Spare a thought for British baseball fans this October

I’m snappy, antsy and frustrated. I’m jittery, emotional and delusional. I’m generally lethargic and drained.

My skin is blotchy and pale. My mind is cloudy and confused. My beard is unkempt and scraggy.

No, I did not suffer a major accident recently. Yes, I’m still taking my medication. And no, this is not the beginning of another depressive episode. It is just October, and I’m a baseball addict living in Britain. These are the best of times and the worst of times – the pinnacle of my ultimate obsession unfurling at painfully unreachable hours of the day.

Understandably, there is a lot of bickering about baseball’s postseason schedule right now. Odd game times. Annoying announcers. Unnecessary off-days. I understand the gripes and share many of them myself. But before you moan, please spare a thought for the British baseball nuts out there. The playoffs are an exhausting grind for us, pushing the boundaries of spiritual, emotional and physical fatigue, and those sacrifices are often overlooked.

Sure, postseason games are a rollercoaster for everybody. The hyper intensity of every pitch. The pendulum shifts and lead changes. The sheer relentless adrenaline. Yet the time difference between England and North America turbocharges those sensations – mixes tiredness and isolation into the ecstasy, despair, hope and heartbreak.

Where I live, we are five hours ahead of the American east coast; eight hours ahead of the west. During the regular season, Brits receive a steady diet of amenable first-pitch times – day games in the US fitting neatly into the early evening hours here. Even during the Wildcard round, there tends to be a few games we can catch at a civilised hour. But from the Division Series on, when start times are pushed back, it becomes near-impossible to follow in real-time while remaining a functional adult – especially for Yankees fans, like me, who see most games slated for primetime.

Years ago, as a bug-eyed kid and unperturbed teenager, I thought nothing of pulling all-nighters to watch baseball, and doing so had a minimal effect on my mind and body. Now, though, I’m 30. Things are beginning to ache. Those Instagram reels of chiropractors cracking backs are beginning to appeal. Most nights, I’m ready for bed by 8pm, and good sleep is essential to the management of my depression, anxiety and OCD diagnoses. Plus my day job starts at 9am on weekdays, and it requires cerebral concentration, so I cannot afford to be impaired.

Obviously, this sucks on many levels. Baseball is my foremost preoccupation. At this time of year, it is all I can really think about. Yet unlike baseball fans stateside, I cannot use the promise of an evening playoff game to make the workday go faster. Those across the pond can take mundane office banalities with a pinch of salt because, no matter what, there will be a ballgame to watch while unwinding once they return home. For me, there is no such bounty – unless I down an espresso shot at midnight, fight drooping eyelids for three hours, and throw my circadian rhythm into chaos.

The lack of an easily accessible outlet for my passion creates pent-up energy that often trickles into tortured agita. Accordingly, each year, I book a week of annual leave for the World Series, during which I become fully nocturnal. I already have those dates in the diary for this postseason, but during the earlier rounds, I’m severely constrained on weekdays. In theory, I can stay awake all night on Fridays and Saturdays, but in practice, I’m more likely to fall asleep on the couch. Again, I’m getting old, people. Stamina is a recurring issue. 

Take Game 2 of the Yankees-Royals ALDS as a pertinent example. First pitch was scheduled for 00:38 here in England – Monday night bleeding into Tuesday morning. My jerry-rigged solution involved going to bed at 10pm, setting an alarm for 5am, then re-watching the entire game, as live, via MLB TV over breakfast.

This may sound fine, and it is better than nothing at all, but such an imperfect setup is also fraught with difficulties and tripwires. Firstly, I have to avoid all mentions of the score before sitting down with my morning coffee, which means fighting the Pavlovian urge to open the MLB app as I roll out of bed. Then, the illusion of watching the game live is kinda clunky – it just about works, but deep down, you feel a little stupid yelling at an umpire four hours after he blew a call. 

And finally, we have the hot mess that is MLB.TV. Before I explode, let me first express my gratitude for its mere existence. I grew up with access to just two live games per week via Channel 5, and spent many nights gawping at the hollow 3D figurines miming delayed action on the original MLB.com Gameday tool. So just being able to watch live games at all – instead of ‘In play, run(s)’ – is a privilege I try to appreciate. That said, it is 2024. Artificial intelligence is primed to crush us. Yet we are still incapable of making an intuitive direct-to-consumer sports streaming product. May the lord have mercy on our souls.

My main issue with MLB.TV is the absurd, insane and unbearable flashback highlights that are played between innings, while network television is in commercial break. I’m not opposed to the idea of filling that dead space, per se, but the nails-on-a-chalkboard soundtrack is infuriating, and by the third inning, I want to punch a wall. The screeching, thrashing noise is just unconscionable – especially for neurodiverse viewers on the autistic spectrum. Moreover, MLB can draw from hundreds of thousands of games, yet seems to rotate the same dozen clips, ad nauseam, to a point where I contemplate switching off entirely. Honestly – if I see one more replay of that Adley Rutschman home run, I will not be responsible for my actions.

When watching on catch-up, one can theoretically fast-forward past those turgid highlight reels between innings, but doing so activates the broadcast progress bar, which you can see diminishing as the game goes on. Late in ALDS Game 2, for example, even when the Yankees brought the tying run to the plate late, I knew the rally would die because the last time I fast-forwarded, there was hardly any time left on the game recording. So it is a Catch-22 situation: go mad by the seventh inning watching those damned flashbacks, or pre-empt the game’s outcome by teasing the progress bar.

I have raised these chronic issues with MLB.TV countless times, citing the awful experience of fellow neurodivergent viewers, but they never listen. For a diehard, lifelong fan, that is extremely demotivating, but I grin and bear it to feed my obsession. Casual fans have much less tolerance for such annoyances, and they will not think twice about abandoning a playoff game in favour of Netflix. That is the market MLB plays in, and it must improve its offering to seriously compete.

The solutions are simple and myriad, too – another annoying aspect of this debacle. Just give me the actual commercials as they are shown live on TV. Just give me a static camera behind home plate, with ambient ballpark noise filling the gaps. Heck, just give me a blank screen that says, ‘commercial break in progress.’ Give me anything but this. My logical mind cannot take it anymore.

Things will only get tougher from here, as well. British clocks go back one hour on 27 October, a week before the same occurs stateside, widening the time-gap for most of the World Series. I get it – these things never change, and I’m stupidly arguing with geophysics for the most part, but this rant needed to happen. I needed to vent my frustrations.

Yes, I knew the rules of engagement when signing up for a lifetime of far-flung baseball distraction. And obviously, MLB will rightfully prioritise its domestic market. However, keep us foreigners in mind these next few weeks, during which we will be sullen, prickly, over-caffeinated goblins. Our devotion knows no bounds, but October tests that to the max.