Down here in Portland, Oregon, we are big Mariners fans, but we have a problem.  We're close enough to be blacked out from watching the games on MLB.TV, but far enough away so that we can't actually make it to the game every night.  That is a mind-bogglingly stupid concept as far as my knowledge of blackouts is concerned.  (I guess it's a cable TV thing, though, right?)

Anyway, I'd love to just pay for an MLB.tv subscription, but the games would be blacked out for me.  I know someone could in theory get around that with a proxy (or even watch from some illegal online stream) but I've "heard" from a "friend" who's tried that that its tedious or slow or unreliable or never seems to work just right. I just want to be able to pay a little bit of money to watch the games, sort of like MLB.TV promises.

I'd love to go to Safeco every night, but can't make it there and back in time.

I see my options as:

-Get cable TV.  I'd be getting it solely for the Mariners games.  The problem is, the lowest package I can find with FSN (ROOT sports now?) is Comcast that's like $50 a month in addition to the internet price.  I already used up my six month trial of the cheaper stuff :(  I could mooch off of friends' cable, but none of my friends are into the Mariners enough to want to watch all the games.

-Go to the bar every night.  This is kinda annoying and expensive and causes me to eat more rally fries than I would at safeco.

-The illegal things mentioned above which I'd rather not do for the above mentioned reasons.

It looks to me like I'm gonna end up spending 50+ bucks a month, either on cable TV, or on bar food, either way.  That's more than I'd LIKE to spend, and more rally fries than I'd LIKE to have to eat.

So, fellow Portlanders (or anyone nearby with the same problem), what do you do? How do you watch the games?

I'm interested to see who everyone's rooting for around here...I'm guessing that everyone wants the Rays to win but beyond that I have no idea.

I'm voting Rays, Red Sox, Brewers, Cubs.  Not a Sox fan, but I can't root for the angels.  Plus, seeing the Rays beat the Sox in the ALCS would be awesome.

I guess the text of poll options doesn't count towards this seventy-five word limit.  So I'll also say that a White Sox-Cubs world series would be cool for multiple reasons.  Go vote!!