FanHouse Extra Innings

Extra inning games are weird. When they first get going, you want to see some sort of resolution so you can go to sleep. But as a game goes to 15, 16, 17 innings and so forth, the masochist in me always comes out and hopes that the game hits that magic threshold of 20 innings ... even though I have to get up early the next morning to go to work.

The Rockies and Padres have hit that magic threshold for me ... and then some. The teams played a 22 -inning extravaganza which finally ended after Troy Tulowitzki drove home Willy Taveras with an RBI double off of Glendon Rusch on an 0-2 count. Taveras had reached with two outs and nobody on when Khalil Greene's throw from short pulled Tony Clark off the bag. Taveras then went to third on a stolen base and an error in front of Tulo's double. Of course it would have to be an unearned run that would win the game ... which finally ended at 4:21 AM ET after six hours and 16 minutes when Kip Wells struck out opposing pitcher Rusch looking.

Amazingly, both catchers, Josh Bard and Yorvit Torrealba, caught the entire game. And both teams now have to travel for Friday night games ... the Rockies go to Houston, and the Padres go to Arizona. Hopefully, Rockies announcer George Frazier will make it to the next game with his sanity, as he spent his time between innings on pizza runs, scrounging for food in adjacent luxury boxes, and contemplated sending their on-field reporter out for food in the 21st inning.

MLB president Bob DuPuy [pictured right] plans to officially address the blackout troubles in front of the sport's powerful executive council two weeks from today at the quarterly owners meetings in New York. How seriously the eight-man council treats the concerns will go a long way toward proving whether baseball is serious about rewriting its archaic rules or simply raising the issue to muzzle all of the fans who are not allowed to buy the product baseball is selling.

... Well, in theory at least. The reality is much different. Some areas are blacked out from 40 percent of the games on a full schedule. No one in Iowa can watch the Brewers, Cardinals, Cubs, Royals, Twins and White Sox. Las Vegas has its own hexagon of darkness with the A's, Angels, Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Giants and Padres.

Think about that. Baseball, which has made billions of dollars through MLB.com and its national television packages by knocking down the barriers that prevented mass consumption, is more than happy to ignore its own Great Wall.

Unfortunately, those rules don't make sense anymore, as Passan says. It's time for the MLB to move out of the Dark Ages like the rest of us, and open up the game to fans who seem to be desperately craving it.

Fox and TBS have postseason TV rights locked up for seven years. [MLB vice president Tim] Brosnan says there's "still north of about 100" of MLB's 2,430 annually scheduled games that are still available to be broadcast nationally. "But there's an awful lot of game programming already on somewhere. We believe this channel won't live or die on games but on our creativity." ...

And given that the idea is to "take fans inside the sport without becoming the insider's network," he says, there could be entertainment: "I'm a big admirer of Bravo Channel's reality shows. We could have heroes and villains."

"I've heard for years we have too much product out there," Selig said. "Everywhere I've gone ... there's no market that has less than 350 to 400 [televised] games, and some have quite a bit more than that. We have an enormous amount of product out there"

"Our chief goal throughout the process was to ensure that fans would have access to as many baseball games and as much baseball coverage as possible," said MLB President and Chief Operating Officer Bob DuPuy.

MLB President & COO Bob DuPuy said late yesterday, "We will continue discussions until we reach a deal or it becomes apparent we cannot."

"It is opening day. The baseball season has begun and we're still waiting for the business guys to get the show on the road and meet their obligation to the fans. Many fans are now denied access to their favorite team because executives haven't resolved relatively minor business differences. That is wrong. I want to see an agreement that is good for fans and consumers. The parties must push ahead with discussions and must not abandon baseball's greatest fans, who have been thrown a curveball."