Strike Zone Channel -- Greatest. Invention. Ever.

For the second night in a row, I'm sitting in front of my TV watching the free preview of the baseball Strike Zone Channel on DirecTV. I wasn't planning to buy the extra tier of service that DirecTV is hawking this year for the first time with the Extra Innings package.

Plans change.

Now, it's not as if this is a new idea. DirecTV did the same thing with its NFL Sunday Ticket package, where they had the Red Zone Channel, which bounced around from game to game, taking you to wherever a team was about to score. And it worked for football. But it works even better for baseball because it's so slow moving. That probably seems counterintuitive to say, but the thing is every time there's a lull in one game, they find something happening elsewhere. In the span of the last couple minutes, I've seen Albert Pujols, Torii Hunter and Miguel Tejada hit.

I don't recognize the guy they have hosting. But no doubt they screened all of the applicants for this job for ADD, because this would be a nightmare for someone who has trouble staying organized. He's a traffic cop, taking you from one game to the next, setting up each situation, which must be real fun when there are 10 games going on at once. He's not bad, though. MLB is going to launch a 24-7 cable network in 2009, and I don't know what they have planned for evenings, while games are being played, but Strike Zone Channel should be it. They can just migrate this coverage over onto the MLB channel. Of course, it's the nucleus of the $40 per year add-on package on DirecTV, so that's probably not likely.

To me, it's stuff like the sports packages where the 500-channel universe shows its true value. Most of the channels on my DirecTV are a complete crapfest. Does anyone need Lifetime Movie Channel? Do I need six Discovery channels? But the ability to watch a dozen baseball games simultaneously? That's the way the world should be. Watching the teams I want to see -- that's what I love about it. I'd love to see it extended to more than just sports. I'd still watch the local TV stations from Pittsburgh if I could, even though I don't live there anymore -- a little slice of home. Yeah, I know there are all sorts of rules that prevent it. Screw 'em. It's the information age. The Internet has broken down the barriers for newspapers. Let's let the 500-channel universe break them down for TV.

In the meantime, I'll be watching the Strike Zone Channel this summer.