Give me my SNY!

February 2, 2008 12:31 PM

How can an out-of-market Mets fan persuade the MLB extra innings system to give us the New York broadcast instead of the Florida one for opening day?

As an out-of-market Mets fan, I've grown somewhat accustomed to seeing half of the team's games on Extra Innings broadcast by the opposing team's network. And while I have nothing but love for Vin Scully, essentially all of the other team broadcasts are torture at best. And I have to listen to these yahoos instead of the Mets' broadcast team, which is far, far better and, of course, Mets-focused.

But I've accepted this as part of the deal.

However, here's the problem:

The Mets are opening their season against the Marlins, in Florida, and will most likely have Johan Santana on the mound. This is a big freaking deal for us. And the thought of this game's being broadcast by the insufferable Fox Sports Florida crew fills me with dread and disgust. But the package generally chooses the home-team's broadcast system.

However, there have been exceptions in the past. Sometimes, the teams have different broadcasters on the weekends (including the Mets, whose weekend games are on the CW 11 instead of SNY, and therefore never make it onto the package.) On rare, glorious occasions, a Mets road game will run with the SNY feed.

Now, if the game is chosen as ESPN's Monday Night Baseball, my problems are solved. But if it's not, I would like to know how I can convince the powers that be (whomever they are) to use the SNY feed instead of the FSN FL feed.

Aside from the fact that I want it, it makes good sense for them anyway. There are FAR more out-of-market Mets fans than Marlins fans, and since Johan is the story of the game, it would be FAR better for the audience at large to watch the game broadcast by his team.

posted by Doctor Suarez to sports, hobbies, & recreation (6 comments total)

Your best bet is to find a friend in New York with a broadband connection and a Slingbox. Convince him/her to watch the game on SNY (or have the cable box on SNY with the TV off). Repeat as necessary. This is how I got my Cubs and Sox fix when I lived in St. Louis.
(I'm from Carbondale; I didn't know you were supposed to choose.)
posted by sachinag at 1:00 PM on February 2, 2008

I don't think it's a matter of persuasion, I think that part of the MLB.tv contract is that the broadcast audio is the home team. Regardless, the MLB is notoriously unresponsive so I will offer you two possible solutions:

Listen to the Mets radio broadcast. When you get an MLB.tv subscription it comes with the audio package as well. You can mute the video broadcast and open the audio stream in a separate window. The audio will be whoever the Mets radio team is, but this is almost certainly better than the Marlins announcers, who are some of the worst I remember. Also, the radio audio is typically a few seconds behind the video.

Look into alternative methods of watching the Mets game, such as sopcast or other p2p streaming. Here's a link to one guide, which I haven't used and can't vouch for. I do regularly use it to watch out of market NFL games though and it works reasonable well.

(I'm a die hard Phillies fan and I just helped you out. Karmically, I believe this means Johan Santana will now strain something opening day.)
posted by christonabike at 1:04 PM on February 2, 2008

Or, maybe the Karma will translate to Cole Hamels getting through a whole season without another bar fight, or Brett Myers getting through the whole season without punching his wife again. ;-P

I keed I keed... very talented ballclub you have there.
posted by Doctor Suarez at 1:17 PM on February 2, 2008

(also, I marked your answer as the best because it's the best for most people, but not for me, since it does not appear that sopcast is available for OS X)
posted by Doctor Suarez at 1:39 PM on February 2, 2008

Doctor, if you're running an Intel-based Mac, you should be okay with Parallels or Boot Camp running Windows. (I've tried Sopcast this way on my Mac and it works fine.)
posted by diastematic at 2:23 PM on February 2, 2008

Yeah, a Windoze boot seems to be in my future. I'd just rather spend the money on something besides a copy of XP Pro.
posted by Doctor Suarez at 3:06 PM on February 2, 2008