TBS nabs MLB exclusivity again

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: Playoff fever not exactly in the air : Baseball's deal with cable TV deal puts games out of reach, again, for some fans : : : Some baseball fans will have an unpleasant realization this week. : It's the same unpleasant realization they had last year, but maybe they've forgotten. : The first round of Major League Baseball's playoffs will not be available through over-the-air, broadcast TV. Again. Neither will one of the league championship series. Again. : Cable's TBS has a $1.05 billion deal with MLB that runs for another five years. So if you depend on rabbit ears for your baseball TV, the rabbit has died. : Actually, it's understandable that Cubs fans would want to purge the exclusive TBS deal from their memory, along with the recollection of last fall's first-round sweep by the Arizona Diamondbacks and those relentless promos for mimic Frank Caliendo that all but wrecked TBS' telecasts. : But that doesn't mean anything has changed, except that this year, instead of the National League Championship Series after the first round, TBS gets the American League Championship Series while Fox takes the National League as prelude to its World Series coverage. : So White Sox fans who don't get TBS—assuming the Sox emerge from their funk and make the playoffs—won't see their team in the postseason on TV until and unless they reach the World Series. : The TBS-less among us (and that's only a hair over 15 percent of the Chicago market) will just have to head to a bar, a friend's house or somewhere else where they have cable or satellite, just like when the Cubs or Sox play on Comcast SportsNet Chicago or ESPN during the season. : Either that or listen to the radio and try really hard to picture it. : "TBS is available to an overwhelming majority of the fans," said Matt Bourne, an MLB spokesman. "While we sympathize with those who do not have cable, the television landscape has changed and a large majority of sports coverage takes place on cable." : Apparently, our Founding Fathers failed to discern the inalienable right to sports on free TV, despite that line about the pursuit of happiness. : TBS has exclusive rights to all four divisional championship series and one of the league championship series through 2013, along with its Sunday regular-season game package. : After 2013, who knows? We'll probably be watching games on mobile phones, and those with only landlines will be out of luck. : : (rosenthal/trib)

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