Red Sox Fans Blinded By Profit

When you live outside of Red Sox Nation you have a certain responsibility to uphold. In many ways you become the ambassador of Red Sox fans everywhere and your actions are carefully monitored by others. When the Red Sox win and the Yankees are still playing, they will stare at you in confusion, wondering why you’re not celebrating yet. Other fans don’t understand that the Red Sox winning is a good day, but the Yankees simultaneously losing is a GREAT day. Even if it is only April.

As if living outside of New England isn’t hard enough, the powers that be at Major League Baseball are on the brink of deciding that DirecTV will be the sole provider of all out of market games. This means that one of the only Red Sox games you can watch on TV will be the one we all had to watch on opening day.

I happen to live in the middle of Manhattan, where millions of people from around the world look at the skyline every day. City representatives imagined a scenario where every apartment had DirecTV and they decided to make it next to impossible to have it installed. Today I looked for a 2 bedroom apartment with DirecTV in Manhattan. I decided not to spend more than $6,000 a month for rent. No luck. I increased the rent to $10,000 a month. Zero apartments. In a final move I looked for any sized apartment, at any price. Once again, no apartments were found at all. The bottom line is if I want to watch the Red Sox, I better move to the suburbs.

Like many members of Red Sox Nation I decided to take a deep breath, break out my credit card and subscribe to MLB TV. I love the game, so I even decided to treat myself to the more expensive, higher quality package. 15 minutes later I downloaded the MLB Mosaic and sat comfortably in front of my computer to watch the game. Manhattan apartments are small, so my computer is less than 15 feet away from the $5,000 TV I bought just to watch the Red Sox in the first place.

At long last the game began. This must be a mistake. Maybe something is wrong with the program. Last year I purchased a few games on line and I could see everything. This year I bought the more expensive package and the clarity is simply absent. I wanted to see how Beckett was throwing since he had such a tough last half of the season. The truth is I couldn’t even read the number on the back of his shirt. For all I know Beckett and Dice K have been together and Becket himself was throwing gyroballs.

Under normal circumstances I would have settled for half closing my eyes and listening to what Remdawg had to say about each player. Except this MLB TV has nothing to do with what fans want. It’s all about profit for them. Simply put this means I got to see the game as it broadcast on RSTN TV in Kansas City. I now know that the Royals are giving away free blankets in two weeks to all fans who come to the stadium, but I still have no idea what my reliable insiders, Jerry Remey and Don Orsillo, are thinking about the potential performance of the 2007 team.

Game One: Available on ESPN and in HD
Game Two: Available on RSTN and on a computer
Game Three: Please, somebody, anybody, let me know how Dice K does. I can’t see a thing from here. And to think, they call this the capital of the world.

By: Contributing Writer, Diane Garnick