Just when you think everything is going to be okay.

For a few long minutes on Friday night, I thought I might go postal at MLB headquarters. When I tried to start up the Sox Rays game, I was greeted with a technical difficulties error. I raced to the forum, only to find that lots of folks were met with the same error. I put MLB.tv on speed dial and rebooted everything. After rebooting, the game started right up. Whew! All was well. Unfortunately, the game itself was not really worth watching.

Tonight, I had the rare opportunity to watch a game live. It was great with just little stutters here and there, all ironically positioned in critical moments. Oki finished the 6th and the game went to commercial break. It was the longest commercial break ever! Or maybe I was just growing increasingly impatient as time went on. Nope. It was MLB.tv because when coverage finally returned, the Sox had scored a run and had 2 men on with 2 outs. HELLO???? That's a lot to miss because dude fell asleep with his finger on pause. Seriously uncool.

Karma's a bitch

I take full responsibility for last night's debacle and for that, I send my sincerest apologies to Jonathan Van Every and the Red of the Boston Red Sox who were humiliated in St. Pete last night. When the Yankees were forced to use Nick Swisher as a pitcher earlier this season against the DEVIL Rays, I was thoroughly entertained by the idea. I spent days relishing in the collapse of the most expensive pitching staff in baseball. Yeah, karma's a bitch. Last night, the Red Sox found themselves in the exact same situation in the same circus tent and chose to let Jonathan Van Every pitch the 8th inning rather than tax the already exhausted bullpen. While it was embarrassing to watch Van Every hurling 75mph fastballs and Javy Lopez chasing balls in right field, the loss did put things in perspective for me. I hate the Devil Rays. It's somewhat irrational, but I really hate them. I don't know what it is -- if it is their obnoxious fair weather fans -- Did you notice the stands were quite empty last night despite being packed with raging cowbells last fall? Maybe it's their horrible stadium that drives me over the edge. Did you see that homerun off the roof or catwalk or whatever? And poor Bay was running blind out there in left last night. The roof is the color of a baseball. Freaking genius. Maybe it is that they swagger like surly teenagers who think they have it all figured out. Whatever it is, I don't like them and I do not like losing to them and fueling their fire. I think I'd rather lose to the Yankees.

Yes, MLB.tv still sucks

Just because I haven't been complaining doesn't mean that MLB.tv has been any better. Friday's Sox Yankee 11 inning marathon was a complete nightmare. I work until 10pm EST so it is always late in the game when I start watching. Fortunately, this season's DVR capability allows me to start from the beginning of the game without waiting for the game to be archived. This is a HUGE improvement over last year's player. However, the transition from a live game to an archived game has not been exactly seamless. Usually the video freezes in the late innings and never recovers. This is exactly what happened Friday night. I watched until midway through the eighth. The video froze and try as I might I could not get the archive to play. I spent at least a half hour trying go access the video with no luck and since it was approaching 11pm PST, I gave up. I went to bed without watching the last inning and a half of a Sox Yankees game. No biggie, I mean I just watched 3+ hours, I didn't want to know who won.

I got up early the next morning. We're talking 5am. I wanted to watch that last inning plus before work because I would definitely not have time before the Fox afternoon game. But, of course, it wouldn't play. It would only load twenty minutes of the game and I couldn't skip to inning or fast forward past that point. I can't even begin to express how frustrating that was. I searched the forums. I couldn't find any answer but I did remember previous time when the NexDef wasn't working but the regular file worked fine. So I turned off NexDef. I've found that if you turn off NexDef during a live game, you lose all DVR capability. I figured the same would happen in the archive game, so I was very hesitstant to try it because I needed to be able to skip to the 8th inning. Obviously, I did not have an extra four hours before work. Finally I tried it and was shocked to find that I could jump to innings without a problem. I managed to watch the rest of the game that morning but was very late for work. Luckily for MLB.Tv, the excitement of the extra innings win overshadowed the fact that MLB.tv yet again failed to provide a product in a big game.

The next two games were blacked out, so I had no complaints, other than the fact that they were blacked out.

Wednesday night I am faced with a similar problem. In the late innings of a tie ballgame, the video froze. Without closing the player, I tried to load the archive. Safari crashes. I restart it and fire up the player. I get the error that I've logged in too many times. It's after 10pm PST. I remember that the customer service line is open until 12 midnight, but I've always assumed that was EST. I decided to call anyway and after 15 minutes of pressing 2 and waiting on hold, I got a representative. She quickly reset my account and tried to explain to me that I need to logout every time. She got an earful. I would be happy to logout but find it difficult when the player crashes the browser. That isn't even true. I shouldn't have to log out every time. The player should recognize that I'm logging in from the same computer every time. I shouldn't even have to type a password every time. Nonetheless, I am willing to log out if they are willing to provide a player that doesn't crash the browser before I have a chance to log out.

Tonight the video was just fine except for that inning with no sound. But the Sox are losing and Jerry is out sick, so who needs sound?

The only thing I hate more than MLB.tv is the Tampa Bay Devil Rays and their ridiculous circus tent of a ballpark.