Passan: MLB’s blackout problem keeps sport in dark ages

But will it play in Peoria?

Here we are. Still. Years later. It’s 2012. We can watch anything we want anywhere we want on any device we want at any time we want. Except baseball games. If you live in Iowa, you can’t see the Brewers, Cardinals, Cubs, Royals, Twins or White Sox. It’s just as ugly in Vegas: no A’s, Angels, Diamondbacks, Dodgers, Giants or Padres. Baseball continues to black out televised games in these areas because of territorial-rights rules conceived when TV was black and white and people actually watched commercials….

Preying on the very consumer who wants to buy your product seems like the antithesis of good business sense, and yet baseball has done nothing to change its tack. Commissioner Bud Selig said: “We’ll figure it out. … We have to do something about it.”

That was six years ago….

On the first page of a complaint filed May 9 in Manhattan, two words aim squarely for Major League Baseball’s jaw and deliver a swift blow: “Illegal cartel.”

Garber et al v. MLB is a class-action antitrust suit looking to do what no amount of complaining from baseball fans could: destroy the blackout rules.