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By GREG AUMAN
© St. Petersburg Times, published March 30, 2001
For diehard baseball fans living outside their favorite team's market, some of the best things in life aren't free anymore.
Major League Baseball announced this week it will begin charging for online audio broadcasts. Eleven spring training games (including the Rays, on WDAE-AM 620) were available free Thursday at MLB.com, but beginning Sunday, a season pass costs $9.95.
Before you mail that angry letter to Bud Selig, it isn't as bad as it sounds. If you sign up through MLB.com, you'll get a $10 gift certificate to use at baseball's online store, so you're getting radio access to 2,400-plus games and all you have to do is maybe buy a hat you don't need.
One minor complication, for fans who don't use RealPlayer to listen online: RealNetworks Inc. has agreed to pay MLB $20-million over three years to be its exclusive online audio provider. The company's basic RealPlayer can be downloaded for free in minutes.
Baseball's decision is bad news for WFLA-AM 970, the flagship station of the Devil Rays Radio Network. Operations manager Sue Treccase said when callers would complain about poor reception at the edge of the station's signal, she pointed them to 970wfla.com and raysonradio.com, which aren't options anymore.
"It's not as dramatic as the station shutting down, but philosophically, it's the same kind of thing," she said. "Like a radio station, a Web site's signal is supposed to be up and running 24 hours a day, and now it's going to be down for periods of time, through no fault of our own."
WFLA still can broadcast the Rays' pregame and post-game radio shows online, though Treccase didn't know if the station would do so. Baseball isn't the first sport to charge for audio broadcasts. The NBA has had a subscription-only service for four years, with its "audio league pass" getting bumped up from $20 to $30 this season.
The NFL and NHL do not charge fans for online audio, and NFL spokesman Brian McCarthy said the league has no plans to add a subscription service this season.
"Everything on NFL.com right now is free, and I imagine it probably will be during the season," McCarthy said. "We don't want to close the door to anything, but it's not something we're planning."
DATA SPRINGS ETERNAL: Diamond Mind, a company that has created a complex baseball simulation program, put every game of the upcoming season through its computers 50 times and released the aggregate final standings at diamond-mind.com.
The Devil Rays average a 62-100 record, four games behind the Minnesota Twins for baseball's worst record. The projections have Tampa Bay finishing last in the AL in runs scored and runs allowed. Interestingly, the Yankees win the AL East in only 15 of the 50 hypothetical years and miss the playoffs entirely in just as many seasons.
Among the new variables the program takes into account are the new strike zone, stadium modifications and the new "unbalanced schedule." The site isn't so pompous as to forecast the post-season, but it does predict who will get there. Division winners are Boston, Cleveland, Oakland, Atlanta, St. Louis and (surprisingly) Colorado, with the Yankees taking the AL wild card and the Mets, Astros and Diamondbacks finishing within one game of each other for the NL's final playoff spot.
TID-BYTES: If you think Southwest Missouri State's Jackie Stiles came out of nowhere for this weekend's women's Final Four, think again. In ESPN The Magazine's Internet Athlete of the Year voting last summer, she reached the Final Four there, too, eliminating Alex Rodriguez and Vince Carter before losing to eventual champ Lance Armstrong.
- If you have a question or comment about the Internet or a site to suggest, send an e-mail to staff writer Greg Auman at aumanac1@aol.com.
Headline: Offshore the catch is permit
Permit is a good bet offshore this weekend, weather permitting. So is king mackerel. Inshore, cobia, red drum and speckled trout should be major targets, especially for waders
Permit, I mean 25-pounders, are hanging at many of the wrecks and reefs not far off the beaches from Sarasota to Clearwater. These guys mean business, so take appropriate gear.
Small blue crabs, pass crabs and tail-hooked jumbo shrimp are prime baits. Permit have excellent vision so it's not a bad idea to dig a little deeper into your pocket for fluorocarbon leader.
Kings are where you find them but it seems we're still a week or two from the big push. The recent cold fronts are keeping the water muddy and the fish far off the beach, but at least they're keeping the water temperature down so the kings don't bypass us altogether. Pulling hardware is the easiest way to locate a few fish.
Glow spoons behind No. 2 or No. 3 planners work extremely well as do big lipped plugs. It's hard for a king to pass up a blue and silver plug that's digging for the bottom.
Cobia are making their presence known on the flats. Look for these brown bombers following big southern stingrays as well as big leopard rays. Rays kick up shrimp and crabs with their wings as they cruise across the shallow grass beds providing the cobias with a free meal. A free-lined pinfish or greenback will get noticed.
Red drum, or redfish or just plain reds are on the prowl north of Courtney Campbell Parkway. Wade the mouths of Double Branch and Rocky Creek with a gold spoon. Look for schools of mullet and make your casts into these schools. Mullet will stir up the bottom chasing shrimp and crabs from their hiding places right to the reds.
Big yellow-mouth speckled trout are all over the flats eating just about everything they can sink their canines into. In low-light situations break out the topwaters and slurp yourself a limit. Jigs with or without a popping cork work, especially if you add a red slug tail.
Live shrimp or whitebait under a float is rarely going to go untouched. Work the 2- to 4-foot grass flats that have intermittent sandy potholes. If you interested in kingfish and don't have a boat, go to the Redington Long Pier and check out the outrigging.
Locals have the technique down pat and are consistently putting tournament-winning fish on its planks. Whiting, silver trout and speckled trout are available during night hours.
Head boats on the half-day trips are catching decent size Key West grunts and black sea bass along with an occasional red grouper. Better catches of grouper and snapper are being boated on the day and overnight trips. For the real deal, take the three-day trip and fish until your arms are tired. Grouper, snapper and amberjack will help you do that.
- Capt. Rick Frazier runs Lucky Dog Charters out of St. Petersburg and can be reached at (727) 448-3817 or by e-mail at captrick@luckydawg.com.