MLB on TV means everything and nothing

Part 2 of “Toward a Better Baseball”

Scene from the 1992 MLB All-Star Game in San Diego. (Charles Starr / The San Diego Union-Tribune)

During MLB’s 2023 offseason, I am posting a series of essays titled “Toward a Better Baseball.” The goal of the series is to articulate a vision for the sport for when MLB loses its monopoly power. This is Part 2. You can read Part 1 here.

FCC regulations, case law, business operations, market variations, evolving technology, and consumer preferences become absurd after remembering that we’re just smashed-together particles of space dust. Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption allows for frequent and infuriating television blackouts—so what? Those are made-up things, there are bigger problems in the world, and in the end our fates are sealed.

We need to spend our time on earth somehow, though, and few things are as fun and fulfilling and elicit as much passion and pain as sports. If baseball is essential to community, as I’ve argued in the first piece of this series, then MLB’s TV broad…