It’s opening day, sort of. The Yankees and Giants will start the season in San Francisco, today’s only game. It’s a Netflix exclusive, which is an annoying development if you, like me, want to watch this game but don’t have Netflix and will not buy Netflix. But Netflix made MLB an offer it couldn’t refuse. It’s a reported $50 million over three years, for what feels like a fairly skimpy slate of programming: three opening-day exclusives, Home Run Derbies, and occasional special events, like the Field of Dreams game and WBC games in Japan.
That is what happens when a company with too much money decides it wants to get into live sports. Another thing that happens is that the desire to make the game feel like An Event results in an overstuffed broadcast, where not a single second is allowed to pass without some recognizable face on screen. Here is the broadcast team:
That’s eight guys. That’s too many guys. Baseball broadcasts need three guys, four max. More ominous even than the lack of a dedicated color commentator, however, is the blank space threatening a special guest. Just what this needed: more guys.
Barry Bonds will be there! That is cool. But he is not the special guest. Jameis Winston will be there! That’s not cool at all. I don’t know why he will be there. He is a special guest, but he is not the special guest. WWE’s Jimmy and Jey Uso will be there! Those are just guys from another Netflix property. A crummy commercial! We’re getting dangerously replete on guys, but we still have not reached the end of the special guests. I don’t know how many special guests this thing can take before it loses structural integrity, but Netflix aims to find out.
Here are some more special guests for opening night, probably:
- Ángel Hernández
- The 1964 Cincinnati Reds
- The entire cast of Bridgerton
- Luke Hughes
- Danhausen
- Outlander
- Reacher (the real guy, not the actor)
- Tracker
- Task
- Luis Sojo
- Bob Costas
- Frank Stallone
- Old Ball
- The Muppet Babies
- A hyrax
- Netflix Chief Financial Officer Spencer Neumann
- Josh Gondelman
- Helen DeWitt
- Your second-grade teacher
- Josh Shapiro
- HUNTR/X
- Ray Ratto
- Magnus Carlsen
- Bud Selig
- Fay Vincent (don’t worry about it)
- Godzilla
- Mechagodzilla
- SpaceGodzilla
- Erika Kirk
- Thing from Wednesday
- Roland, from The Song Of Roland
- The Dwemer
- The Denver Broncos
- Carl XVI Gustaf of Sweden
- Rich Aurilia
- Orson Scott Card
- A Kawasaki R211 open-gangway subway car
- Joey Buttafuoco
- John Smoltz
* One of these is real.
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