Dear MLB: Let Me Watch My Games

I was never supposed to be a baseball fan. I grew up in Raleigh, North Carolina, with my nearest MLB team over 200 miles away. If anything, I was supposed to be a Carolina Hurricanes or even a Carolina Panthers fan. I became a New York Mets fan by some stroke of luck (though New York Yankees fans would say otherwise). I know, it’s strange. But I came from the dreaded divided household: Mets versus Yankees. And since I knew nothing about baseball when I chose my favorite team — and I liked their colors — I decided, “Hey, let’s go, Mets.”

I never got the experience of rooting for my hometown team and seeing the World Series parade roll down my street. I was too far away, but even then, I never got to develop a connection with my closest locational team: the Washington Nationals. My local team — if you can even call it that — is blacked out, despite the fact that I purchased an MLB subscription. 

Yes, I pay the dreaded $130 every season to only watch the NL East. Well, at least the NL East games that don’t include the Nationals. The same goes for my Yankees fan of a dad, who can watch almost every game in the AL East, save those of the Baltimore Orioles. MLB didn’t think one team was enough to blackout, so they gave North Carolina two teams. 

The definition for “in-market” is odd. I live about 300 miles from Camden Yards, for example, which is about a 5-hour drive. Somehow, by MLB’s logic, I am a local fan of the Orioles. Honestly, if you asked me where Baltimore is on a map, I don’t even know if I could tell you. 

If you thought I had it hard from missing out on two teams, I don’t think the city of Las Vegas has ever seen a major league baseball game. Seriously, they can’t see six MLB teams. They can’t even tune into MLB.TV and catch the best player in baseball play — what a shame.

If I didn’t have such loving parents who introduced me to their favorite teams (and moved almost 500 miles so we could be out of the TV blackout region), I would have never gotten into the sport on my own. I would have no connection to the sport because my local team — the default team to root for in my case — would be blacked out. 

Baseball and many other sports thrive on a few essential things, one among them being fan engagement. Fans drive the sports and, in turn, the athletes themselves to perform at their highest potential. The diehard fan bases of each individual team are a huge piece of the engagement puzzle, as existing fans are crucial in attracting new fans. As a fan, one big goal is to surround yourself with others who are equally as passionate and have just as much love for their team as you do. 

It’s a lose-lose situation when you think about it. As a fan, you have two options: watch the game on TV, or see it live in person. Families who live out of the market can watch all the games but rarely ever see them in person. Meanwhile, if you live in the local area, you can go and watch a game any night of the week, but unless you have a local sports package, MLB won’t air your game.

Honestly, on MLB.TV’s website, when you go to purchase a new package for the season, the headline reads “stream every game live and on-demand.” Every game is a funny way of saying every game except your favorite team’s games.

MLB emphasizes all the time how important it is to get younger fans involved in the sport. They toss around all these ideas on shortening the game times and juicing the balls, but what good is that if you can’t even tune in and watch your local team?

Of course, MLB would tell me to get cable, and that would solve all my problems. Do they know how stressful and expensive it is to have cable? Especially now with services like Youtube TV, I’ve loved moving on from my old cable provider. Even if I still had cable, I could only watch my two local teams if I’m lucky, and never another team in baseball. It’s ridiculous.

I and many other fans understand how money-hungry companies can be, and how focused they are on profiting off of their regional sports. But I pay for MLB, not my local sports network, because I only want to watch MLB. 

Additionally, MLB wants to profit off of ticket sales and prioritizes that over broadcasting. That’s fine, but some tickets cost an arm and a leg nowadays, and I’m a debt-ridden college student. So I guess in-person games are out of the question for at least three more years.

A line has to be drawn at some point; either let me watch all of my supposed “local games” in my subscription or lower the cost of actually going to games.

Photo courtesy of Jeff Curry/USA Today Images