The Blackout Blues
A Sad Girl’s Plea to the MLB
(To Karla Clifton readers: Last night I was possessed with the spirit of sports, and desperately needed to exorcise it. As such, this isn’t an article about music. It’s about baseball. I apologize for this deviation in my regularly scheduled programming.)
Two years ago, I moved to Philadelphia. Six months ago, I became a sports fan.
I grew up in a family of diehard sports fans, but I was never quite one of them. I went to a lot of in-person games, and I would sometimes catch the ones that my parents put on TV in passing, but I was more into other things — like, say, music.
But if I had to pick my favorite sport, I would have said baseball. I loved the numbers, I loved the players, I loved the walk-up songs. I loved the seventh-inning stretch; I loved singing the BUM-BUM-BUM! in “Sweet Caroline.” I loved the cadence of the game. I loved the fact that it was low-scoring, the way that each inning is a game unto itself. One time, we went to a game and my dad bought me a scorecard, and I sat there and scored the whole thing, learning the difference between a base hit and an error, a forwards K and a backwards K.
When I became an adult, no one else was turning on the ballgame, so I stopped watching. I missed it, but not enough to do anything about it. Then, last October, Philadelphia became one of the most exciting sports cities in the U.S.A.
Philadelphia gets a lot of hate, but it is the city that taught me to love sports. We lost three separate championships last year — yep, straight up Rocky Balboa’d it — but guess what? I watched every single championship game, and I loved it. I actually went to a sports bar! For the express purpose of watching sports! I watched the Phillies lose the World Series to the Astros, white-knuckled the bar with every out, marched out in a huff when the final score was called. But I was still weirdly proud of them, knew that they had done everything they could.
Then (bear with me, because this doesn’t directly concern baseball, but it does illustrate my point) the Eagles lost the Super Bowl. And I was a part of it. I went to watch at a friend’s house in the city, but had to leave early to make the train. My boyfriend and I watched the last fifteen minutes of the game on my phone, running through the streets, delivering updates to all the people smoking cigarettes on their stoop, celebrating a touchdown with complete strangers. Then they lost, and we changed trains, ran through the chaos on South Street, all still exhilarated, all our hearts breaking together. (By the way, tales of Philly’s destruction were greatly exaggerated.)
Here’s my point: in the thick of overwhelming loss, surrounded by people who loved where they lived, I realized why people love sports so much.
After those two crushing losses, I made a conscious decision to become a Phillies fan. I told everyone that would listen: “I’m going to watch every single game.” “That’s impossible,” was the reply, though no one elaborated. I just smirked. If you know me, you know that I am nothing if not devoted to completing arbitrary tasks.
I counted down to the start of the regular season and started re-familiarizing myself with baseball. I dove into the new rules and debated the pros and cons (mostly pros) of the pitch clock. I learned what spring training was and why it doesn’t matter. I despaired when I realized that the Phils would be starting out without Bryce Harper, and despaired even more when they announced that Rhys Hoskins would be out for the entire season. I threw myself into it. I was so excited.
Imagine my utter dejection when the regular season started and I was blindsided with the truth: that I can’t watch Phillies games.
If you’re a non-fan, let me enlighten you: baseball (among other sports) is suffering from a paradox right now. Baseball games are carried both on cable and on streaming services, like the MLB app and YouTubeTV. However, if you are “in-market,” you are blocked from streaming the games. It’s called a blackout, and it is my new worst enemy.
So: if you live in Philadelphia, and want to watch the Phillies games, you need to have cable or you are SOL. Can you pay for an MLB subscription? You can, but you will still be SOL. When I desperately bought MLB ($150/year! Out of my price range!), pulling up the Phillies game just gave me this message: “This program is blocked in your area.” So I canceled it and desperately tried to find another way to watch.
I looked into a cable subscription, but if MLB was out of my price range, cable packages with sports were prohibitively expensive. I looked for the game on my TV antenna. (YES! I have a TV antenna!) Nothing. I’m blocked from watching on YouTubeTV, too. In the end, the only way I can get the game is by listening on my little handheld radio.
People have explained the reasons for this — something to do with contracts — but I really don’t care. I’m just heartbroken that baseball games, an integral part of my childhood, are now too expensive for me.
In fact, I was more than heartbroken — I was mad. (My boyfriend was mildly terrified to witness my first-ever sports meltdown.) I was so upset that I decided I needed to turn my rage into something productive. So here is my screed outlining the reasons why this is so horribly unfair.
1. Cable? Are you kidding me? The MLB is staking their future on cable? Here’s a fun fact: people under the age of 80 don’t really use cable anymore. Why would we? If you want to keep abreast with the TV that people are actually watching, you have to subscribe to a laundry list of streaming services. Are we happy about it? No, but The Mandalorian is the only thing worth watching right now, and it’s only available on Disney+. I’m not paying for that and cable.
2. I’ve seen it argued that part of the reason for these blackouts is to encourage people to physically go to the games. Well, guess what — if I can’t afford cable, I certainly can’t afford to go to a baseball game every single night. Besides, the Phils are playing in New York right now!
3. If you haven’t noticed, people are using VPNs to bypass your stupid blackouts anyway. Or they’re streaming games illegally. Is that how MLB wants people watching baseball?
And then there’s reason #4, which is the reason I am writing this article at all. I’m a new baseball fan, a fan that fell back in love with the game because of my city, and I am being completely shut out. And major league baseball needs new fans.
This whole experience has really soured my excitement. Blackouts are a huge, huge obstacle to baseball getting any new, young fans. Baseball has never been less popular — again, not to toot my own horn, but you need fans like me, fans under thirty, fans that genuinely want to watch. The only thing that’s kept me hanging on is the fact that it’s not the Phillies’ fault.
Granted, I don’t know what’s going on behind closed doors. People tell me that the MLB is trying to figure out a way to end the blackouts. But I still felt the need to write this piece, just to remind the people in charge of the urgent need to fix it.
Right now, I’m listening to the third game in the Phillies-Yankees series on my handheld radio. Last night the Phils won their first game of the season, and because I live in Philadelphia, I wasn’t allowed to watch it. I’m starting to like the radio broadcast, though — the announcers are diligent about the play-by-play, and guess what, it’s FREE. Maybe I’ll never switch back to the TV broadcast. God knows they don’t want me watching it.
