The greatest bane of the Major League Baseball fan in existence is not high ticket prices, competitive imbalance or rainy days. It is the dreadfully antiquated blackout policies of Major League Baseball on television. Drawn up long before the internet, national cable networks and Extra Innings packages, they, as they are currently drawn up, do little to benefit the teams they are meant to and do everything to annoy, enrage and inconvenience fans. It’s so bad, in fact, that some people are suing MLB over it.

(More after the break)

Take a look at the blackout map, showing every team’s territory:

Okay, now, if a area is in a certain color, then they are blacked out from that area. So I’m in Western New York, so that means if the Mets or Yankees are playing, I can only see those games on SNY or YES. Even though I might, for example, prefer to see the game on MLB Network, because Bob Costas is commentating there. Or if I just don’t want to hear some of the more Homerific YES announcers and want to see if, say, the other team’s broadcasting team is on on MLB Extra Innings. Nope, I can’t watch those, I have to watch it on YES. Nevermind the fact that my location is closer to Cleveland, Toronto and I believe Pittsburgh than it is to the Bronx or Flushing.

That said, I have it lucky. Take a look at other parts of the country:

• Las Vegas is somehow in a area that is blacked out for the D-Backs, Dodgers, Padres, Angels, A’s and Giants. That’s six teams. And none of them are that close to Vegas.
• Parts of North Carolina (including Charlotte) are in the zone of Atlanta, Baltimore, DC and Cincinnati. This or a variation of this zone also exist elsewhere, such as in all of Tennessee.
• If you live in Oklahoma or Arkansas, you are blacked out for two Texas teams, Kansas City, and St. Louis.
• Areas of New Mexico have similar restrictions, although with Arizona and Colorado instead of KC and STL.
• Iowa is a freaking rainbow of teams that have it as a blackout zone.

So you are probably thinking: so what? They must get the cable channels with those teams, right?

WRONG! They don’t. I’ve done some research. Take Charlotte and other areas in North Carolina, for example. MASN, the cable network of the Orioles and Nationals, isn’t carried by Time Warner there. And after a recent legal dispute over it, a columnist in Raleigh wrote this:

At this point, Time Warner customers might as well get used to life without MASN – and the blackout of all games televised by MASN, including the Extra Innings package. If you’re a Los Angeles Dodgers fan who pays extra to get all their games, you won’t get the ones against Washington. As far as MLB is concerned, those are in-market games, even if your cable provider doesn’t carry the channel.

Ironically, the main argument by Time Warner to not carry MASN was that there aren’t many Orioles or Nationals fans in NC. This, you would think, should be a hint of how stupid these blackout rules are: they don’t take into account reality, and end up punishing innocent fans. And, as DeCock pointed out above, it doesn’t just hurt the fans of the Orioles or Nationals, it hurts everyone. What if you had been a Red Sox fan late last season and wanted to see if your team could make it to the playoffs? Well, you couldn’t have, because those games would have been blacked out since they were against the Orioles. Although, come to think of it, maybe the blackout policy was doing Boston fans a favor in that case…

Las Vegas is even worse: while it is in the blackout zone for essentially every team on the West Coast, only the Dodgers, Angels and Padres have any of their games available on cable in that area. Fans of the D-backs, A’s and Giants- or any team that is playing them on a given day- are out of luck. This is even if the game is set to be on MLB Network or ESPN (with the exception of Sunday Nights).

And so on, and so fourth. And, again, this also means that even if your service DOES have the “home team’s” games on, it means that you won’t be able to use your Extra Innings or MLB.TV package, since you have to watch the network of the team in the zone you are living in. For example, if I wanted to turn on the Dodgers feed to hear the great voice of Vin Scully, I better hope the Dodgers aren’t playing the Mets, because that would mean I’d have to watch the SNY broadcast, which, while better than YES, still lacks Vin Scully.

There are a few possible solutions to this issue:

Have MLB charge extra for a “Break Out of Blackout” package on MLB.TV and Extra Innings

It’s highly unlikely that the blackout policy will change significantly anytime soon. Once baseball owners have something set down that pertains to money, they won’t move away from it unless the government comes after them threatening their anti-trust exemption. However, one thing the owners do like is getting more money. Therefore, what if they could create another option in the MLB.TV and Extra Innings packages: if you pay more money, you can “Break out of the Blackout”. That extra revenue from people who “break out” would be given to the teams that otherwise would be blacking you out, so it’s likely that any such package’s price would depend on the zone you are in. Still, MLB should consider this, it’d allow them to keep the current blackout policy while making money from people who absolutely, positively want out of it.

Move to a one or two team zone

Probably not practical, but take a look at that map up there. Notice the areas where there are only one color? Move to those places, as they only have one or two teams in them, and they almost certainly would have them on Cable. There are exceptions: some parts of North Carolina, for example, are still only in the zone of Baltimore/Washington but, as we saw, don’t have MASN, probably because those zones were drawn up before the Braves even moved to Atlanta. And there are certainly some more rural areas where there is no big digital cable company carrying sports networks. But, in general, any baseball fan who wants to see every game should, if they can, live in a one-color zone, or, barring that, a zone where there are only two colors. Because seeing a Dodger game called by the Giants booth or a Orioles game called by YES is probably preferable to not seeing those games at all.

Get a Dish

A satellite dish will get you basically every channel possible, although you will still need to buy Extra Innings or MLB.TV to get out-of-market games (i.e. somebody in Vegas would finally be able to see the Athletics play the Mariners, but you’d need Extra Innings or MLB.TV to get the Red Sox-Yankees game if it somehow is not on MLB Network, FOX or ESPN). Of course, this then brings the problem that your TV signal will likely be at the mercy of heavy clouds, solar flares and birds trying to make nests in your dish. Okay, maybe only the first one. The other two are just hypothetical.

Write politicians

You know how I said that the only way MLB owners will ever change the blackout policy would be the government going after them. Well, only way that’s going to happen is if there is a massive storm of mail and e-mail to those politicians.

Deal with it

I know, life sucks sometimes, right? In the end, it is sometimes just a case of having to suck it up. Thankfully, the radio broadcasts of games, for example, are not blacked out, so if you have the MLB At Bat app, you can listen to your team that way. It’s better than nothing.

And it is still better than the NFL blackout policy.

Right?