After Thursday’s Opening Day whiff, I knew MLB would apologize to their MLB.TV customers for the outage. It didn’t come on Thursday. Nor on Friday. It wasn’t until Saturday at 12:06 p.m. that I got an email:

Dear Loyal Subscriber,

Opening Day is one of the most exciting days on the Baseball calendar. It’s the first chance to watch your favorite team and players start competing for a World Series Championship. And for over 20 years, MLB.TV has consistently given you the chance to stream those Opening Day games from wherever you are.

Our PR people tell us that every great apology starts with gratuitous, self-congratulatory backslapping. We’re also going to pretend the blackouts that prevent you from watching “your favorite team and players” if “wherever you are” is in a designated home region just aren’t a thing.

Unfortunately, MLB.TV experienced a technical issue yesterday that resulted in a temporary inability to access our live game streams. 

By “temporary,” we mean “at least a third of the average length of a ballgame.”

While our technical team addressed this issue immediately…

Got on the phone and yelled at people. So much yelling.

… and restored access as soon as possible,…

The credit card charge finally went through.

we understand how disappointing this was to fans who were eagerly awaiting the start of the season. 

We have no idea how disappointed fans—many of whom took the day off—were at missing the first game of the year, the game that sets the tone for the rest of the season, the one they’ve been looking forward to since their team was eliminated last year, and instead spent two hours staring at error messages and yelling at us. So much yelling.

For that, we apologize.

For that, we apologize.

MLB fans deserve the best streaming experience possible and we will continue to strive to provide that. 

We paid upfront for service through November. Also, we’re reopening negotiations with ESPN. (Apple? 🤙🏻 Call us, mmmkay? )

To thank you for your support of the National Pastime, MLB would like to offer you $10 off any purchase of $25 or more at MLBshop.com. See details below. Enter code [REDACTED] at checkout on orders over $25.

There’s no better way to say we’re sorry than to give you a discount on merchandise you had no intention of buying. What’s better than giving us at least $15 more for completely screwing up? Did we mention there’s a minimum shipping fee of $8.99? But don’t worry about that, we’re currently running a free shipping promotion. Of course, you can only use one coupon code at a time, so you can either save $8.99 or $10, so really, this is a $1.01 coupon. This is so much better than the $0.93 you’d get with a prorated refund of your $150, 162-game MLB.TV subscription. Math is tough. Let’s go shopping!

We thank you for continuing to support the game we all love and look forward to an exciting 2025 season.

Please don’t cancel your MLB.TV subscription! Please, please, please!