Grinds My Gears: The "Hot Spot" of Baseball

Connecticut lies smack in the middle of the undeniable biggest rivalry in American sports. In Connecticut there is an imaginary line which goes through Hartford where the Yankee fan territory and Red Sox fan territory begin to blur. My home city of Shelton lies a respective 1 hour and 21 minutes from both Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium and only 2 hours and 28 minutes from Fenway Park, so says mapquest. So this sounds great, the close proximity of some of the best teams in baseball means fantastic action everyday, or so you would assume.

Major League Baseball enforces black out rules throghout the country in order to encourage viewers to purchase cable channels which typically show these programs. Major League Baseball sets what counties these regions contain. What does this blackout really do you might be wondering? In fact it does not effect much, simply put on games broadcast by ESPN (except for their national Sunday broadcast), TBS and WGN if a team within your blackout zone is playing on these stations you will be unable to watch them.

Who cares right, if you want to watch your locale team play simply get the channel they play on? This is where my cable company comes in to dig the knife deeper in its baseball viewerships back. My cable company Tele-Media, a subsidiary of Adelphia, does not give me the option of purchasing NESN (New England Sports Network), the station which broadcasts Red Sox games, nor the option to purchase SNY (SportsNet New York), the newly formed station which broadcasts Met games. Apparently, when asked Tele-Media has stated that picking up NESN is a more important goal for their company, even though NYC is twice as close as Boston and the Mets blackout zone covers all of southern Connecticut. In addition Tele-Media is lazy. Shelton, even though it is the red headed stepchild, is still a part of Fairfield County, which is far enough away from Boston to not lie within the Red Sox blackout zone. However, Tele-Media headquarters lies within the Red Sox blackout zone and thus they blackout all of their customers. When comfronted members of Tele-Media avoided answering the question by redirecting callers to Adelphia, basically a dead end.

So in summary I live an hour and a half away from Shea Stadium, easily within Met Fan territory, however my cable company does not allow me to watch more than national broadcasts, the occasional weekend game on Channel 11, and the subway series, because I do get YES. Red Sox games in addition I am not able to get NESN, and I get blacked out from games that I should not be blacked out. Hot Spot my ass.

Why does this come up today? Look at the schedule and the glaring best game in baseball today is the Mets vs. Diamonbacks which pits and 8-0 Brandon Webb versus Pedro Martinez, I just might enjoy watching that game if I could.