Franke: Baseball 2026
by Mark Frank
At risk of irritating my wife . . . again . . . it is time for my annual baseball column. Major League Baseball is well underway and the TinCaps have opened their home season. I have moved my “baseball” TV out of winter storage to the back porch where my baseball addiction is less irritating.
Some random thoughts on the new season:
My MLB network subscription has been renewed at no cost to me, courtesy of my phone carrier. I should say at no additional cost as the company finance gurus have certainly factored that cost into my monthly cellular bill. Still, it is a bargain for me.
Having the MLB network used to give access to what they call all out-of-market games. “Used to” is the operative phrase. Now MLB in its pursuit of profit maximization has sold off specific games to ESPN, Amazon Prime, Apple TV and Netflix. Netflix? Even if you have an MLB subscription, you need additional subscriptions to watch these games. I guess out-of-market has taken on a new and more pernicious meaning to us fans. We hoi polloi should be consoled by hearing the cash register ring at MLB headquarters in New York City.
MLB has always blacked out what they define as in-market games. For viewers in Fort Wayne, that meant the Cubs, White Sox, Reds and Tigers were all blacked out, both home and away. Fort Wayne was sited in a strategic location by the Miami tribe and the American army due to its central location on several transportation networks. Their foresight has redounded to our losing about 15 percent of MLB broadcasts. I’m proud to be a Fort Wayne native but there are times when I am not so grateful to my local forebears.
The good news is that the Detroit Tigers apparently have been removed from the local blackout list. At least I was able to watch them on opening weekend. A good friend and a diehard Tiger fan told me that he is still blacked out by MLB. He lives only a few miles away from me but on the other side of the St. Joe River so maybe MLB has figured out how to use the rivers to control their broadcasts. At this point I am willing to believe any outrageous claim against the baseball commissar, Rob Manfred, and the Manhattan politburo that rules everything baseball.
My lifelong favorite team is the New York Yankees, probably because they seemed always to be on the Saturday afternoon baseball game of the week when we got our first TV back in the 1950s. I mention this as a segue to the Fort Wayne TinCaps as two of the Yankee starting pitchers this year are former TinCaps, Max Fried and Ryan Weathers.
It is always gratifying, I think that is the word I want, to see these young TinCaps kids move up to the majors. I watch them go through the rite of passage of professional baseball here in Fort Wayne, finding a niche one hopes in the major leagues. Even when the team or individual players struggle, I keep reminding myself that these are young men pursuing their dreams. They deserve all the fan support I can give them.
Preseason stories I have read in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette promise an exciting season, with more than a handful of the San Diego Padres’ top prospects assigned to Fort Wayne. We’ve suffered through some difficult seasons the past several years so the club, the fans and the city are ready for some excitement.
That’s the good news. The bad news is that it’s time for another April of ridiculously cold nights at Parkview Field, as I try to make it to at least the sixth inning before frostbite sets in on my fingers and I am no longer able to keep my scorecard updated. And trust me, I can’t see any reason for going to a ballpark and not keeping score. Truth be told, I prefer my scorecard full of chicken scratches, particularly when compared with the incomprehensible computer stuff that the networks use to obscure a perfectly good ball game.
That’s it for the whining. For all its problems, including fan-unfriendly executive management and early spring games here in the upper Midwest, baseball is Americana at its best. I’m sure baseball is what Thomas Jefferson had in mind when he proclaimed that the pursuit of happiness was a God-given natural right.
So this spring and summer I will be in our back porch watching baseball while my wife is elsewhere in the house watching golf. That’s the secret of a 54-year marriage — knowing when to be together and when to be apart even if we are physically together. Anyone married as long as I knows exactly what I mean.
Mark Franke, M.B.A., an adjunct scholar of the Indiana Policy Review and its book reviewer, is formerly an associate vice-chancellor at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne.
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