Back in the day — the day spanning from college through the first year or two of having a grown-up job — I used to bail out on any responsibilities for Opening Day. The Cubs usually played at 1:20 or thereabouts, so I basically shut it down after lunch.
Hey, at least I took care of my morning duties.
Anyway, I always get excited for the start of baseball season, no matter how god-awful the Cubs will probably be. One of the only bummers about moving to Omaha (nearly seven years ago now) is the significant drop-off in the number of Cubs games we get to watch. In Waterloo, Iowa, Comcast Sports Chicago is on the local cable system, along with WGN. Between the two, most Cubs games were broadcast.
Here, we were left with WGN, which handles only a fraction of the games it used to, and ESPN. And ESPN sucks.
But even though we only got some of the games, WGN was a major attraction for holding on to DirecTV as long as we did. Better to have some games than none at all, right?
Here's a better question: Why not get ALL of the games, for every team? That was one major factor in going with the dual-PS3 setup — the built-in MLB.tv app. Live, HD streaming of every major league game (except the Royals, since we're in their broadcast area. That said, it's the Royals. No big loss.), just $120 for the entire season. For reference, our old DirecTV bill was $78/month.
Four games into the season and I'm absolutely hooked. If you miss the live broadcast, you can jump through inning by inning to the good bits, or watch the game in its entirety. You can choose the home or away TV feed, and you can sub in the corresponding radio feed in lieu of the TV announcers. For example: When the Cubs are on ESPN, I'll be listening to the WGN radio broadcast with the ESPN video.
There's an in-game boxscore, and you can jump back and review the game on the fly. Game going south? Switch to another one. It's already proving to be well worth the price of admission. More sports leagues need to get on board with streaming technology. For as old-fashioned and behind-the-times as baseball can be sometimes, it's on the cutting edge on this one.
4 comments:
It's now official. I took your advice and am now off the grid with cable/satellite programming. An extra $700/yr in my pocket.
Thanks for your advice and posts about this subject. It doesn't really get me away from the tv, but makes me feel less guilty when I don't watch it.
Well, I am pretty inspirational.
A few hundred dollars extra per year means a few extra bike races, bike parts, video games or whatever else you couldn't really do before.
It's a nice feeling. Hope it works out for you as well as it has for us.
It's just not the same since Harry Carey passed! Whose the voice of the Cub's now?
Len Kasper on TV, Pat Hughes on the radio. Both are very good.
Bob Brenly is the color guy on TV, former Cub Keith Moreland does radio with Hughes.
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