You gotta make a buck. I get it. But when in effect you hold people “captive” to a product, it’s only a matter of time before they find ways to break out. Of course nobody is actually captive to watching the Seattle Mariners through exclusive contracted channels like Comcast and ROOT Sports. That’s why I put quotation marks around the operative word above. We are free to make other choices.

But MLB and it’s approved channels have conspired (legally) to trap those who want to watch local team broadcasts. If you subscribe to cable or satellite with a package that includes the approved channels, you’re in fat city. But MLB has specifically excluded legal streaming access to local broadcasts, this despite the fact that people are leaving cable and satellite in droves in favor of streaming services. MLB even blacks out local broadcasts on THEIR OWN TV service. They do not even offer them at premium prices. Subscribe to MLB TV, and you enter into a bizarre and contradictory world where you can watch EVERY MLB game EXCEPT…your local team.

Now it’s clear how we got to this situation. Because people are leaving cable and satellite in droves, cable and satellite companies have figured out that their ONLY leverage to hold onto customers is exclusive rights to live sports. The last vestiges of reliance on cable/satellite for any other form of entertainment have disappeared. So these companies and their broadcast partners funnel huge contracts into the coffers of MLB to obtain and maintain these exclusive rights. But it’s also clear they do so not to better serve their customers, but to trap them. In effect they say, “If you want to watch local Mariners’ broadcasts, you gotta come to US!”

Over the last few years more and more people are wondering, when is MLB going to change with the times? When are they going to leave the dark ages of cable and local boundaries? When are they going to accept the growing customer demand for freedom of access to their product through their preferred channels? Alas, small rumblings in 2015 and 2016 have turned out to “lipstick on a pig” solutions.

So, for those who want to break out of this “prison,” what are our choices?

We can try to bypass the systemic restrictions imposed by our lords and masters. We can, so to speak, get a file and cut through the bars, or get a spoon and dig out the grout between bricks. We can resort to unapproved methods like Virtual Private Network software which attempt to fool the system into believing you are watching the broadcasts from another locale. But it’s my understanding that MLB and the approved local channels are continually working to defeat this hacking of their licensed product. Myself, as a matter of life-policy, I prefer to stay legit.

If we forgo the bypass approach, we are pretty much left with not watching our local team’s games. And here we get to the heart of the matter. It is right here where the prison walls come into play. Sports is at its core an entertainment based on rooting interests. I mean, you’ve gotta root for your local team, right? RIGHT?

Well, just how badly do you want to break out? Do you feel so trapped, so constrained, so unwilling to shell out the money for a full cable subscription just for your one team’s games that you are willing to consider the unthinkable? Might you contemplate changing allegiances, and rooting for the team from a different locale?

This is the point I am at. For years I have faithfully watched Mariners baseball on cable. For years I contemplated switching allegiances because of the futility of team ownership and management. Fifteen, sixteen years of playoff-less baseball will do that to you. But it is no longer futility alone that is driving my impulses. After all, last year the team missed the playoffs by a slim margin, and they have a real chance to get in this year. Still, a more powerful impulse is driving me to consider switching allegiance to some team other than the Mariners, the impulse to break out of prison. MLB has created this situation. Every fan who wants to free themselves from cable or satellite is literally being driven to ROOT FOR AN OUT-OF-TOWN TEAM! MLB has made this bed. They have created this contradiction.

I can subscribe to MLB TV without cable, and choose any other team to follow. I can even subscribe to an online news service local to that team. I can participate in their forums. This is the soup mixed by MLB. Unbelievable. But true.

I appeal to MLB to reckon with this absurd situation. I hold out no hope that they will, because they have exclusive contracts that in most cases extend out many, many years. This is NOT a good approach for the future. The Gulliver of MLB has INVITED the cable and satellite companies to bind him for a price. As Bob Dylan said so long ago, “The times, they are a-changin’.” MLB is stuck in the dark ages, they have sold out their customer base for 30 pieces of silver. (How many conflicting metaphors can one build into a single paragraph? Inquiring minds want to know. You don’t end a letter with an aside, but I just did.)

P.S. -- I sent an email to MLB with a link to this article. I'm not holding my breath that it will be taken as anything other than a throw-away.