All Things Bubba

No, I'm not talking about last night's Yankees game, which went 11 innings after a four-hour rain delay. Tomorrow, Major League Baseball is celebrating five years of MLB.TV by offering a free game: the Yankees-Tigers finale.

It was five years ago this Sunday that the Next Big Thing in baseball consumption was introduced, and once again it was the national pastime that paved the way for the technology and reshaped the average fan's life. On Aug. 26, 2002, exactly 63 years after that first televised Major League game, the Yankees withstood an Alex Rodriguez homer and beat Kenny Rogers and the Rangers, 10-3, at Yankee Stadium. The YES Network's full broadcast was streamed as a live Webcast for free exclusively at MLB.com, meeting immediate excitement, probably slowing worker productivity a bit and most definitely leading to the ultimate curtain call.

To commemorate that historic first and the five years of technology excitement that followed, MLB.com will provide a free live Webcast of Sunday's series finale between the Yankees and Tigers from Comerica Park in Detroit.

I did not stay up for last night's game. I went to bed not long after it started. I couldn't believe they were actually trying to play the game. Apparently, the umpiring crew had gotten in trouble before for calling a game too soon, so they went they other way this time. Gotta give those Tiggers fans credit. Reportedly, most of them stayed until the end of the game. Which was at 3:30am.