Tonight's the night

Baseball in 2009 starts tonight! Ramon Ortiz is on the hill, Cookie Rojas is in the booth, and we're off, live from Mexicali, the Chinesest city in all Mexico.

And once again, no one seems to care but me. I can't find a scoreboard on ESPN - and keep in mind that ESPN's site makes damn sure to keep you up date on each and every score from the third tier Scottish soccer league.

There is hope that this thing's going to catch a little bit, though. The MLB Network has programming hours to fill, and what else are you going to show in February?* Maybe with their muscle behind it, I won't be the only one watching this thing in a couple years. So this right here is the place to go if you're interested - they got a scoreboard, and they're even doing the live Gameday thingy for it. This ESPN preview is a little bit interesting too. I recommend that you get on this bandwagon before everyone else does and I lose interest.

*Here's another thing I love about the MLB Network. Naturally, when I heard about it, my feelings were mixed: Yay for more baseball, but this is inevitably, I thought, going to wind up being the Yankees Show with special guest stars the Red Sox. We're a month in, though, and that absolutely has not happened. The other day they showed an hour-long documentary about the 1982 Milwaukee Brewers. It wasn't the Yankees, it wasn't the Sox, it wasn't even the Mets - it was a full hour about small market World Series loser. And it was damned interesting. It would have been even moreso if I were a connoseiur of hideous white guy moustaches.

This was one of the tasteful ones.

UPDATE!!!!!!!!! I don't want to oversell this thing (the Caribbean Series, not the Brewers' awful facial hair) - it's not quite the Major League product. Case in point - Brad Knox (it would appear that the Venezuelans have a ringer) is pitching a no-hitter for the Tigers against the Tigers (yes, 50% of the teams in the thing are called the Tigers). He is removed from the game in the 7th because his pitch count has gotten up to 88 pitches. Oh, the PAP! The shoulder-destroying PAP! The good news is that the Dominican immediately ties the game on a bomb by . . . BIG FAT RONNIE BELLIARD! See what I'm talking about? This is great.

Programming

It's that time again. As the football season lumbers to its merciful conclusion, thoughts turn to February and to baseball. Not to, you know, real baseball, but to real baseball's harbingers. Stained artificial turf is its wilderness; fat former major leaguers are its locusts and wild honey. The Caribbean World Series is about to set straight the paths to Opening Day.

MASN in the winter is as useless as TNT without Law and Order reruns, but they've earned their slot the last few years by covering the Caribbean Series. The problem with this thing is that it appears that I'm the only one who cares. I'm not making this up (and I don't remember if I've mentioned this before): I was watching this thing being brought into my living room live during the Super Bowl, and announcer Victor Rojas actually made fun of everyone who was watching baseball instead of the football game. He may as well have mentioned me by name, because I must have been at least 100% of the viewing audience.

My point, though, is that it's tough to find news on this thing. No one cares, and there aren't websites being set up, rich with multimedia features, weeks before it happens. The best you can get - if you're as solidly monolingual as I am - is the occasional obviously Babelfished press release from midsummer. I hadn't seen any news on this, so I went to the MASN website and went to the trouble of filling out one of those forms they make you do to communicate with them. That thing is as uncomfortably curious as the survey you take before you give blood. Naturally, I made most up of the info. What the hell does MASN need to know my address for? An Anita Marks candygram? Anyway, I asked them - in between demands for more Buck Martinez and more less Bob Carpenter - whether they'd be bringing us the Caribbean World Series. I made sure to appeal to their ratings-grubbing side by truthfullly nothing that it's the only reason I would even think about watching them.

I never got a response, and I just figured out why.

MLB Network announced today that it will televise live the 51st annual Caribbean World Series from February 2 through February 7, 2009 scheduled to be played in Mexicali, Mexico. The telecast of the Caribbean World Series will mark the first live games telecast on MLB Network.

Hell yeah!

In addition to televising 12 games of the winter tournament, otherwise known as "La Serie del Caribe," MLB Network will air game highlights and recaps of tournament play, preview match-ups and provide extensive coverage as part of its studio show "Hot Stove."

HELL YEAH! Look, it seems like it's the in thing among people who hate everything (I'm a member in good standing since about 1982) to hate the MLB Network, but take it from me, your favorite avuncular, trustworthy, intermittent internet commentator: it's rad. Super rad. Sure, the studio show is as dumb as Sportscenter, but don't watch that. Where else are you regularly going to find footage of Stan Musial on your television? When's the last time that or any other appliance emitted the words "Tris Speaker"? Finally there is a channel that loves baseball as much as I do, and it's replaced Oxygen as the thing I check first during my television viewing hours.