Dodger fans on the Central Coast have been effectively banned from watching their team this season — a ridiculous development for the year 2014. By Downtowngal (Own work), via Wikimedia Commons

If the Dodgers wanted the Central Coast as part of their media market, they sure could have fooled me. With thousands of other Dodger fans, we are the forgotten children, poised in no-man’s land.

It’s officially the All-Star break. We are still, officially, blacked out.

For fans around Los Angeles, there are other ways to take the game in. Their flagship radio station’s ratings are up almost 50 percent and ballpark attendance is up over eight percent. In San Luis Obispo, the games can be found on ESPN Radio 1280, but there is no legal way to actually watch the games.

Like many others in California, we live hours away from Los Angeles, while still being technically within the Dodgers’ market. One county to the North (Monterey County), the market switches to the Giants. It takes at least 12 hours to drive to Dodger Stadium, take in a game, and get home (probably more like 15-18 if you like to get there early). In other words, it’s a full day.

I’ve explained the ridiculousness before. If I lived almost anywhere else in the country, I’d have at least some access to games. If you live “outside” of the Dodgers’ market (one county to the North, for example), you can get every Dodgers game via MLBTV. Even if I was “blacked out” in Los Angeles, I’d be able to go to more games in person, as it seems many fans are.

This, my friends, is no-man’s land.

Like so many Dodgers fans, I haven’t been happy about the situation. While fans are completely helpless, I’ve found other things to focus on this Summer. In my house, there are lots of projects I’ve completed instead of watching the Dodgers on TV. I’ve found other sports to watch, writing for an MLS-related site. In an age where I can watch EVERY World Cup match live, from my computer, wherever I am, how silly is it that I can’t watch the Dodgers on TV?

It’s far less than it once was, but every so often, I have thought about the Dodgers this summer.

I wonder what an All-Star level Dee Gordon looks like. I haven’t seen it with my own two eyes, so I wonder whether it actually exists.

I wonder what it must have been like to see Clayton Kershaw throw one of the best-pitched games of all-time.

I wonder how many years Vin Scully has left in the tank. How bitter will my emotions be if this whole season goes by without being able to see hear Vin describe those warm Chavez Ravine evenings? If this is Vin’s last year, how much does anyone really care?

I wonder what will happen if the Dodgers make it to the World Series. Will I have to learn about some of the players on my own team throughout the playoffs, when I should have had 162 games to take the information in? Am I less attached to this team because I cannot see them play?

To be a fan is to be engaged. To be an educated fan is to have consumed the games by some means. Radio used to suffice. I still follow games on Twitter and online, along with ESPN Radio 1280. No matter what I try, there is nothing like seeing the look on Yasiel Puig’s face before he gets tossed, or witnessing the throws (which have been described alternately as both ill-advised and outstanding) he makes on what seems like a regular basis.

The thing that is always crazy to me is that the buck just doesn’t stop anywhere.

The Dodgers have their money, Time Warner has its price, and other television providers have made their stand. Everyone has made rational, probably defensible decisions along the course of this process. It reminds me of an undergraduate Poly-Sci professor’s lectures on the decisions that led to the first World War. Everyone makes decisions in their own interests, and those decisions don’t always turn out to be best for the greater good. Maybe Victor Magagna should be baseball’s commissioner. His mustache he wore circa 2001 would give him instant clout.

For those of us who are Dodger fans on the Central Coast, we know what the impact of the Giants’ recent World Series’ have been. We know we’ve seen more orange and black than ever. What rational decision can we make?

One option is to go to the beach more and care about a baseball team 200 miles away less. I promise I’m not the only one thinking that way.

After they swept a doubleheader against the Twins last night, the Dodgers have played 29 games. That’s almost twenty percent of the season (to be fair, about 18 percent).

This year was supposed to be about a team taking the next step. It was supposed to be about a team that last year became a group I could be proud to root for again. It was maybe the most anticipated season the franchise has ever had. What it’s turned into, I’m not sure — because I cannot watch the games. I’m not allowed to.

I live in San Luis Obispo, and the Dodgers are only available on a network I can’t get. Our cable option here on the Central Coast is Charter, but the Dodgers station, Time Warner Cable SportsNet is only available on Time Warner Cable. Neither DirecTV nor Dish Network carry the Dodgers’ station either, so a dish isn’t a viable option.

I have MLBTV, which is a solid product. Of course, all the Dodger games are blacked out where I live, 3 1/2 hours away from Los Angeles.

The whole thing is ridiculous. The situation smells like a soiled diaper at the top of a mountain of month-old garbage and refuse and I’m about fed-up.

Look online and you’ll find articles like this one, where (hilariously) the CEO of Time Warner Cable, Rob Marcus is described as “upbeat.” I’m glad someone is… . Everyone involved including Marcus, other cable executives, and (importantly) Dodgers executives are all to blame. Maybe this is the price we have to pay to be able to have the highest payroll in baseball. Unfortunately, not being able to see the games is probably the only price we aren’t willing to pay.

As all of these leaders from cable companies and satellite providers continue to hold Dodger fans hostage, I’m reduced to watching games with something that looks like this:

A screen shot of last night’s Twins/Dodgers game from the “GameTracker” on MLB.com.

How exciting can it get?!

This season, I’ve been following baseball as though I lived in 1950, when Vin Scully began his career — via the radio and box scores. In the age of HDTV’s, and advanced statistics, this time machine of a season has been quite exhilarating.

In all seriousness though, I lost patience a long time ago. At this point, I’ve missed a fifth of the season and every day that goes by where I have no option to watch the team, I care about this season less and less.

Two years ago, my grandmother bought an HDTV. It was a few years after my grandfather had passed and she wanted to be able to watch the Dodgers games. Over the past few years, it’s become her main source of summer entertainment.

Well into her 80’s, she would pay much more than the $4 per customer Time Warner is said to be demanding of other providers to watch the Dodgers. I think she would pay $100-$200 per year. Too bad she lives in the far reaches of the “territory” the Dodgers call their own.

Options

If I want to watch the Dodgers, I could move about an hour North to Monterey County — a place closer to me than Dodger Stadium. From there, Dodgers games on MLBTV would not be blacked-out.

I could also move to a place where Time Warner Cable is an option. At this point though, I would move away from a Time Warner area just on principle.

I have a friend who has gone to the trouble of masking his IP address and, with his MLBTV access, can watch the games with his rigged-up system and a little extra cost. This is something I’ve considered, but seems like a lot of work just to watch a team that has been complicit at-best in the current standstill.

The truth is that I haven’t had cable or satellite service in almost two years. My household saves over $100 per month, still gets all the shows via Netflix and Hulu Plus, and I pay for any sports packages I want — the MLB package for instance, on my terms.

I get to watch a lot of baseball still. I watch almost all of my fantasy players on a regular basis and probably enjoy baseball itself as much as I ever have while basically having to act like the Dodgers don’t exist. It’s basically as if Major League Baseball liquidated my favorite team. It’s as if the Dodgers don’t exist anymore for millions of fans who should be rooting now harder than ever for ‘dem Bums.

Major League Baseball is already losing young fans, and If I was a kid still, I’m pretty sure I’d be thinking about rooting for a different team right about now. I’m well into my 30’s and I’m taking applications.

I guess the alternative is to find something healthier than sitting on my couch. There are a lot of other fun things to do in this part of the country. The Dodgers and their new cable network shouldn’t forget that.

Instead of fretting about the Dodgers, go see a college baseball game this week. There are lots of options. By Owen Main

This weekend, baseball fans in Los Angeles and throughout the Dodgers “local” market — which spans from San Luis Obispo to Orange County — are experiencing quite a bit of frustration not being able to get the Dodgers on television. Locally, San Luis Obispo County residents literally have no (legal) option to watch the games.

It got me to thinking — what other options do we have? The answer, of course, is college baseball. On the Central Coast, Cal Poly is ranked in the top-five this week and UCSB is in the top-20. Their three games this weekend feature a number of players who will be drafted this spring. The most you’ll pay is $14 for the opportunity to sit outside, feel afternoon turn to evening, and watch one of the best college baseball series in the country this weekend.

If you’re in the Los Angeles area, don’t fret.

Perennial college baseball and Big West Conference powerhouse Cal State Fullerton is hosting UC Davis in Fullerton this weekend. Long Beach State is playing defending national champion UCLA this weekend in an out-of-conference series in Long Beach. If you’re in the Inland Empire, you can go see UC Riverside vie for regional legitimacy as they play Cal State Northridge for three games.

In the West Coast Conference, Loyola Marymount is hosting the University of San Francisco over the weekend. The Dons are a regional contender as well this year.

I’m probably leaving some teams out, but my point is that there are options — lots of them — to consume good baseball. I love the Dodgers, but I’m not going to sit at home all day staring at the MLB Gameday screen.

For those of you in Southern California who want to watch more baseball on television, someone at one of the other regional networks – Fox Sports, Prime Ticket, even ESPN 3 should really try to take advantage of the Dodgers not being available in Los Angeles. Lots of people want to watch baseball and it would seem that showing a few extra college games a week during this negotiation dumpster fire would get some really positive exposure for an entity they have an interest in promoting.

Instead of sitting around wishing I could watch the Dodgers play baseball, I’m going to go watch some college games this weekend. I recommend you do the same.

If you want to see Mr. World Peace this year, you might have a hard time — depending on your cable provider. Photo by Bridget Samuels (Flickr: P1010031.jpg) [CC-BY-2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

On the first of this month, Time Warner Cable Sportsnet rolled out the red carpet for their two infant sports cable networks. Both will carry the same content, one in English and one in Spanish.

In a glitzy and glamorous presentation only reserved for the likes of Tinseltown, big names like Kobe Bryant, David Beckham, Dwight Howard, Magic Johnson, James Worthy, Pau Gasol and Landon Donovan were all present for the epic kick-off.

But what were they celebrating? These new networks claim to be able to take both the Lakers and the Los Angeles Galaxy MLS soccer franchise to the next level – but at the network’s outset, they seem creating a bottleneck for several fans.

Time Warner has paid a sum of 3 billion dollars over the next 20 years to carry the Lakers and the Galaxy. That’s all fine and dandy, but the problem is Time Warner Sportsnet is only currently offered to Time Warner Cable subscribers.

Just 35% (1.7 million of 4.8 million) of television customers in the greater Los Angeles area are Time Warner Cable subscribers. And even that minority percentage drops significantly when you factor in surrounding areas (like San Luis Obispo County) that don’t even have a Time Warner option. This is a striking punch in the gut to a region that could tune into Fox Sports West or KCAL9 before the takeover, and catch every single one of the Lakers’ non-nationally televised games. Herein lies a major problem between Time Warner and everyone else.

Direct TV, Dish Network, Charter Communications and Cox Cable are all currently at the bargaining table. Time Warner obviously holds all the cards in the market. The Lakers are the equivalent of gold bullion in the Southern California region.

Anything and everything as far as programming in the Southern California region stems and moves through the Lakers broadcast. Go ask KCAL9. Their newscasts prior to and following Lakers road broadcasts were essential in making them Los Angeles’ news leader. And now that the Lakers are gone, their ratings won’t even be in the same ballpark as before.

So what does this chaos and disarray mean to Lakerfans like you and I? Let’s start at $3.95 more a month on top of your current provider subscription. This is what Time Warner is currently proposing to all the other outlets. That would make Time Warner Sportsnet the second most expensive regional sports network in the nation behind Comcast SportsNet Washington, which charges $4.02 more than the base charge, per subscriber, per month.

Directv said in a statement that it is “very engaged” in talks to carry the channels, but said it has a responsibility to its customers to “avoid any extraordinary increases” in their monthly bills. Ugh. Sounds like a stalemate and we are all already tired of lockouts, aren’t we?

And the worst part? This Laker team is the story this upcoming NBA season. The overall talent the Lakers have acquired in the off-season is arguably the best collection on paper that has been assembled in Lakerland since The Showtime Era of Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, James Worthy, Byron Scott and Michael Cooper. Only being able to watch this team when they are on national television will be beyond a frustrating process for Lakerfans to say the least.

So what does the dilemma all come down to? Money, of course, just like it always does. I just hope Time Warner understands that yes, there is a lot of money to be made, but if you don’t settle on a reasonable deal soon, there is also a lot of money to be lost. And as of right now, if things stand as they are once the regular season kicks off, there is no answer for non-Time Warner Lakerfans to turn to.

If you think the couch burning after championships was bad, imagine what will start to burn if the majority of Southland fans can’t see their Lakers? I’m already starting to stock up on lighter fluid like Mayan Calendar 2012 conspiracy theorists are hoarding canned goods.

Make me put down my lighter, Time Warner.