Tuesday, September 16, 2008
So we're gonna beat this horse one last time. Sorry to all of you who lived through it initially.

Today we're going to talk about Orbit ESPN.

Again.

See, a lady from Dubai just wrote a comment to me, a lady whose Blogger ID is "edwardseliz". Yes, her name may or may not be "Elizabeth Edwards"! Shoot, I only know one "Elizabeth Edwards" as it stands, and she's not my wife.

Waitaminute, do you think John Edwards' wife left him and moved to the Persian Gulf?

Huh.

Anyway, regardless of who she is, this lady wants to to watch baseball in Dubai, and wrote to me to ask how. I'm replying to her here because A) I couldn't seem to find her email address on her blog and B) she says "PS I am NOT a Yankees fan" so I feel obliged to help a sister out.

Although, to be fair, I was a Yankees fan last week ... when they were playing the Rays. Yes, my two favorite teams now are the Boston Red Sox and whoever is playing Tampa Bay. (How long before those bumper stickers make it to New England?)

So Liz, if you're reading after all of that, the easiest way to watch baseball in Dubai is ... leave Dubai. Yes, I can say it now. Don't go to Dubai.

I've found that the easiest way to drive in traffic in Dubai is ... leave Dubai. The easiest way not to be offended by the horrible racism of Dubai is ... leave Dubai. The easiest way to live a happy and complete life is ... you got it, leave Dubai.

I know that's no help or consolation to the four baseball fans in Dubai, but that's just about all I've got.

I mean, we lost Orbit ESPN in April (see Where the Hell is Orbit ESPN?!?) and a week or two later we heard rumors it had joined some outfit named ART (see ESPN now on ART?). But I couldn't find any info about those clowns at all. And since I was leaving in July anyway, I just sucked it up ... and complained a lot on the internet.

It didn't work.

True, I heard that starting in January there's going to be some full-on cable channel for the MLB, and that it's going to be the largest cable channel launch in history - 50 million households, making it part of basic cable for everyone, and it's going to have "talent" like that Hazel Mae from NESN and Harold Reynolds from TBS.

Will Dubai get it?

Ah, there's the rub.

Who the hell knows?

Not me.

But in all seriousness, if I lived overseas I'd look into MLB.tv or even the GameDay Audio. I had quite a bit of success with GameDay Audio, they even had the real WEEI Boston radio feed. That sure as hell beats the games on Fox when Joe Buck and Tim McCarver announce. Ugh. Why can't they go to the MLB Network?
 
posted by Josh at 1:35 PM |


1 Comments:


At 3:24 AM, Blogger brent_schwartz@hotmail.com

Just got showtime in Dubai and was surprised to see that they have three ESPN channels, but yet when you sign up for Showtime, they don't mention it at all. Seems like they might make a big deal that they offer some form of sports given that Orbit now offers almost nothing (although Orbit recently added an "extreme sports" channel - boo!). I did catch some of the Yankees / White Sox game the other day, but I have no idea if it was one day old or 5 years old. Obviously not live as I was watching it in Dubai at 9:00 PM.