John Kerry can relax

Trivia Time:

[Q:] Who is the only player in baseball allowed to wear his particular uniform number?

Answer below.

Now, to Senator Kerry, currently leading the league in Red Herrings.

Because baseball has reversed its position, and thrown its Extra Innings super-package back on basic cable, as Kerry wanted, in a deal starting in 2009. From the ESPN story, which explains it better than I can:

Baseball announced an exclusive $700 million, seven-year agreement with DirecTV on March 8, but during a hearing last week in Washington, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., pressed baseball to resume talks with iN Demand, which is owned by affiliates of Time Warner, Comcast and Cox.

If that only half clears it up for you, the Sports Business Juornal has some additional facts worth noting:

...Cable will wind up with an equity stake in the channel. The stake will be 16%, which will be equal to DirecTV. Originally, DirecTV agreed to take 20% of the channel, and it had to approve this deal. The deal means that at launch, the channel will have nearly 40 million homes, making it one of the most successful channel launches ever.

Whether any of this relates to Turner merging with Time-Warner, and AOL, and giving up the Braves, who are now being sold to Liberty Media, who owns large chunks of DirecTV... aw, who can tell? Let's just go with Kerry and say it's better that you can watch it on basic cable (although I'll now have to drop my DirecTV two years from now.)

Trivia Time:

[A:] Mariano Rivera (#42). Rivera is the only player still allowed to wear 42 regularly, under the grandfather clause of a rule instituted ten years ago, when Major League Baseball retired the number league-wide to honor Jackie Robinson.

-Zed

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