Major League Baseball – It is time to get it right… especially on the web
In
1968, the Detroit Tigers won the World Series. I was five. Today, I have an
autograph from every member of the ’68 team including the batboy and managers.
In 1984, the year I met my wife, the Tigers won the World Series again. I have
several autographs from ’84 including bats from: Trammel, Whitaker, Gibson,
Sparky Anderson and Johnson.
At the moment (2006), the Detroit Tigers are the best team in baseball. They
don’t stink anymore. The Cathedral known as Yankee Stadium belongs to a Chapel
(OK, enough with the movie lines…) While I am a baseball fan, I am first and
foremost a Tiger fan.
So what? Right, I agree. So what… As a baseball fan, often times we wait. The
Red Sox faithful waited from 1918 until 2004 to rid themselves of the Curse of
the Bambino. Cub fans still wait. And so it goes. I waited from ’68, when
my love for the Tigers was handed down from my grandfather, until ’84. Even getting
married that year didn’t take my eye off the ball. The Tigers won.
Unfortunately, my wait from ’68 to ’84 seems trite compared to my wait from ’84
until now… To me, the hiring of Jim Leyland as manager was the second coming of
Billy Martin. This year Tiger fans still wait, but we wait earnestly and with
hope.
So, if I do the Math, I realize that I had better enjoy the Tigers this year or
else I may have to wait until I am well into my seventies to experience this
again. So in early May, when it was clear the Tigers were pretty good, I set
out to live the season. I set out to hand down the Tigers to my son. For the
regular season, I purchased the Extra Innings package from DirecTV. For the
post season, I secured hotel rooms throughout the month of October in Detroit.
I am ready.
Last night I sat down to watch the Tigers play the White Sox in Detroit. I
flipped my DirecTV on to watch the game and it was blacked out. Hmmm…not to
worry since I subscribe to every channel DirecTV offers . I switched to the
Detroit sports channel…blacked out. OK, I thought, I’ll switch to the Chicago
sports channel…blacked out. Since I don’t live within 5 hours of Chicago and it
would take a day to get to Detroit and I can’t get cable out in the country, I
am starting to get confused.
Not to worry. I decided to subscribe to MLB.com and stream the game. I reached
in my wallet and handed MLB.com $29.95 for a season pass with roughly 80% of
the season already over…a good deal for them. It was easy. MLB.com really has a
great user experience right from the get-go. Unfortunately, when I clicked on
the White Sox v. Tiger game, it told me I was blacked out. No dice. No stream.
A small note at the bottom of the screen suggested I call if I had a problem. I
did. I called.
After 23 minutes on hold with MLB.com, a very nice young man explained to me
that because I was in the Chicago-land area I was blacked out from streaming
the game. Bummer… Knowing that even if I put the Sears Tower out in my
alfalfa field with the best Winegard antenna known to man that I couldn’t get a
Chicago-land station, I decided to find out as much as I could. The young man
couldn’t help. I was starting to figure out that both DirecTV and MLB.com have
some work to do.
Instead of magically opening up the stream to me, the young man basically said,
“Yes, we know this is a problem. This is a huge problem…most of my calls are
about black outs.” It is a problem and it is one that needs to be fixed. And
not just for Tiger fans but for ALL baseball fans. There is technology, our
technology, which has the granularity to make black-outs (for all sports)
precise.
Since nobody knows more about who gets what channels, what content, and so on
than Decisionmark, I am going to suggest MLB.com have a sit down with us.
Clearly, there is an opportunity to do something that will benefit fans. And if
it benefits fans, it benefits baseball.
Still, the night was not a total loss. My son is becoming a Tiger fan. I hope
his son(s) will someday be as well. After my half hour of frustration to no
avail, I realized that I’m succeeding with my son even though we couldn’t watch
last night’s game. In ’68, my favorite player was the guy with the coolest name
– Stormin’ Norman Cash. Last night, even when all I could do was track the
play-by-play on Yahoo Sports, my five-year-old son looked up at one point from
his SpongeBob video game and asked, “Dad, is Magglio up yet?” Magglio Ordonez
is the 2006 Detroit Tiger with the coolest name.
All was and is not lost…