Baseball on televison

Baseball has a long historic connection with Italy. Some of the greatest to ever play (DiMaggio, Berra, Campanella) were Italian, or of Italian heritage. Italy has a strong baseball league, and it's not just a local event either. It big all across the country, and the Italian league has something every league wants, and very few in Europe get. Television coverage. Granted, it's on tape delay, but it is on television. And nothing is more important in helping to increase the popularity of a sport then the opportunity to get it to as many people as possible. There are millions of people in the states who have never been to a major league game, but still watch on a regular basis.

I can't go to a real game, but I watch every day. Since I don't get it on television either, I watch on the web. In Italy, so do a lot of people:

There were 145,962 hits for the second televised game of the 2010 Italian Baseball League. The median number of spectators who tuned into the April 8th Danesi Nettuno-Montepaschi Grosseto game at any given time was 18,333, which translates into 0.17% of the market share.

That's over 18,000 people watching an Italian league game in April. Don't you think the A's and Pirates would like to have that many people watching? I don't know anything about Italian television, beyond the fact that women get naked all the time, so I don't know how the share system works. But I would have to imagine that almost 150,000 people checking out a baseball game in the country is a good thing, and so does the league:

The results are regarded as positive and give a foundation on which to further increase television exposure as the IBL season progresses.

It's not all tape-delayed or webcasts either. It's popular enough that they are getting real-time exposure:

The upcoming Thursday April 22 contest between rivals Rimini and San Marino will be the first game of the season to be telecast "live" on Rai Sport Piu'.

So if you're in Italy, and you want to watch live baseball, and  you don't have MLB.tv, here's your chance.