Dear New England Cable Companies,

You are all a bunch of stupid whores.

Do you know what happened to me today? I came in to work. That usually happens on Monday-Friday, but I came into my sports-crazed office without knowing that apparently the best game in the history of baseball or whatever happened last night. Do you know who told me? The office Yankees fan. Do you know what part she omitted? The fact that the Red Sox let up a grand slam in the bottom of the 75th and lost. Until the IT department head told me, she let me be smug and enjoy what I thought was a victory. Then she laughed at me. I was humiliated. What kind of baseball fan am I?

Listen up, RCN and Comcast. I am not rolling it dough. Were I rolling in dough, I would pay your exorbitant rates to get expanded basic cable and have NESN on as I enjoy my subterranean fortress of solitude. But there have been movies with ransom demands that cost less than a summer of expanded basic cable and internet. It's absolutely ludicrous that you don't put NESN on the basic cable package. Is it a smart business move? Absolutely. People without $450 monthly student loan payments will find a way to swing it. Us poor bastards who can't afford it alone just can't afford it. I'd gladly get basic cable from you if it had NESN. But it doesn't. And I'm in no rush to buy a TV since I don't want to buy cable from you since I'll miss baseball either way.

The Red Sox aren't completely innocent in this either. By giving the rights to broadcast Sox games exclusively to NESN this year, I can't even enjoy the Friday night games on FOX. The Globe had some letters to the editor about this, but the Sox are in effect kicking fans in lower economic brackets out. A ticket to Fenway is a lot more than most people can regularly afford. Expanded basic cable costs about $60 a month. Kids who hear about Papi and Manny can't afford to see him since their parents can't afford to bring them to Fenway or buy cable with NESN. It's eventually going to bite the Sox in the ass.

I can't very well just have a schedule of houses I visit to watch Sox games. "Kristen, okay, you're on Monday. Marianne, you're on Tuesday. I'll go to a bar on Wednesday. One of these days is bound to be an off day. Shit." I shall wander the streets of Boston, peering into the windows of bars until they ask me to move along. Me and all the poor kids, together.

So, in closing, let me reiterate. You, meaning the cable companies and the Red Sox, are a bunch of assholes.

Sincerely,
Amy