It’s major league baseball’s opening day, which to me is justification for a national holiday. Technically, the season had already opened last night, when the Yankees steamrolled through the Giants (and my supposed fantasy team ace Logan Webb) 7-0, despite an 0-for-5 performance with FOUR strikeouts from the defending two-time AL MVP Aaron Judge. But that’s hardly newsworthy, as the concept of a single game kicking things off has been SOP pretty much since 1948, when the Cincinnati Reds, officially baseball’s oldest team with professional roots going back to 1869, carved out a niche that gave them that honor more years than not until ESPN became part of the media mix and took it upon themselves to schedule said lidlifter. In more recent years Major League Baseball has actually opened seasons in outposts like Japan, Korea and Australia more than a week before that, with start times back here in the middle of the night. Somehow, that all didn’t piss as many people off as what transpired last night.
This year’s opening day (yes, I know it was opening night, but it was still bright daylight in Oracle Park when the first pitch was thrown) had the audacity to be the first-ever game that aired on Netflix, which to hard-core fans was treated as a treasonable offense. Witness the scathing lament authored by THE ATHLETIC’s Andrew Marchand this morning:
It was the first game of the 2026 season and the inaugural exclusive MLB game on the service. For MLB and Netflix, it was a bit of celebration to have the league and such a powerful media player together. Good for them. But fans don’t care… From a business perspective for MLB, it is a good thing for them to be on Netflix, because it has a huge subscription base of more than 300 million globally.
However, what Netflix missed was it was just picking up the story of MLB. A new season starts another chapter, but it is an old book… It’s the same mistake. These companies may have trillions of dollars and a lot of smart people, but they miss something about their services. On Major League Baseball’s Opening Night, Netflix thought we wanted to watch Netflix. Nope, we wanted to watch baseball: the Yankees vs. the Giants. It happened to be on Netflix. It’s that simple.
And Yankees fans denied the chance to see their team start it up on their YES network with their familiar faces were especially up in arms, as you can see what was hitting my timeline even as their team was pounding my fantasy starter into a stratospheric ERA that already had my new league mates trying to troll me into a reactive trade. I’ve been around enough blocks to know damn well one bad game (in Webb’s case, one bad inning) doesn’t a season make. I wish Yankees fans were as grounded.
The fact is we were all watching, grudgingly or not, and we would have no matter where it was airing. We are NOT who this was intended for. This was aimed at a far less passionate generation, including a globally measurable and monetizable segment that is crucial to both MLB and Netflix’s long-term business models, that might not have known Logan Webb was a damn good fantasy pitcher (not to mention fourth in NL Cy Young voting) or that eventual winning pitcher Max Fried was a nice Jewish boy from the San Fernando Valley who has emerged as the Yankees’ most significant opening day lantsman since Ron Blomberg.
Indeed, I’m willing to wager a farthing that a goodly number of viewers didn’t know–or care–that the Yankees were an relative easy out in the second round of last year’s playoffs, or that the Giants didn’t even make the post-season. Especially those around the world who got to experience the bleary-eyed wonder of watching in the middle of the night like we true blue fans did last March when MLB determined the absolute best place for the world champion Dodgers to start their quest for a repeat was nearly 9000 miles away from Los Angeles.
I watched and actually liked a good deal of what Netflix even beyond the sometimes strange attempts to cross-promote their platform’s other tentpoles. Having Bert Kreischer as an omnipresence to help promote Netflix Is A Joke was to me no more egregious than FOX forcing the cast of ALLY MC BEAL to pretend to be watching a World Series game. Even Marchand couldn’t find fault with a good deal of we both watched:
The best part of the Netflix presentation was Matt Vasgersian on play-by-play. He may not have been Netflix’s first choice, but he was a good choice. He is a baseball lifer and next to the likable CC Sabathia and Hunter Pence — when they focused on the game — it was pretty good…The best part of the Netflix presentation was Matt Vasgersian on play-by-play. He may not have been Netflix’s first choice, but he was a good choice. He is a baseball lifer and next to the likable CC Sabathia and Hunter Pence — when they focused on the game — it was pretty good.
And when they cross-cut between fans in the stands and folks participating live via zoom all simutaneously and extemporaneously warbling TAKE ME OUT TO THE BALL GAME during the seventh inning stretch I got a lump in my throat. It was a wonderful way to both salute and introduce a tune first sung more than a century ago at home games of the New York Giants. Talk about coming full circle.
Here’s one other little fact of life my history with nay-sayers always is want to point out. In a quantitative world, hate-watching still counts just as much. Hence I don’t think I’m going out on a limb that just has been the case with Christmas Day NFL and WWE Netflix will somehow produce record Opening Day viewership levels to tout to advertisers and sponsors. A true Yankee fan should be proud to be part of such history and be able to rationalize that there’s 100-some more games ahead to watch on YES, and that learning to find their team on a new outlet was no more challenging than when their fathers and grandfathers discovered YES when Channel 5–and before that their beloved Channel 11–stopped carrying games. If we were able to make it without Phil Rizzuto, we should be able to live without Michael Kay for a night.
Today my social media feeds will be filling up with equally frustrated and pissed off Mets fans who can’t seem to get over the fact that their beloved Gary/Keith/Ron (Cohen, Hernandez and Darling for the less passionate Mets lovers among you) won’t be covering Citi Field’s Opening Day–a good old-fashioned midweek afternoon game. It just so happens to be the choice for Peacock’s first game under its new broadcasting deal with MLB, leaving far too many Mets fans apoplectic with rage. A sadly misinformed plurality have ignored the fact that the game will also be airing on good old fashioned NBC, making the need for any cable or satellite subscription moot for a day. And if the way they handled the production of Sunday morning games a couple of years back and the way they’ve saluted the past with the presence of old school music and personalities on Sunday Night Basketball is any indication, we’re more than likely to be getting memories of how they covered the Mets’ 1986 World Series wins today. I consider the fact that the network still considers them an attractive enough viewing proposition despite how they crapped the bed in the second half of 2025 to the point of missing the p0st-season entirely a endorsement tbat happy days may soon be here again.
There was a god-awful attempt to reinvent the Oldsmoblile line of General Motors a generation ago with a campaign called This Is Not Your Father’s Oldsmobile. MOTOR TREND’s Benjamin Hunting penned a fascinating retrospective of it in 2022; it’s an enjoyable read. As he repeatedly pointed out, the product itself was even more inferior than the ill-fated and tone-deaf marketing–especially in comparison to the 442 and Toronado muscle cars that those fathers enjoyed when they wore a younger man’s clothes.
I’d like to ask those still bitching about Netflix and prematurely castigating Peacock–aside from the presence of third-string Giants quarterback Jameis Winston, is anything you’ve been hate-watching so intentely the same level as bad as trying to hock a derivative minivan to the same people who once loved Rocket V-8s?
And let’s not forget this. There may not even be an Opening Day 2027 anywhere–not on Netflix, Peacock or YES. Not in San Francisco, New York or Seoul.
So I have but one thought for my far less forward-thinking forward fans. Hush. I typically choose to use harsher language, but I’m at least trying to evolve. What’s your excuse?
Until next time…