Tonight, the Los Angeles Dodgers are playing their rivals, the San Francisco Giants.

And what am I watching? Arena crews replacing glass behind the Los Angeles Kings’ bench.

Why? Because network television and apps have made it impossible to do something we used to be able to do every Spring, Summer, and Fall: watch the game.

I live about as close to the center of California as you can get. As a kid I was almost always able to see the Giants/Dodgers tilts on the one of the local channels. Then, cable started to poach some of those games. First, it was ESPN. Then Sportsnet combined baseball, basketball and college athletics regionally. But, they didn’t offer that service everywhere. And when they did, your address dictated whether you could see the games. The platform, AT&T, Dish, or Directv either allowed viewing or didn’t even though the address didn’t change. If you didn’t have access, it didn’t matter. You were already paying for a year of content to get the best deal on the content you then discovered you couldn’t see.

Tonight, a Google search promises FUBO has the game. That’s a lie. Peacock and NBC pulled their programming off of FUBO last year. I am paying for Peacock -which is supposed to have the game- but, viewers are told they are unable to watch due to “streaming rights.” And, YouTube? Nope. That requires yet another subscription. Simply put, as every app tries to get a piece of the baseball pie, they are splintering the broadcast availability so badly as to make it impossible to watch games. Aren’t they trying to get more people to watch? If so, why are they making it so bloody difficult? And how does MLB not see that this splintering is keeping people from watching?

With FUBO and HBO Max and Peacock, I can’t get the game? What in the hell am I paying for? No idea. It certainly isn’t consistent baseball coverage. The promise of that coverage is exactly why we added Peacock after the stupid bird and FUBO (most unfortunate name for a company?) couldn’t come to an agreement on how best to share billions of dollars in revenue or how to put NBCU channels on the FUBO platform. So, where is the game? On MLBTV, for the low, low price of $149.99. That’s a no-go for many families on fixed incomes, which are also baseball’s most loyal fans. For sports fans, we already have to pay for multiple sites that also have movies and programming because we can’t justify blowing $150 to watch 162 games in part because no one has time to watch all of those games. That’s simply a waste of money and most people are not as baseball crazy as I am.

The gouging and “streaming rights” blockades have to stop. MLB needs to renegotiate its contracts to make baseball more available, not less. Participation in the game is already down between 19 and 35 percent depending on who you ask. I’ve seen it at five schools in California’s central valley/Sierra that have scrapped their junior varsity teams or combined the JV and varsity into one team. Participation starts with access. High costs and expensive broadcasts only block that access.

Where else can we not watch the game?