Sympathy with the blackout devil

If there’s one thing that I find amazingly Kafkaesque in Baseball, it’s not the infield fly rule, but the blackout restrictions. Arbitrary rules to force fans to watch games on one distribution medium (such as a local TV station) by blocking the broadcast on other networks (such as the official website). Which assumes that you have access to a local TV station, that carries the game, and you’ve subscribed to them.

Which leads to situations such as Linus Edwards…

Both the MLB Extra Innings and MLB.tv packages blackout all games of teams that are part of your home market. This supposedly is meant to protect local television affiliates from having viewers taken away who watch through the package… although the package usually broadcasts the same feed as the local channel. That’s where I enter a no-man’s land by living in Carlisle, PA. For some unknown reason, Carlisle is designated as a home market for the Phillies, blacking out all their games, even though almost none of their regular season games are shown on local television here.

Sometimes it’s better to be a fan five thousand miles away in the UK. There’s no ‘local’ game at all here. Just an eight hour time difference…