The Minnesota Twins went 0-for-3 on Friday- and no, I'm not talking about Luis Rivas.
Three bad things happened to the team: They lost 11-9 in 13 innings to Oakland, their latest stadium bill went down to defeat in a legislative commitee, and the team agreed to a long-term deal with Fox Sports Net to broadcast its games, thus abandoning their effort to create a new, revenue-producing regional sports network.
True, there are silver linings in all: They're still just a game back of Chicago, the stadium effort isn't totally dead (though it's on life support), and the TV deal means the games will finally be televised again after they were blacked out locally for the first five weeks of the season. But the demise of Victory Sports One is a big blow- not only do they lose out on an attempt to make up some of the revenue disparity that comes with being in a medium-sized market, but it's demoralizing, sort of like if the Yankees had settled the YES/Cablevision dispute by agreeing to dissolve YES and sell their games to the Dolans.
And besides, the return of the Twins to local TV may well spell the end of Bat-Girl's Lego-Vision feature.
Posted by Stephen Silver at May 8, 2004 05:48 PM