Want to Watch Baseball Online?

The fellows over at U.S.S. Mariner clued me in to this great deal, and as the information is now off their front page, I thought I'd pass it along to you.

I've always been intrigued by the idea of MLB TV, an online service from MLB.com that lets you watch games from around the country in Windows Media Player or Real Player. It's pretty expensive (without the loophole that's just been discovered) at $14.95 a month, and I had questions about the quality of the broadcasts as well. Gameday Audio is a neat service that gives you the radio broadcasts -- if you throw that into the MLB TV mix you get MLB All Access for $19.95 a month. That's still a good bit of cash, and I probably wouldn't be willing to spend $90 or $120 bucks for the season even if the quality were stellar.

Enter the loophole, or option three on this page. Tucked away at the bottom of the advertisement is a statement reading: "MSN Premium Subscribers get MLB All Access with your subscription". MSN Premium sounds like it would be a service in and of itself, so it's probably in excess of the $19.95 monthly they're charging for MLB All Access alone, right?

Surprisingly, that is not true. Here's what MSN Premium is:

$9.95 a month
* Virus Guard and Firewall from McAfee Security
* Some home and learning resource nonsense from MS Money and Encarta
* Multimedia photo story-telling tools (I have no idea)
* Up to 11 customizable accounts (of something, I'm sure)

and MLB All Access.

Items marked with * are crap and do not have to be installed on your computer to make this offer work. They send you a CD in the mail, if you want, or you can download them. The main thing is that you are able to use MLB All Access right away, independently of any MS nonsense.

So $9.95 a month, coming out to $60 bucks for the season. That's a lot better than the MLB.com deals, but still a little pricey. That's not quite tempting enough for me to bite on.

The next part of the offer mystifies me as to how MLB.com is making any money off of this whatsover. They cut the price in half by offering three months free.

So, to recap: $30 bucks to watch nearly every major league game, even archived ones once they're finished, or to watch them in condensed form (just the highlights) or even a customized highlight film of the at bats of players you select (no one here plays fantasy baseball, do they?). I fired up a game the minute after I signed on, and the quality was excellent on my cable connection. Last night while checking game scores, I saw that Minnesota and Cleveland were locked in an extra innings battle, so before I went to bed I opened up the MLB TV window and enjoyed a couple innings.

I don't know how long this stupid, stupid deal will be around, but if you're interested in shelling out just a little bit of cash (they bill monthly, I'm pretty sure) to watch nearly unlimited baseball, I'd check it out. I know this is a pretty hokey advertisement, but this one, unlike my dream of Kaz' perfect OBP continuing, isn't too good to be true.

If you're interested, join here.