Right now I'm sitting here in the spacious front room of Berea-Rose watching the Mets play the Phillies. Yes, the Mets. I broke down today and shelled out 50 clams to get streaming media access to all regular season games.

Out of character? You bet: my normal stance is that major league baseball is overpaid and undeserving -- I'd usually refrain from giving them even a dime of my hard-earned money.

But the streaming media package... it's so subversive I just have to support it. First of all, to be able to watch any game from any market (except the local market -- natch), that's pretty cool. And so I switch to the Red Sox vs Twins right noe and see Boston take a one-run lead. Then back to the Mets. I like it.

Does geekiness trump curmudgeonliness? No way: as undeserving as I consider MLB, I consider cable companies doubly undeserving -- if I had to pay a king's ransom for a cable-tv sports package... I'd never buy a sports package. And never have. And never will. Putting content out over the Internet direct to the viewer is the promise of the future: kudos to the sport for seizing the technology.

On the flipside, the usability of MLB's interface sucks the bat-wang. And the media stream is a bandwidth hog. Yeah, that's what it costs to get high-res video that supports fast scene transitions, I know; but I had high hopes of lying in my hammock out back and watching the game. No dice -- not until I re-position my wireless access point.

Mets up 9 to 4 in the bottom of the eigth. Woo-hoo!