ESPN, MLB Ruin Carlos Zambrano's No-Hitter

The Chicago Cubs' baseball game against the Houston Astros on Sunday night, which was moved to Milwaukee due to Hurricane Ike, ended up being about as historical as it gets.

Carlos Zambrano, the Cubs' starting pitcher, threw a no-hitter, the first for a Cub since 1972. Luckily, WGN was broadcasting the game, so the whole nation was going to get to see this performance, right?

Wrong.

Due to ESPN's agreement with Major League Baseball, no other game can be broadcast nationally at the same time as its Sunday Night Baseball. Therefore, unless you paid for every Fox Sports channel and watched the game via Houston's regional broadcast, or you lived in Chicago and watched WGN's local broadcast, you were out of luck.

Like me, a guy who lives less than an hour away from the Skyway, who found out about Zambrano's no-hitter via a text message from someone in Chicago that thought I was watching the game (because I hate missing the games).

Instead, I was watching Pittsburgh laugh at Cleveland's offense on Sunday Night Football. Awesome.

I hear that ESPN did broadcast the ninth inning of the Cubs-Astros game to show the no-hitter, but, unless you were watching ESPN already, how would you know?

I've never hated ESPN like a lot of people west of New York City do, but this is an outrage.

A game that got moved because of a natural disaster couldn't be seen by 95 percent of the country. A game that normally would have been available to 100 percent of the country. That's pathetic. 

ESPN and MLB should be ashamed that they ruined a night of baseball for fans all over the country, and that was before I knew there was a no-hitter.

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