Baseball and new media...

I had fun watching Homer Bailey and the Reds shutout Pittsburgh this afternoon. Made me think about how much following baseball has changed in my lifetime. Today it is possible to see almost every game live or archived. (When I was a kid it I only had the Saturday game of the week to watch. Did I actually just type a sentence that started with "when I was a kid"? Now I am officially old.)

I had to follow my local team by radio as a kid. Nothing wrong with that and I still enjoy tuning in from time to time. There are many more options today though. Thanks to cable I can see almost all of my team's games. With the internet I can follow along with live updates if I am not near my tv. I sometimes wonder if this is a good thing or not. Does it cheapen the experience? It was a treat to have the Indians on the game of the week. On these rare occasions I would make sure to watch the whole game because you never knew how long it would be before you could do it again. Now I have a tendency to only watch parts of the games. It does not seem as important to see the whole game now.

Thanks to cable the options are so much better for watching baseball. In fact if you are willing to pay you can see almost every major league game now. With the mlb package on cable/satellite you can see several dozen out of market games each week. If you spring for the mlb online package you can see practically every game. Some you have to watch archived because of blackout restrictions, but you can still watch them. Again is this good or bad? Is there a point of overload? I guess it depends on how much of a sports fan you are.