That was a weird weekend. No big sports of any kind. No basketball or football on the TV for the first time since Labor Day. No kid sports.<\/p>\n
Sure, I watched some of the Master\u2019s, but we were often busy during the peak watch times so I wasn\u2019t able to give it a ton of attention. Plus it wasn\u2019t a super interesting tournament this year, so when I did sit down to watch, I did not feel compelled to remain seated for hours.<\/p>\n
Baseball has begun, but I\u2019m in one of my baseball moods right now and not ready to dive back in. Out of protest at the owners\u2019 bad faith during their lockout of the players, I cancelled my MLB.TV subscription rather than let it renew annually as I\u2019ve done for at least a decade. A few days later MLB automatically put all accounts on hold pending a resolution to the labor conflict. But I still felt like I got one over on them, withholding my $120 on my terms.<\/p>\n
I have yet to go back and re-up.<\/p>\n
A big piece of that is the dishonesty and unfairness that the owners built their entire lock-out argument on. They wanted to prevent the players from taking their fair share of the revenue pie in a moment when said revenues are skyrocketing.<\/p>\n
And as soon as an agreement was made, MLB started trotting out all these new ways that baseball will be broadcast. Each of which is a new revenue stream for owners but which also makes it harder for fans to see their favorite teams. National broadcasts that wipe out local broadcasts and require a subscription of some kind to see. Added to a refusal to adjust the existing, ridiculous MLB blackout rules, these are just another example of how hostile to fans ownership and the MLB office are. Throw in that it\u2019s damn near impossible for a family with more than a couple kids to take the entire household to an MLB game without dropping $500+ and I can\u2019t help but be soured on how the game is run and where it\u2019s headed.<\/p>\n
My little protest won\u2019t mean a thing to any organization\u2019s nor MLB\u2019s bottom lines. But it\u2019s hard to get interested in a game that really doesn\u2019t seem interested in the fans in any way other than finding more ways to get money out of us.<\/p>\n
Of course, if the Royals are playing well in a month I may cave and start watching again.<\/p>\n
We did have one big family event on the calendar this weekend: M got inducted into the National Honor Society. The ceremony was Sunday afternoon and we drug her sisters along with us. They were thrilled. We told them we expected to do this again in two and four years for each of them, so no pressure.<\/p>\n
That was the first moment in a big month for M. Prom is two weeks away. She has a dress, a date (a friend, they are going with a large group), and as a class officer is responsible for setting things up the morning of the dance. We\u2019ve also told her to get serious about what colleges she wants to visit so we can start making plans to get on those campuses between now and September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
That was a weird weekend. No big sports of any kind. No basketball or football on the TV for the first time since Labor Day. No kid sports. Sure, I watched some of the Master\u2019s, but we were often busy during the peak watch times so I wasn\u2019t able to give it a ton of attention. Plus it wasn\u2019t a super interesting tournament this year, so when I did sit down to watch, I did not feel compelled to remain seated for hours. Baseball has begun, but I\u2019m in one of my baseball moods right now and not ready to dive back in. Out of protest at the owners\u2019 bad faith during their lockout of the players, I cancelled my MLB.TV subscription rather than let it renew annually as I\u2019ve done for at least a decade. A few days later MLB automatically put all accounts on hold pending a resolution to the labor conflict. But I still felt like I got one over on them, withholding my $120 on my terms. I have yet to go back and re-up. A big piece of that is the dishonesty and unfairness that the owners built their entire lock-out argument on. They wanted to prevent the players from taking their fair share of the revenue pie in a moment when said revenues are skyrocketing. And as soon as an agreement was made, MLB started trotting out all these new ways that baseball will be broadcast. Each of which is a new revenue stream for owners but which also makes it harder for fans to see their favorite teams. National broadcasts that wipe out local broadcasts and require a subscription of some kind to see. Added to a refusal to adjust the existing, ridiculous MLB blackout rules, these are just another example of how hostile to fans ownership and the MLB office are. Throw in that it\u2019s damn near impossible for a family with more than a couple kids to take the entire household to an MLB game without dropping $500+ and I can\u2019t help but be soured on how the game is run and where it\u2019s headed. My little protest won\u2019t mean a thing to any organization\u2019s nor MLB\u2019s bottom lines. But it\u2019s hard to get interested in a game that really doesn\u2019t seem interested in the fans in any way other than finding more ways to get money out of us. Of course, if the Royals are playing well in a month I may cave and start watching again. We did have one big family event on the calendar this weekend: M got inducted into the National Honor Society. The ceremony was Sunday afternoon and we drug her sisters along with us. They were thrilled. We told them we expected to do this again in two and four years for each of them, so no pressure. That was the first moment in a big month for M. Prom is two weeks away. She has a dress, a date (a friend, they are going with a large group), and as a class officer is responsible for setting things up the morning of the dance. We\u2019ve also told her to get serious about what colleges she wants to visit so we can start making plans to get on those campuses between now and September.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[20,26,85,76,14],"class_list":["post-11113","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-baseball","tag-family","tag-high-school","tag-mlb","tag-parenting"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11113","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11113"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11113\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11115,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11113\/revisions\/11115"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11113"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11113"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dsnotebook.me\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11113"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}