The MLB World Series is kicking off tonight between the Texas Rangers and the St. Louis Cardinals, but with Fox holding down the broadcast rights, it's difficult, but not impossible, to find a means to watch the games without tuning in on your television.
The Official Way
The official means to watch the game comes in the form of a $19.99 subscription to MLB.TV's Postseason plan. However?and this is a big catch?the games will not be streamed live in the U.S. The live video stream won't be available until 90 minutes after the game is over. A live audio broadcast of the game from both teams home broadcasts are available in the app, as well as video highlights for great plays as the game happens.
Seems like kind of a bum deal, right? Viewers outside of the U.S. and Canada will not have the same delay of the live broadcast, and according to a representative at MLB.com, the service detects your IP address at the access point, so you theoretically could run your internet connection through a proxy server that lives outside the U.S. to gain access to the live footage, but proxying video streams across oceans can get choppy, so your mileage may vary.
If you're not worried about the picture, you can also stream the radio broadcasts live from ESPN for free. This might come in handy if the live video streams are having hiccups with audio.
The Unofficial Way
Unofficially, you'll have a few options for streaming content online, although there is no guarantee on the quality of the streams you'll have available.
The first and easiest to use is First Row Sports, a web site which aggregates user-submitted streams and allows anyone to submit their own live stream of the game for fellow fans to enjoy. The quality depends on who is streaming it and from where they're streaming, and the sources are wide ranging, from Justin.TV to straight P2P sites. Alternately, you can try LiveTV, or Wiziwig for similar services, or visit a streaming site like Justin.TV or Ustream directly 30 minutes before the game's start time.
Ways to Enhance the Game
Once you get your live stream up and running, you might want to delve a little deeper into the game and if you're a fan of pitch-by-pitch tracking, your best bet is going to be MLB.com's Gameday. If you prefer to use your phone or tablet as your second screen during the game there is a 99? official app, MLB At Bat, which is available for iOS, Android, WP7, Blackberry and webOS.
For more indepth stats on the web, you can follow the modern stats at FanGraphs or the more traditional statistics from Baseball Reference. FanGraphs also has an iOS app if you don't want to juggle tabs in your browser. If you're the type to crunch numbers during games, both of these will provide in-game stat tracking on a variety of levels, including win-loss projections, pitch tracking, detailed match-ups and more.
If you're more interested in being a part of the game and keeping track of stats yourself, the $10 ESPN iScore Baseball Scorekeeper is a way to keep track of every little thing that happens throughout the game. Title Photo remixed from the originals by: Ken Lund and Christoph Weihs/Shutterstock.
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