When I first looked at my house, I checked everything. The toilets flushed. The water ran in the sinks and showers. I thought I checked everything. I didn’t. 

The first floor wasn’t wired for cable. The basement was. The top floor where the bedrooms are were. The first floor wasn’t. Due to reasons beyond my understanding, an antenna doesn’t pick up local television stations. Not even PBS. As a result, I got the Roku, and I have been quite pleased with it with one major exception: I can’t watch the Mets. 

That’s not completely true. I can if the Mets are on ESPN. Other than that, I can’t. I can watch them on my phone via the Optimum App, but not on the Roku. My Optimum subscription allows me to get live TV from different Roku channels, but it doesn’t allow me to watch SNY. Even if I subscribed to MLB TV, I still couldn’t watch the Mets on the Roku because I live in market. 

MLB is now easing restrictions to stream games on devices like the Roku. Note, this has no effect on the MLB TV. Rather, it has an impact if your team’s partner is Fox, which is apparently half the league. It includes YES, which owns a share of the network. It doesn’t include the Mets because their partner for SNY is Comcast. As a result, my Roku is useless for watching Mets games in 2016 past Opening Day. 

It’s about time that ends. Optimum needs to make its app available for the Roku like Time Warner did. Comcast should work with MLB to permit SNY to be streamed. Why isn’t this going to happen?  Are the Mets and MLB afraid I’ll take my Roku with me when I go on vacation to an out of market location and watch the games?  Are they afraid I’m going to see the commercials when I’m elsewhere?  

It’s ridiculous. It’s why a solution needs to be found before the season starts.