A Promotional Top 10

MLB.com has a Top 10 list to promote the MLB Network. Is it a David Letterman Top 10? Well, it starts out like that.

The MLB Network debuts at 6 p.m. ET on Thursday in about 50 million homes, by far the largest launch in cable history. It will be free on your local TV provider, easy to find and many people will stumble across it and ask the question:

Why should I watch?

The easiest answer is:

"Because 'House' and 'Rachael Ray' and 'Dancing With The Stars' and 'American Idol' and 'Oprah' and 'Family Guy' are going to talk about other things, like medicine and food and dancing and singing and books and gross stuff. The MLB Network is going to be all about Major League Baseball. Life is good, TiVo the rest."

For those adjusting to the concept of a different lifestyle in 2009, there is a more detailed response. Here are 10 reasons to watch:

The reasons follow. Winks at The Bucky Channel will really get a kick out of #4.

It was the summer of 1998, and new MLB Network on-air reporter Trenni Kusnierek told onmilwaukee.com this story of what happened one day back then:

"When I was a part-time TV producer at Channel 12, I liked to practice reporting. Well, one day during a Brewers-Phillies game at County Stadium, I had a few minutes to practice, so a photographer and I headed to one of the entrances to the lower level seating deck. I was positioned with the game behind me. The photographer insisted on using his light, which is pretty bright. So while Jose Valentin is up to bat and I'm improvising a report, I noticed people around me starting to boo. I turned around and realized that the photographer's light was shining right in the eyes of the Phillies' pitcher and the ump stopped the game because of it. The TV cameras showing the game were trained on me as the reason for the game delay, and Matt Vasgersian was poking fun at me in the TV booth. I had no idea it would distract anyone, but there I was, accidentally stopping the game with the whole stadium booing me."

Fast forward a decade. Now there are 1,200 combined total light fixtures throughout Studio 3 and Studio 42 at the MLB Network's home in Secaucus, N.J. Now Vasgersian is a studio host. Now Kusnierek is an on-air reporter. There is a good chance someone is going to unearth that little story. (Oops, we just did, thanks to Google.)

There is something about #6 that is in turns neat, disappointing, and insulting. The neat part is in bold. The disappointing part is in italics. The insulting part is in bold italics.

Tradition. The MLB Network will open with Don Larsen's 1956 World Series no-hitter for the Yankees against the Brooklyn Dodgers, the first time a mass audience has seen that in more than 52 years. Guess what you are probably going to be charmed by the most? Those original commercials between innings and those announcer plugs, all signs of a halcyon time gone by. You will have Larsen and his catcher, Yogi Berra, talking about it in the studio after the game is shown. How perfect is that?

It won't be the Baseball Classic Channel, so don't expect to find a place that lives in the past. What you can expect to find is an all-hour network that embraces its past along with its present and its future, so that a 17-year-old fan with a microscopic attention span who tunes in will find a familiar high-volume, video-game world where you also learn about what got us to where we are today. MLB Network CEO Tony Petitti said it will take "six to seven years" to digitize the entire history of broadcast Major League Baseball, an indication of how serious the network is about remembering.

So, we'll be able to watch the entire 1957 Braves-Yankees World Series in about...2015?

Click the link for the full list.

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