Blackouts Are Still In

While The Uncommon Wife is away for a few days, The Common Man and The Boy have winged (wung?) their way to sunny Arizona for some grandparents, great-grandparents, and cousins. And, of course, Spring Training. The upshot, for today anyway, is that The Common Man is unavailable for general blogging. In fact, it is taking the last of his energy and sobriety (The Common Man immediately poured himself a double of Jack Daniels after lugging three bags, a mega-stroller, and a carseat around three airports because The Common Man was too stubborn to check luggage. The Boy, thank God, was an angel all day.) Anyway, in lieu of himself, The Common Man contacted his boyhood friend and frequent commenter, Bill, to sub for today (though there should be some random Thursday action coming your way late Thursday). Bill's an awfully smart guy, and a talented and discerning writer, who really should be blogging in his own right. Bill was concerned that a lot of the ideas he wanted to write about wouldn't be fully developed enough or painstakingly researched enough for to his own standards. The Common Man was all, like, "Dude, have you read this blog before?" and convinced him to lay his fears aside. Anyway, if that's what it takes, he needs to stop his lawyering and fathering and husbanding and general business and get writing. 'Cuz feeding your family and stuff is highly overrated. Show him some love and encouragement and tell him to get back to "work." Without further ado, here's Bill:



Many thanks to TCM for letting me borrow his space for the following rambling rant. Warning: I use words like "I" and "me." I know you haven't seen those words here before, but it turns out that I'm a person, and not a Platonic construct. So I know it'll be weird for you, but just assume that those words mean the same things they do on any other site. Cool? Okay.

So have you noticed that in the last five or so years, Major League Baseball has gone from an organization with as much technological acumen as your grandpa to the cutting-edge leader, among all the major sports, in utilizing the awesome marketing power of the internet, and of cable and satellite TV? It may be hard to come around to that idea (baseball was so blind to these resources for so long, after all, and is still pretty prehistorical about a lot of things, and its really hard to admit that an organization run by this guy is doing anything right), but think about it for a minute.
• You can watch baseball games on your computer with MLB.TV from anywhere in the world (and it usually works pretty consistently now if you've got a pretty good connection, very unlike four or five years ago).
• You can listen to the radio broadcast of any baseball game on your computer through Gameday Audio or in your car with Sirius/XM Radio.
• You can get baseball games from other markets on your TV through MLB Extra Innings (and now you can usually even choose which broadcast to watch, so you're not stuck with the stupid YES Network every time your favorite team has to play the Yankees).
• If you don't want to pay for any of that (or if that's just not enough for you), MLB.com gives you Gameday, easily the best graphical play-by-play tracker out there, for free (who would've figured, five years ago, that MLB would be the best at giving you something that any national news organization could also give you?).
• Gameday in turn offers Pitch-f/x, probably the most important advance in baseball statistics since some guy came along at some point after Jim Rice and Andre Dawson retired and realized that walks are good things.
• Even the website itself, by the standards set by, e.g., NFL.com and NBA.com, is pretty great. Easy to use, loads pretty fast, not too hard on the eyes. Just don't read it for the articles.
• And earlier this year, MLB launched the MLB Network, available on most but not all cable packages. The "analysts," by and large, make the dufusses at ESPN's Baseball Tonight look like Bill James and Aristotle combined, but the non-newsy content is, by and large, a baseball geek's dream come true.

You have to admit, there's a lot of good stuff going on around here (and that's just the officially sanctioned stuff, ignoring completely your BBREFs and THTs and BPs and FanGraphs). It's a good time to be a hopeless baseball addict, especially if you're forced to live in a different market from your home team.

Except.

The part about watching games on your TV or computer? Well, you probably get to see the games you want to see. Most of them, if you live in the right zip code. See, against all odds, MLB continues to employ the most senseless and archaic set of blackout rules in existence -- an opaque set of restrictions that, sometimes seemingly at random, prevents certain users in certain markets from being able to see certain games; they've paid as much as anybody else has for MLB.TV or Extra Innings, but they get to see fewer games, and there's nothing they can do about it (besides move, I suppose).

The rules were created at least 30 years ago, and while I'm not at all convinced they've ever done anybody any good, they definitely weren't created with the internet and satellite TV in mind. This is the rough equivalent of your grandpa outfitting his house with wireless internet, a huge HDTV, and a sweet surround sound system, but then continuing to have to make sure the party line is open when he wants to use the telephone.

Of course, when one talks about baseball's "blackout rules," they're really talking about one of two distinct things, both of which suck for very different reasons: national blackouts and local blackouts.

National Blackouts: These come from specifically negotiated contracts with the big boys, ESPN and Fox; in exchange for getting paid a huge sum of money from the network, MLB agrees not to allow any games to be shown at the same time as the games the network is contracting to broadcast, other than local, regional broadcasts. In theory, this is kind of hard to argue with. If the networks are willing to pay more for exclusivity, MLB is totally within its rights to give it to them. And I have no quarrel with ESPN here: the blackout affects only their Sunday night games (it used to be that games were also blacked out for Wednesday Night Baseball, which seriously devalued your MLB.TV or Extra Innings subscription), and almost no other games are played on Sunday night anyway (when they are, it's almost always because the game is outdoors in Arlington or Miami in July and the teams are trying to avoid spontaneous combustion, and ESPN will often make an exception from its policy in those cases).

Fox, however, has the Saturday afternoon game, and competing Saturday afternoon games are much more common than Sunday night ones. The small print on the MLB.TV page linked to above says that Fox's blackout affects "live games occurring each Saturday with a scheduled start time after 1:10 PM ET or before 7:05 PM ET." The practical effect of this is that unless Fox itself is carrying the game, only teams in the eastern time zone schedule Saturday afternoon games (since those typically start at about 1:05 ET), and all the others start after 7:05 ET. The fact that Fox would want to black any games out at all is puzzling, since perhaps half or more of all local broadcasts are run on a Fox Sports Net channel anyway.

But Fox seems to really enjoy competing with itself, and that's the real problem. The only games that really get effected by Fox's blackouts are games that are being shown on Fox -- just not in your market. So if you're (oh, let's just say) a Twins fan living in Chicago, and Fox owns the rights to both the Cubs-Cardinals and the Twins-Indians, obviously your local Fox station is carrying the Cubs game, and because of the blackout arrangement Fox bargained for, you have no way of seeing the Twins game. On Fox.

I suppose the reason the powers that be would give for this is that they want you to see the local ads for your own market, right? But the thing is, a lot of the ads Fox shows during these games -- most of them, probably -- are for Bud Light or Ford Trucks. Big national ads for big global companies who would probably pay a little bit more to be piped into a few thousand (or more) extra homes via satellite TV or the internet. So Big Bob's Discount Auto Superstore gets some free airtime to reach some viewers living hundreds of miles away; is that really a dealbreaker here? Maybe it wouldn't even be that hard to come up with a feed that puts your own local commercials in another region's feed...I have no idea. What I do know is, there's no real justification for a policy whereby Fox prohibits competition from itself. None. Make it go away.


Local Blackouts: These are much more complicated, and yet much more stupid. The following map (borrowed without permission from Bleed Cubbie Blue; click that picture to access a greatly magnified version) shows the oddly gerrymandered group of overlapping territories within which a given team's (or teams') games cannot be shown on MLB.TV or Extra Innings. I'm not going to get into why this rule was initially created (frankly, I don't understand it, but it sounds pretty questionable even for the time), but now -- especially since they've now made both teams' broadcasts of most games available -- it serves absolutely no purpose.


If the idea is to make people go to games rather than watching them on TV, that's an epic policy fail. Research has shown for about sixty years now that the availability of telecasts has little to no effect on baseball attendance, and anyway, the policy applies to the Cubs, Yankees and Red Sox, who sell out every game regardless, with the same force as it does to the Royals and Marlins.
If it's advertising-related...um, how? If you watch an Orioles broadcast in Irvine, California, you see all the local Baltimore commercials. Wouldn't letting residents of Raleigh, North Carolina see those same commercials be better, not worse?

And whatever the purpose, the regions are much, much, much, much, much bigger than they need to be. Until about two years ago, I lived in Charlottesville, Virginia, a lovely little place that was nowhere at all near Baltimore or Washington. A die-hard fan might drive four or more hours each way to see one or two Nats or O's games a year. Yet, as you can probably see from the map, Charlottesville was squarely in the blackout zone. What's more, both of the "local" nines played the bulk of their games on the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network -- a network that the cable companies serving Charlottesville did not carry. Whatever the local blackout rules were intended to do, it's hard for me to imagine that blocking an entire city from meaningful access to its product was part of MLB's plan.

But that's just my personal experience, not the worst of it. From my reading of the map, the entire state of Iowa is prohibited from seeing -- are you ready for this? -- the Twins, Brewers, Cubs, White Sox, Royals and Cardinals. I mean, what can even be said about that? Does the MLB brass just really hate Iowa (perhaps they took a field trip only to find out that the Field of Dreams didn't really have ghosts playing on it)?

There was hope not so long ago, when MLB officials strongly hinted that the blackout policy would be reconsidered this offseason. But the subject apparently fell by the wayside, and we're stuck with the same infuriating inanities for at least another year. How is that possible? How is it any more complicated than: (a) here's the policy; (b) it infuriates fans and serves no purpose; (c) let's can it? Voting to table the discussion probably took longer than the discussion itself should have taken. It seems obvious that there's something in this for the owners that I am missing (along with everybody else).

The question, then, is: where's the secret profit? What are the owners actually getting out of this?

The answer: it doesn't freaking matter. If Iowans and central Virginians have to pay the same price as anyone else for the service, they should get the same service. If you're going to promise that "you'll be able to follow your favorite team from opening day to October no matter where you live," you have to make it so people can, you know, follow their favorite team from opening day to October no matter where they live.

Pretty simple, right?



The Common Man thanks his friend profusely for helping out when no more blood could be squeezed from The Common Man's stones. Good job. Dude, this could be the Jack Daniels talkin', but hwkjeaoijadioghjioadfsklewrjioe;a....

Erasing Collusion

It was strange last night to be watching Prime 9 on the MLB Network. Prime 9, for those unlucky enough to not have the MLB (on right now is Pudge Fisk's first game back in Boston after signing with the White Sox, Harry Caray calling Dennis Eckersley vs. Britt Burns), is a weekly countdown show that focuses on a different topic and is allegedly "guaranteed to start arguments, not finish them." One of last night's episodes focused on the "nine best" eligible players not in the Hall of Fame (so no Pete Rose and no Joe Jackson). The weirdness was not necessarily watching guys twist and turn to make a plausible case for Lee Smith Luis Tiant, and Keith Hernandez.

Rather, it came when the show, and its various talking heads (think I Love the 80s with Bob Costas as the only real celebrity, and no snark), talked about #6 Andre Dawson. They talked about his power and his speed. His throwing arm. They talked about his nickname.

Then they talked about his MVP campaign in 1987. Prior to the '87 season, Dawson became a free agent, refusing to resign with the Montreal Expos. Much to his dismay, no one seemed to want him. Dawson proceeded to show up to the Cubs' spring training facility, and gave general manager Dallas Green a blank conctract, and asked him to fill in what a fair salary would be. Green gave Dawson a deal for $500,000 with more than $250,000 in performance incentives.

What was happening, of course, was that Dawson and the other free agents of 1987 were victims of collusion. Major League owners, with the encouragement of commissioner Peter Ueberroth, were refusing to sign free agents from other teams without their rivals' permission.

As these talking heads recounted the '87 season where roundly smacked National League pitching, they repeated the story that "no one wanted" Dawson before the season, and that he had to give the Cubs "a blank contract" to sign him. Just watching this show, a casual viewer might think that Dawson had had a terrible year in '86, rather than the .284/.338/.478 line he put up in 130 games (good for a 123 OPS+. Instead, of course, in a free market many other teams would have wanted Dawson's services. Other starting rightfielders that year included Glenn Wilson (.264/.308/.381 for the Phillies), RJ Reynolds (.260/.323/.400 for the Pirates), Curt Ford (.285/.325/.408 for the Cardinals), Pat Sheridan (.259/.327/.361 for the Tigers), and Lee Lacy (.244/.326/.399 for the Orioles), all of whom were clearly inferior. The Cubs themselves were planning to go with Brian Dayett. Despite mentioning these very specific stories from Dawson's 1987 offseason struggled to find employment, none of the footage mentioned a thing about collusion.

This marks the second time The Common Man has seen the MLB Network skip over stories about collusion, suggesting that there may be a organizational imperative not to acknowledge one of the more sinister chapters in baseball's history. It's going to be increasingly hard for MLB Network to maintain a claim of impartiality and integrity if they refuse to even address the topic, and it calls into question how the network will react if and when there is labor strife with the Players' Association.

Breaking Down Breaking News

The Common Man woke up this morning with The Boy in his bed, kicking him in the head. The Boy was ready to get up, and wanted his father with him. So together they walked downstairs, had some breakfast, and turned on the TV. As they sat enjoying the MLB Network showing David Cone's 19-strikeout gem from 1991 (The Boy likes baseball, and keeps yelling "run, run, run!"), MLB came through with the first scoop of its short life.

Alex Rodriguez, the most complete and talented player in the game today, tested positive for steroids in 2003. The Common Man fired off an email to Shysterball as quick as he could, but hasn't really had time to unpack what this means for the game and for Alex Rodriguez until now.

--The original test in 2003 was supposed to be anonymous, an effort to determine just how many players were on the juice and whether further action by the league and the union was required. Obviously, it was. But it's somewhat disconcerting that the results that were supposed to be anonymous (and probably should have been destroyed in the aftermath of the testing) have been used to name names. Since there are apparently 103 other names that are connected to these positive tests, The Common Man agrees strongly with Shysterball, who argues that "Given that it is now inevitable that all of the names who tested positive in 2003 will come out, maybe it's in the union's best interest to release every name now rather than deal with the drip, drip, dripping of names over time."

At this point, the players (and the league) should be trying to minimize the damage of the positive tests. The longer this story keeps generating new information, the longer it will remain in the public consciousness. With Opening Day approaching and a bevy of storylines waiting to be exploited, there will be ample opportunity for baseball fans to get distracted. Also, by taking control over the release of the names, the players and the players' association can control the story to a degree, putting a more positive spin on their decision and shift the focus from the tests themselves to the union's responsible decision to clear the air.

Whether or not this is feasible is debatable. With an expectation of privacy, the players who tested positive may not be willing to have their names released, hoping that journalists will stop looking or they'll miraculously escape detection. And they may have legal recourse (honestly, The Common Man doesn't know) if their names are released without their consent. The union's statement today that "information and documents relating to the results of the 2003 MLB testing program are both confidential and under seal by court orders. We are prohibited from confirming or denying any allegation about the test results of any particular player(s) by the collective bargaining agreement and by court orders" would seem to suggest that releasing the names could prove difficult and complicated at best.

--Allegations that Gene Orza, the union's Chief Operating Officer, tipped off players about upcoming drug tests, are potentially more serious to the game's integrity than A-Rod's positive test. A-Rod tested positive before there were penalties in place for the cheating and represent a single player's bad actions. Orza's alleged behavior compromises the entire Players' Association and undermines its credibility tremendously. At this point, it's unclear how effective Orza's warnings were in minimizing positive tests, but it suggests that a) the union had knowledge of specific players who were using and b) was actively working against efforts to clean up the game. It would seem to be a violation of the collective bargaining agreement, and destroys Orza's personal reputation with league ownership.

--Jason at It Is About the Money, Stupid, writes that A-Rod "can kiss his HOF wishes goodbye." Later, in the comments, he writes, "maybe I jumped to that 'no HOF' stance too quickly, but in seeing the response that Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Palmiero, Sosa, et al are getting with respect to the HOF, I wonder how ARod will stand above it all." If these allegations against A-Rod are true, Jason is right that he'll get thrown in with Bonds, Clemens, McGwire, Palmeiro, and Sosa (though, technically, Sosa's name has never been connected with any steroid allegations). But it's not at all clear what the BBWAA's response to these players will be. While McGwire has thusfar been shut out of the Hall, and Palmeiro is unlikely to gain induction any time soon, it's hard for The Common Man to imagine Bonds and Clemens on the outside looking in. And if there is an inconsistency in the BBWAA's voting with these players, The Common Man would argue that A-Rod (with his phenominal talent, his position on the field, and his ridiculous numbers) is far more likely to be in the Bonds/Clemens group than the McGwire/Palmeiro.

It's also worth remembering that Alex Rodriguez still has nine years remaining on his Yankees contract, and five years after he retires before he becomes eligible. There is no way to predict a) how the rest of his career will progress, and how his image will change in the public eye (he certainly has plenty of time to atone); b) how the public and media's perception of the steroid era and PEDs will change in 14 years; and c) how the voting pool of the BBWAA will change in that time.

--One interesting, and underdiscussed, aspect of this story was that, while it was broken by Sports Illustrated, SI has been linked closely with the MLB Network through the on-air presence of writers Tom Verducci and Jon Heyman. As a result, MLB Network, wholly owned and operated by Major League Baseball, was ostensibly breaking a devastating story this morning about its chief rival (the Players' Association) and its most prolific player. Whether or not there is a conflict of interest there, The Common Man doesn't know.

What interest does Major League Baseball have in this story, and were they at all responsible for alerting Selena Roberts, the SI reporter who wrote the story and who was interviewed on the network by Bob Costas today, to the existence of the test results? The Common Man isn't much for conspiracy theories, but the cozy relationship here and the obvious way in which this disparages the union and Gene Orza in particular makes The Common Man wonder. Also, and The Common Man is sure the league's lawyers have delved into this question, does the league and its subsidieries have a legal obligation to not release a story in which a specific player is outed as testing positive, especially in light of their agreement with the Players' Association and the existing court order to keep the results confidential?

New Game In Town

Did you see the big game? What? No, The Common Man isn't talking about the Super Bowl, which The Common Man miraculoulsy managed to get half right (picking the wrong winner, but being correct about the Cardinals covering. Though that was pretty good (holy frak, Santonio Holmes!). Instead, he's talking about live baseball. On your TV! In February!

Those of you lucky enough to have DirecTV (get on the ball, Shyster, you don't know what you're missing) and awesome enough to be baseball fans already know about the pleasures offered by the new Major League Baseball network. The network shows great games from the past, wide-ranging shows debating the top players/seasons of all time, schmaltzy documentaries on the game's past.... Really, it's got everything you need. And now, they are showing the Caribbean World Series for what must be the first time on American television. It's not like ESPN has been pounding down the door for this, but baseball fans will take anything in the dead of winter, and it's more fun to watch games that mean something than the upcoming Spring Training action.

Today's game featured the top winter ball squads from Venezuela and the Domincan Republic in opening round action. Though the Dominican squad had the more impressive lineup (with legitimate big leaguers Erick and Willy Aybar, Ronny Paulino, Timo Perez, Jose Bautista, and Ronnie Belliard), the unknown Brad Knox (a 26 year old who flopped at AAA for the A's this year) emerged as the star, no-hitting the D.R. through 6+ innings. Knox did not figure in the decision, as his offense mustered little support, but left to great aplomb after 90 pitches. Luis Maza, a 28 year old infielder who finally reached the majors this year after hitting .378 at AAA, banged out four hits (two of them doubles) and two RBI, including a game-winning single in the top of the ninth.


More important than the actual game, though, was the effect that the game had on The Common Man. Now that the football season is officially over, The Common Man could easily slip away into a sports-deprived hibernation, surfacing just in time for the first two rounds of the NCAA Tourney before losing interest, and bemoaning that Spring Training is meaningless and just not eventful enough to really satisfy. Like eating a Jolly Rancher when you're really hungry. Sure, there's some flavor there, but how much does it actually fill that aching need inside?

Now, with the MLB Network, The Common Man can feast and recharge on the Caribbean World Series now and the World Baseball Classic in the first week of March. Real baseball. Played by guys who care about winning and losing. Watched by fans with an emotional investment in the outcome. How awesome is that? How badly do you need that? The Common Man needs it bad. And so, now, excuse him, because it looks as though Mexico and Puerto Rico are dueling it out as he writes.

Random Thoughts

Many many thoughts are running through The Common Man's mind tonight. Here are some of them:

The Rose Bowl was terrible. Having married into a Penn State family, The Common Man was looking forward to PSU proving itself against the class of the Pac-10. But Paterno's boys were clearly outclassed by 'SC. It was torturous for a while there.

Fortunately, at 5 CST, the MLB Network went live for the first time.


The programming was up and down. The Hot Stove Live show was largely unwatchable, perhaps because nothing is really going on in the game right now, except for a segment in which the in-studio analyists break down how to steal home. As an example, they use Jackie Robinson's straight steal from the 1955 World Series. While it's unclear from the footage whether Jackie was safe or out, it's very clear that Yogi Berra (the catcher) interfered with he batter's opportunity to swing by coming forward to catch the pitch before it got to the plate. Therefore, Robinson should have been awarded home anyway.

The second program on the network, the original footage and play-by-play of Don Larson's Perfect Game in the 1956 World Series, was much better. The interviews with Larson and Berra were fairly interesting (though Berra seems to have developed a strange verbal tic where he anticipates what a speaker is going to say, and then mumbles it with them), but the game itself was wonderful. Mel Allen and Vin Scully did the announcing, Mickey Mantle hit a homerun, and the whole game was sponsored solely by Gillette (the original commercials were included). Things The Common Man learned include: Roy Campanella was an absolute truck of a man; Gillette blades come in three sizes for light, normal, and heavy duty shaves and faces; Gillette's spokesanimal in 1956, for some reason, was a parrot; Larson was aided significantly by late-afternoon shadows at the park that obscured his breaking ball and by the crowd sitting in the deep CF bleachers, since the black hitters' backdrop had been removed to squeeze in more fans; Birdie Tebbetts and Johnny Logan also use Gillette products, and Duke Snider is going to teach his son to only use Gillette; the game did indeed move a lot quicker in 1956, as both pitchers worked fast and batters tended to stay in the box between pitches (Jackie Robinson was booed when he stepped out because he had something in his eye); standard atire for a baseball fan in 1956 was a suit and tie, and probably a cigarette or twelve; while supplies last, The Common Man can get a free baseball encyclopedia at a store near him when he buys a pack of Gillette razors for only $1.

Any dude who didn't get worked up for the Clint Eastwood marathon on AMC yesterday needs to get his manliness examined by a qualified physiscian. The Common Man Tivoed The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly; A Fistful of Dollars; and Kelly's Heroes. With Clint's new movie, Gran Torino, coming out next week, the network has apparently been tasked with reminding the general public of how awesome and manly Eastwood is, and how much they love him. And while you all revel in the glorious masculinity of teh Eastwood (is Eastwood the manliest of stars?), take a minute and contemplate the greatness of Eli Wallach (who, believe it or not, is still alive and kicking at 93), who created two iconic Latino characters (Calvera of The Magnificent Seven and Tuco of The Good...). Wallach's Tuco is a nuanced and moving performance, and he gives it far more depth than most Hispanic roles not written exclusively for Edward James Olmos. He has to be the most lovable Mexican villian in film history.



The Common Man hopes you had an excellent New Year's Eve and that your 2009 is excellent. So far this year, The Common Man has watched his college football team get demolished, his wife get laryngitis, his son fall and smack his face on a toy tractor, and his dog poop on the floor (because he refuses to stay outside longer than 30 seconds in the snow and cold). Also, he got peed on by The Boy (yes, again) and ran out of ice cream. 2009, baby. It's fannnnn-tastic!