MLB to ESPN: Drop dead

MLB vs. ESPN? I haven't had this tough a time finding a rooting interest since big oil battled HMOs in a steel cage match.

Fuck them both. But good for MLB for treating ESPN like it would have treated any of us for breaking the embargo.

 

Can I get some of that action?

 

Neil Best actually broke this Thursday on his Newsday blog. We linked to it and within an hour, an ESPN flack emailed to say that we should change it and that Best was incorrect. Naturally, I asked about Dan Patrick, and the guy 'had no idea what was going on.'

I think - pure guess - we're heading into some dicey times for ESPN. I've said it a few times ... i smell the NFL network coming after the NFL draft. The NFL network is only going to grow nationally, and eventually, it's going to want ESPN's crown jewel. That's going to drive a massive wedge between the two. I have zero proof of this, other than the fact that the NFL is locking all kinds of shit down in an attempt to protect its product and give the teams the power, as opposed to other outside forces. I think by next year, the MLB will doing much of the same.

IMO, the only major league that really needs ESPN is the NBA, and that's because although it's more popular among young people than MLB/NFL, nobody watches the damn sport. And this is from a guy who is a huge NBA fan. Baseball will be fine on Fox and TBS and wherever it goes; the NFL already airs in multiple places.

 

That would be KNTU, sir. The Credit Union of North Texas wouldn't give up their initials ....

 

The Southern Tenant Farmers Union says please be quiet.

 

Novelist hit it on the head, there was a problem because the game ran late. The Braves-Marlins games ran late into extra innings, on top of a rain delay, thus making TBS to announce the starters several minutes before ESPN and SC came on to announce the starters. If the game ended like it should, TBS would have made the announcement around 5pm EDT, and not 5:45pm EDT as they ended up doing. That's the story that hasn't been brought up.

MLB can't bitch too much about it because it was about timing. They should have told the Fish and the Braves to hurry the fuck up and play the game or postpone it and get off the t.v. screen.

 

Are you saying they should forget about the baseball game so TBS can run its show, and so ESPN can have the rosters in time for SC? Sorry, that's lame. When games run long (think October baseball), TV adjusts. Happens all the time.

Just because things were supposed to run at a certain time, that doesn't mean what ESPN did was right.

 

And Craig Sager can't wait to go shopping!

 

It was tongue-in-cheek, Oz. You want me to put that in blue? Things like that (extra inning games) always happen. If MLB is going whine, that's their problem.

 

Sorry, I've always had a miserable sarcasm detector here. :-[

MLB still has a right to whine, though. A partner went against a previously made agreement.

 

Apology accepted, Oz.

Common sense would have told the WWL to hold off until TBS was done, but given their history of being cocky and doing whatever makes them happy, they released them anyway, without waiting for a while.

Ernie Johnson is somewhere at home laughing as Barkley gives his two cents worth about this faux pas.

 

TBS actually partially did this to ESPN last year.

I doubt its on YouTube...but Skip Caray was doing the Sunday afternoon telecast on TBS on the Selection Sunday. The rosters came down at 3 pm that day, but were embargoed, of course, until ESPN's Special Show at 7 PM leading into Sunday Night Baseball.

Prior to a commerical break just around 3 PM....Skip announces the rosters are in and he'll inform fans who the Braves picks are, because after all Skip is Skip and "if I was the commissioner of baseball" we all know how he'd run the show.

After the commercial, Skip proceeded to tell fans that if the Braves were going on a fishing trip over the All-Star Break that "Brian McCann, Edgar Renteria, and Andruw Jones should not board the boat"