier this year if they're going to have similar success.

The Twins play the Yankees at home tonight, on a nationally televised game that I will get to watch. For some reason, the completely useless Ponson will be starting despite the availability of the completely average Boof Bonser on six days' rest. These are the kinds of decisions that end up costing a team a very tight division, and the kind that lead a team to end up giving up 25 runs to the Yankees on national television. But then I guess Ponson giving up 25 runs, which is honestly well within the realm of possibility, might lead to Garza's recall coming faster, so maybe that's a good thing?