LAST week, Major League Baseball’s season came to a disappointing, crushingly inevitable conclusion. If I’d wished – and were it not for the ensuing domestic chaos, I might have – I could’ve watched every single ball game on MLB.tv. That’s 2,430 regular season games live in HD and home comforts for the monthly fee of $19.95.

It’s a package which, by comparison, leaves Sky Sports’ paltry 92 live Premier League matches – even with Champions League, Football League, SPL and Carling Cup thrown in as well (plus whatever else they have knocking around) – looking like something from the stone age.

No wonder then, that in the wake of Setanta’s demise, the FA dipped their toes online; first for England’s defeat in the Ukraine and then for Saturday’s FA Cup first round clash between Oldham Athletic and Leeds United.

With half the sparse crowd at Boundary Park shushed by Jonny Howson’s first-half howitzer, the FA could do little about the fact it was an otherwise dreadful game. But by the time Mike Grella added a second, the admittedly colourful language of our boisterous travelling support had been silenced as well; seemingly by a member of the TV production crew.

If the streaming of this tie was the FA realising they’ve got a lot of catching up to do, then the decision to muffle the sound of those present beneath fake crowd noise was it swiftly exercising control over one of its “core brands” at the expense of its followers.

Whoever would resort to such crude artifice? Don’t the FA realise that we know more about how effects microphones work than most supporters? Would censorship have resulted had Leeds fans been fastidiously singing about “When we win the FA Cup (Sponsored by E.ON)…” ? In fact, in future why don’t they just dub that on themselves?

I would say you’ve just heard it here first, folks – if it hadn’t have been done already. Middlesbrough match commentaries on local radio regularly used to feature the apparent sound of the Riverside metronomically chanting the name of the local cable TV firm: “COMCAST TEESSIDE! COMCAST TEESSIDE!”. They weren’t of course, so let’s just consider this a warning. I’m allowed to say that on here, right?

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SINCE it’s the MLB All-Star game tonight (on ESPN America from 00:30 GMT), let’s talk a little baseball. And Ken Bates.

Like most things in life worth knowing, I learned of Shea Stadium’s existence via a Beastie Boys lyric. It wasn’t the first time I’d acted on a rhyme of theirs in New York (that was “Excuse me motherfuckers, can I beg your pardon / I’m gonna see the Knicks at Madison Square Garden”) but by the time I got around to taking the 7 train to Queens a couple of months ago, old Shea had been bulldozed car park flat.

Both the Big Apple’s Major League Baseball sides have miraculously built ballparks in the shadows of their existing homes: in the Mets’ case, the nipping new – if numbingly-named – Citi Field. It’s a similar story in the Bronx, except that one’s shit because it’s where the Yankees play.

Nevertheless, we’re talking $2.5billion worth of brick, limestone and granite here, brimming with improved facilities and concessions for match-goers: merchandise stores, multiple bars, restaurants, food and beer stands. Two goldmines of box office, catering and hospitality.

Once the FA realised it was going to be costly enough without any of Ken Bates’ further input, Wembley was developed along similar lines. If it’s accommodation you’re after at his raison d’être, the stadium hotel, there’s plenty of rooms at hotbeds of mediocrity like Bolton, Reading, Coventry and Oxford.

In recent years, three of the Premier League’s top four clubs have extended, or made plans to extend, ground capacities to cater for the sort of attendances that the fourth – Chelsea – are prevented from matching because someone left two empty hotels and a nightclub in the way.

It’s a complex that his successor as chairman, Bruce Buck, admits they wouldn’t have built as “all a football fan wants, really, is football.” And that’s from an American.

They may openly refer to fans as ‘guests’ in New York, but Citi Field’s no midweek doss-house for hoover reps. There wasn’t a single check-in desk, water feature or Corby trouser press in sight – and they hadn’t even the wit to include a basement nightclub. The schmucks.

See also: Leeds United, MLB, Premier League by TBG | Comments Off

MICHAEL Lewis’ brilliant book Moneyball is the real-life tale of startling sporting success on a shoestring. When baseball stattos demonstrated that the nitty-gritty players who actually win matches were greatly undervalued, Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane sat up and took note. Out went the scouts, in came a Wall Street bean counter who signed a bunch of apparent no-marks for peanuts, and the cut-price A’s started to mix it with Major League Baseball’s big spenders.

The book makes the compelling case that much baseball wisdom is wrong, and for a brief period its football stock was rising too. But with Moneyball’s leading UK practitioner, Aidy Boothroyd, now out of work alongside fellow number crunchers Sam Allardyce, Iain Dowie and Alan Pardew, football’s proving to be a rather different ball game.

Beane’s own attempts to shake up the San Jose Earthquakes, with the help of one-time Leeds United meltdown egghead Bill Gerrard and ‘English Legend’ Darren Huckerby, have left the side dead last in Major League Soccer’s western conference with only 8 wins from 30.

In the east, Red Bull New York finished just two wins better off, but in a development more goofball than moneyball, they face Columbus Crew in tonight’s final – and nobody, not even the geeks, know how they did it.

How come, they’re all asking, a sub .500 side – that is, one which won less than half its regular season games – can earn a shot at winning the whole damn caboodle? With a win percentage almost identical to last season’s West Ham, it would be as zany as Alan Curbishley winning the Premier League. Any other team, said MLS commissioner Don Garber to the New York Times, and this ‘would be heralded as an incredible sports story. But when the Red Bulls do it people think it’s a joke.’

It’s a joke that’s already wearing thin. Only Red Bull’s North American scum standing on the brink of success could have Americans doubting the single thing that underpins their team sports. Red Bull New York suck. If they succeed, then the playoffs suck too.

They may well be badged up like the Village People, but a victory for fellow first-time finalists Columbus Crew at LA’s Home Depot Center tonight is the only hope for reason. According to New York’s official site, should the unthinkable happen a celebration will occur at Red Bull Arena on Tuesday. They’d better get a move on with it, then. Here’s hoping they don’t have to bother.

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