Lack of Internet and Lack of Marlins
Rockies 5 Marlins 2.
Maybe it’s better I didn’t watch. Jimenez looked like a Cy Young winner while the Marlins couldn’t get any offense going until the very end. Jimenez has really good stuff, but looking at some of his games he either locks a team down or gets crushed like a dixie cup under a monster truck. Too bad last night wasn’t the latter.
So why didn’t watch? My internet last night was practically dead. I could do a few tasks to play some flash games and check if I’m on the terror watch list or not (if I wasn’t then, I probably am now just for mentioning it…). But watching the game instantly turned my computer into a something like a baby who refuses to eat strained peas or banana substrate. I would click play in the window and it would just sit there and do nothing. Very frustrating.
This allowed me to reflect what a great and horrible thing MLBtv is. Yes, I get to watch my games. BUT… only because I live in Michigan now. When I lived in Florida, specifically Gainesville, I couldn’t watch the Marlins on MLBtv. Why? I was in the blackout policy. That means that the Marlins were being shown on cable “in my area.” Well here was the finisher, I lived in an apartment complex which was 95% student. The TV package we had wouldn’t be good enough for a hotel in northeastern Wyoming. We had most of the basics, but we also had a few head-strachers: CSPAN 1-3, 2 Channels of BBC America, the home shopping network (what college student in the world would watch that?), and my favorite: the UF channel which is a channel devoted to showing events occuring on campus. Problem was, it hadn’t been utilized since 2002. We had these channels instead of FoxSports Florida. Now, we did have SunSports. That was nice. The problem was, most of the time when a Marlins game actually was on (once every 2 weeks or so), we would some ridiculous thing like a replay of a Clemson vs. Wake Forest softball game from 2003. After calling “my local cable provider” I was basically told: “You are too young to understand how TV works and how the local population and society affects TV markets.” I guess that TV and American Society class I took was for nothing.
After realizing that my cable people wouldn’t do anything about it, I knew I was done. 4 years of no Marlins on TV. Very tough. I wouldn’t dare to bother asking to challenge MLB’s blackout policy. Oddly enough, there was something interesting about this blackout policy. An article on Yahoo.com by a similarly angry person cited something in the policy that makes absolutely no sense. It was along the lines of: “You have to be within a days drive of the stadium to be in a blackout period.” OK… that’s fair. Gainesville is 5 hours from where the Marlins play. But what about the 5 hour drive back? And would I do this 81 times a year? What about road games? Gainesville is 6 hours from Atlanta, so I guess Atlanta should be blacked out too. BUT… they aren’t. We aren’t in their market. Although, WRUF 850 AM carries Braves baseball games every night unless a UF team has an event that is broadcasted over the radio. So, clearly MLB’s blackout policy sucks. It leaves people like me out to dry. Worse than me are people who live in places like Iowa. Look at the map: http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/1133/baseballterritorialmap.jpg. Iowa is lucky enough to be in 6 markets: the Cubs, White Sox, Royals, Brewers, Twins and Cardinals. Aren’t they lucky? Oh wait, no. They aren’t. If I live in Iowa and I want to watch the Twins and I don’t have a cable carrier who has FSN North, I’m done. But I can get all the division rival White Sox games I want on WGN. The consolation prize is that I’ll get to watch the Twins play the White Sox when they are on WGN, right? Nope. Those games get blacked out! According to Google Earth, Iowa is only about 3-6 hours from Minneapolis. So that’s not bad… is it? Let’s get really messed up. Jackson, Mississippi is 10 hours from Atlanta. Jackson, Mississippi is in Atlanta’s blackout range. Yet again, the literal sense of the rule is enforced. 10 hours is definitely less than 24 hours, so it is a day’s drive. So… 10 hours there, 10 hours back, 3 hour game. That’s 23 hours! They can sleep for an hour and do it again. Hopefully there aren’t too many 12 game homestands. Nobody lives in Eastern Montana. But if they did, and they were Mariners fans, they are in trouble. It’s a 14 hour drive to Seattle. Now we are in trouble.
In summation, there are millions of other people like me. I am grateful that I can watch the games. Technology is awesome (and sometimes scary). But the rules are absolutely ridiculous. I wasn’t able to watch my team until I moved 1100 miles away and where I won’t be able to go to any games this year, or maybe even next year which really saddens me.
One more thing with the map. Notice there are holes in places like the middle of Georgia, Nevada and a few other places? Those aren’t lakes. Those are holes in the baseball universe. They are worse off than anyone! God only knows what they did to banish themselves to a dimension with no baseball.
I’ll finish this incredibly long post with one mention of the game tonight. Last night we made our first errors in a long time. There seems to be a direct correlation between not messing up in the field and winning. I’m just saying. No more errors.
Anyway, go fish!
Angry Marlins Fan 
