organized chaos

king bud and his merry monopoly

it’s almost that time of the year again, where MLB returns to beautiful grassy fields all over this great nation. for those who are privileged enough to live close to a good major league team, congratulations. you can watch your team live in person and on local tv. as for the rest of us, well, we aren’t so lucky. we are subject to the whims of bud lite and DirecTV, who will have the exclusive rights to out-of-market games in their Extra Innings package, if cable and other satellite providers don’t show MLB the money (and soon). how generous of MLB to permit competing offers they have no intention of taking. this has got to be a joke, right? the feds jump all over microsoft for being anti-competitive, and yet they will not take on this obvious attempted monopoly.

i think this is the first time i will give john kerry credit for anything. he is actually going to hold a hearing on this. i think that i will agree with the other liberal senator from massachusetts — more access to good baseball games is good for america. if he can produce any positive result from this hearing, good for him…but i’m not optimistic. baseball does what it wants to do, and there’s not much congress can do about it.

i can’t tell you how much i wish baseball commish bud selig would decide to retire soon. i think it’s almost as much as the democrats want to see the quick end to the bush administration.

tags: bud selig, DirecTV, monopoly