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The screen's small, but the price isn't

Tech Toys column on mlb.com

Date published: 3/15/2008

URK. I JUST PAID MLB.com $119 for MLB Extra Innings.

Urk.

One hundred nineteen bucks to watch my beloved, now hopefully steroid-free San Francisco Giants on a 14-inch laptop screen.

Urk.

I suppose there's something poetic in the fact that now that the Giants have rid themselves of Barry Bonds, the screen I'll be watching them on has shrunk down from Barry size to Barney Fife size. Purists might say this is my penance for enjoying all those artificially enhanced 450-foot home runs as a Giants fan.

I am forced to stream live games over the Internet instead of watching them on television because I recently signed up for Verizon FiOS TV. And it seems to be a surprise to Verizon Communications that baseball season begins at the end of March.

Verizon is currently in negotiations with baseball on a deal to carry Extra Innings, a package that provides subscribers with up to 80 out-of-market games a week. For viewers in our area, this means no Washington Nationals or Baltimore Orioles games. Those games are available to local fans on MASN. Extra Innings has virtually every out-of-market game that's not a national Fox Game of the Week or postseason game.

To be fair to Verizon, Major League Baseball is so greedy and unreasonable that it's very difficult to deal with. To paraphrase Barack Obama's minister, Bud Selig can never know what it's like to be a poor baseball fan living in a rich baseball mogul's country.

But I'm upset with Verizon for what will happen after any deal is made with baseball: Even it the two parties work out a deal, it will take up to two months for Verizon to phase in reconfiguring its channel lineup at its 13 video hubs around the country. That means it could be June before I could see my favorite team on FiOS.

That's consistent with Verizon's overall slowpoke approach in delivering to customers. FiOS is a great product with a superior picture and wonderful features, but this is the kind of thing that makes subscribers like me question whether it was worth leaving other carriers.

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Date published: 3/15/2008