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Alexander: As a Southern California sports fan, what would you change?

March 27, 2026

The world according to Jim:

• It’s reader participation time, and I’m guessing today’s question might be mostly an opportunity to vent. But if the custodians of SoCal’s teams are smart, they’ll pay attention to the answers (which will, indeed, be printed).

The question: If there were one thing that you, the reader, could change with any of the region’s teams to enhance the fan/viewing experience, either in attending a game or watching on TV, what would it be?

Within that limitation – just one to a customer, please, and I know how limiting that might be – I have a feeling we’ll be seeing a pretty good variety of responses. But this should be limited to the local teams and the parts of the experience that are under their control. …

• I’ll start, and I’ll address this one to the Dodgers: TURN THE SPEAKERS DOWN!!!!! …

• I’m guessing, however, that a large degree of fan angst has been caused by the increasingly screwy nature of TV/streaming contracts, which often mean double-checking before every game to see which channel or platform is doing a given game on a given night. Remember: That’s not the local teams’ fault but that of the leagues, which are increasingly parceling out national broadcast rights to entities that demand exclusivity. …

• The baseball fan may be the biggest victim here, since following a team now requires getting used to exclusive broadcasts in potentially six different places beyond the local outlet: Netflix, NBC, Peacock, Apple TV, Fox (with its Saturday prime time over-the-air game of the week) and ESPN. MLB has established a web page, MLB.com/watch, supposedly to help the beleaguered fan figure it out. …

• But here’s a web page I’d like to see: www.Blame-Rob-Manfred.com …

• If you are a Dodgers fan, there will be at least 16 games not shown on SportsNet LA through August, including 14 exclusive national games (which included Thursday night’s opener against Arizona on NBC and Peacock). That’s part of the price of popularity – or notoriety, if you prefer. And 10 additional games are shown nationally on FS1, TBS or the MLB Network in addition to SportsNet LA.

There are also two games, for whatever reason, where no TV at all is listed as of now, June 15 at home against Tampa Bay and July 20 at Philadelphia. Similarly, there are two Angels non-televised games – again, as of now – July 20 against the Cardinals and Aug. 12 against the Rangers. And no national games are listed yet for September, with the streamers presumably waiting to determine what the best games might be. …

• If you are an Angels fan, I guess you should at least be happy that your team isn’t in as much national demand, because that means more opportunities for Wayne Randazzo and Mark Gubicza on what is still known as FanDuel Sports West (now owned in part by the Angels). There are only seven Angels games through August that are bogarted by streamers, two by Apple TV and five Sunday games by Peacock. …

• It’s also fortunate that neither of the local teams is scheduled for Netflix games given the way that platform handled its first game Wednesday, with whatever the Yankees and Giants were doing becoming secondary to Netflix’s promotion of Netflix.

That outlet has only one real game left to show – the Phillies-Twins Field of Dreams game Aug. 13 from Dyersville, Iowa – plus the Home Run Derby at the All-Star Game. How much damage can they do with that? …

• This is the start of what appears to be a nationalization of baseball’s television footprint, in anticipation of all of the contracts coming up for renewal in 2028. You would hope management would take that into consideration before provoking a work stoppage, but it seems to have every intention of doing so following this season in pursuit of salary restraints.

They never learn, do they? …

• The best solution to the maze – an expensive one, at that – that sports fans have to navigate to see what they want to see might have come from Yankees broadcaster Michael Kay, who told the New York Daily News that the streamers should get together and offer a sports bundle.

The alternative, Kay said, is this: “I think people are getting to the point where they’re angry now. If they can’t see certain games on a streamer and they go, ‘Ah, I actually lived to see another day,’ that’s how you wean people off of the thing that they love.”

In other words, maybe think of the big picture instead of your own bottom line? …

• Are you going to be using the new corporate name of Dodger Stadium’s field? No? Good. Neither am I. …

• This week’s quiz: No National League team has ever won three consecutive World Series. Which was the last to have a shot at it? Answer below. …

• Latest words of wisdom from NBA commissioner Adam Silver at the league’s Board of Governors meeting this week: “The problem we’re having these days is it’s become almost impossible to distinguish between a tank and a rebuild.”

The commish made it clear that there will be something done in response to that race to the bottom for draft position, but exactly what still seems to be uncertain. How about this idea? Flip the order of non-playoff teams, so the lottery teams with the best record have the best lottery odds, rather than the worst. …

• Quiz answer: The Cincinnati Reds defeated Boston in Game 7 of the 1975 World Series, and swept the Yankees in 1976. Who dethroned them in 1977? The Dodgers, who finished 10 games ahead of Cincinnati in the NL West that year after finishing second to the Reds by 20 games in 1975 and 10 games in ’76. …

• But the last team to actually have a shot at a three-peat was Toronto, winners in 2002 over Atlanta and 2003 over Philadelphia. What stopped them in 2004? A players’ strike that wiped out the World Series (and was unnecessarily provoked by management over the same issue that’ll be coming up this time). …

• Things I’m glad I didn’t write: Columnist Dieter Kurtenbach of our corporate sibling, the Bay Area News Group, wrote this Feb. 27 before the Lakers and Golden State Warriors met in San Francisco: “When Los Angeles acquired Luka Doncic in the shock trade of the century, it was supposed to guarantee a parade down Figueroa. Instead, the Slovenian James Harden is showing the exact same limitations and attitudes that saw Dallas frantically dump him.”

Ouch. …

• In fairness, Dieter ripped both the Lakers and the Warriors before that game as substandard versions of themselves. At the time, who could blame him? The Lakers, in particular, were 19-20 dating to Dec. 1, had lost nine games by 20 or more points and looked like a mismatched team that was running in place. After a fourth-quarter collapse and a 128-106 loss to Detroit on Dec. 30, Doncic said his team “let go of the rope,” a pretty severe indictment in itself. …

• Now look at them. Beginning with that 129-101 victory over the Warriors on Feb. 28 at Chase Center, Luka and his mates had won 13 of 15 going into Friday’s home game against Brooklyn, and now they’re wearing that “team nobody wants to see in the playoffs” mantle.

I didn’t just jinx them, did I?

jalexander@scng.com

Orange County Register

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