Friday, April 22, 2011

Question for longtime baseball fans

How did you watch baseball before TiVo came along? I mean, how could you? Baseball is wall-to-wall commercials. It's literally infested with them.

Every pitching change brings a commercial. And if they change pitchers after every single batter: too bad. You get commercials after every change. And not short ones, either.

While the game is on, the announcers inject commercials right into their commentary -- as if it's an old Burns & Allen show, fer god's sake. Even the damn graphics have commercials built into them. And I won't even mention the physical stadium, which is literally tattooed with product names.

Strangest of all is that the commercials themselves come with commercials. I'm always dumbfounded when they got to break, saying "This pitching change brought to you by Toyota." What exactly is the benefit here that I should be thankful Toyota is providing for me? Since the commercial is the only thing "brought to" me during the pitching change, and it's a Taco Bell commercial, I'm not sure what it means to say "this pitching change brought to you by Toyota." It's insane. There are layers upon layers of commercials. Aaaaaargh!

The only way I can watch a game is with one finger hovering over the fast-forward button. And I would never watch a game in real-time. Never.

So, tell me. How did you survive this commercial onslaught in the days before TiVo? I only came to baseball full-time about five years ago. In other words, TiVo was always available to me as a fan. But you didn't have that. So tell me: how the hell did you survive baseball without TiVo?