There’s a lot to like about this video of Mark Fidrych being interviewed by Bob Uecker moments after beating the Yankees on Monday Night Baseball, but the part that made me laugh out loud comes at the very end:
Blackouts, then and now
“Next Monday night, we’ll be in Philadelphia for the Phillies-Dodgers game, which will be seen everywhere in the United States, except in the Philadelphia area, which will see the Astros-Mets game.”
Here are three reasons why the Phillies game might have been blacked out in Philadelphia in 1976:
1) The Phillies’ owner didn’t want the game broadcast locally unless or until tickets for the game sold out. (Possible.)
2) The game was already scheduled to broadcast on a local Philadelphia station. (Probable?)
3) Philadelphia is really more of an Astros town.
Blackouts today sometimes take the form of option two, with “local” defined broadly. Iowa, for instance, is local to Minneapolis, Chicago, St. Louis, Milwaukee, and Kansas City. Luckily, according to this article from seven years ago, our redoubtable commissioner is on the case. I’m sure he’ll get around to fixing the problem before he retires next year, which he’s totally doing.
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