Sunday afternoon was a rare bright spot for the New York Mets, as they enjoyed a walk-off win against the Los Angeles Angels, but Ron Darling was unable to watch it on TV.
More than 38,000 fans were in attendance at Citi Field for the Mets fifth walk-off win of the season, although most of them were there to catch a glimpse of Shohei Ohtani. But the fans who stayed home may have had a hard time watching the game at all after they tuned to SNY and WPIX only to find that it wasn’t airing on linear TV. Count Mets Hall of Famer and long-time analyst Ron Darling among them. Instead of the usual SNY or WPIX, the Mets and Angels were featured nationally on Peacock as the Sunday Leadoff game.
Monday night, the Mets were back on WPIX with Darling and Gary Cohen in the booth. During the game, they replayed Sunday afternoon’s walk-off hit by Rafael Ortega which prompted Darling to air his grievances with Peacock and the streaming world’s infiltration of live sports.
Ron Darling is not a fan of MLB's Peacock partnership pic.twitter.com/kLhq1lKFJl
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) August 29, 2023
“I would have seen it live except I’m a little IT challenged on getting the Peacock channel yesterday,” Darling said. “I was so frustrated.”
Somehow, it’s hard to believe Darling was incapable of navigating to the Peacock on his smart TV and clicking the “watch live” tab that was hard to miss as soon as you open the app.
“We’re moving toward a point where three companies are going to own everything in the world,” Cohen said, warning Darling that he better get used to streaming because much to his dismay, it’s here to stay. “I don’t know if you know this, but Comcast/NBC Universal owns a piece of SNY. And so, as a consequence of that, you, Ron Darling, you get Peacock streaming service free.”
“What?” Darling asked with surprise. “You know why I ended up not getting the game, cause I kind of figured it out, Peacock came up. I said, ‘Okay, I’ll get Peacock.’ I looked at my family and what they own already, it was protest, I said I’m not getting another one. I’m not spending another five dollars.”
So, Darling was able to find the game, he just didn’t want to pay for it. For one game, between two bad teams, that seems like a more reasonable explanation than an inability to find it. And in Darling’s defense, someone should have given him a heads up that he has free access to Peacock and its Sunday Leadoff game prior to Cohen mentioning it a day late.
We’re a long way away from the days of getting access to your favorite local team’s games just by paying for cable. But as frustrating as having to pay for several streaming services might be, the worst part about all of MLB’s various broadcast partnerships (streaming or linear), is the fact that it forces fans to watch more games without their local announcers. So, while Darling protested the cost of Peacock, there were probably some Mets fans who protested having to watch a game without Darling, Cohen, or Keith Hernandez.
[WPIX]
