IS BASEBALL REALLY DYING A SLOW DEATH, OR ARE THE DODGERS ONTO SOMETHING BY RESTRICTING TELEVISION VIERWSHIP TO ABOUT 30,000 IN A CITY OF MILLIONS?

New radio

    The lack of televised Dodger games has forced me to listen to them on the radio.  And on AM.  It has been a long, long time since I had no other media with which to watch the team.

    The standoff between Time Warner Cable and every other television program provider only just hit me this year, when I moved into a house that has Direct TV.  My last 20 years of residency was within a two mile radius, of which, Time Warner (and its earlier iterations) was the primary cable provider.  As such, when SportsNet LA became a channel, I paid little attention to the fact that it was “exclusive.”  It was just a different channel on which I watched the Dodger games the past 20 years.

    At first, I panicked!  How was I going to survive my nightly ritual!  How was I going to handle not seeing Puig, or Gonzales for that matter, hit them out of the park?  What about guessing who is sitting in the first row?  Ok, that’s a throw away! 

    I thought that if I purchased the MLB package, I could at least see the Dodgers, but at a hefty price.  I figured I could watch them on my tablet, or better yet, on the TV.  But, that option was not available I soon found out.  Direct TV had a free preview of MLB games on opening day, and the week thereafter.  However, the Dodger game was blacked out.  Serious frustration began to set in.  (I have already read about people who have bypassed the MLB restrictions, but I have not made up my mind if I will utilize this approach).

    I tried to see if I could stream the AM radio station, but again, the dreaded black out notice.  I had to finally dig up this tiny Sony portable AM/FM radio, circa the 1980's, plug my Bluetooth speaker in (obviously, no WiFi connect!) and locate the damn signal.  Once I was able to put that all together, I started listening to the games every day the team played.  Then the radio broke, and I had to wait a week before my new one came in the mail.

    What a difference listening to the game on the radio is. I love it.  I know enough about baseball that between Vin Scully and Rick Monday, their calling of the game is easy listening.  I find myself sitting out on the front porch with the bug candles lit (!!) and my radio on the window sill, spending the early evening with the game pictured in my mind. 

    I listened to the Dodger games when I was a youngster, teenager and young adult, on the radio.  I had my trusty transistor radio back then. Took it to the beach when I was laying out for a tan.  I lived two blocks away from the beach, so this was a regular past time for me.  I was listening to the game on the radio in 1968 when Drysdale pitched his 58 perfect innings.  Ironically, I was listening to the game on the radio in 1988 when Hershiser broke that record with 59!

Old school transister

    I really don’t understand the Dodgers' apparent unconcern about the lack of television exposure that is going on its second year, in the Los Angeles community, as expressed by Magic Johnson recently. Baseball is, in many ways, a dying game. It has been pointed out many times that the mean age of the baseball fan is now in the 50's. The game is slow and methodical; it is not fast paced like hockey or basketball. Having a 55,000 per game attendance is certainly sustainable for a while, but bringing in the younger new fans will be a stretch without television.