It's too early to tell what exactly is going to happen with Major League Baseball's Extra Innings package now that InDemand, a consortium of three of the nation's largest cable companies, apparently has agreed to match the terms of DirecTV's pact with MLB, according to a report from the Associated Press.

The pay-per-service has apparently agreed to carry the Baseball Channel (scheduled to launch in 2009), which is the crux of all of this metaphorical  pitcher's mound melee, to "at least the same number of customers" that DirecTV does.  MLB had decided to withhold the Extra Innings service to cable companies unless it was placed in the companies basic channel line-ups.   Were they right to do so?  That depends on your point of view.  Are they playing ummm…errr…hardball?  Yup, you betcha.

However I am scratching my head trying to figure out exactly what InDemand and the cable companies are doing.  Why?  It's simple.  DirecTV has approximately 15.6 million subscribers, the three cable companies that own InDemand - approximately 43 million.  If those companies are only guaranteeing that at least 15.6 million of their customers will see the new Baseball Channel, what's to happen to the other 27 million or so customers?

So parts of Northeast Ohio get the Baseball Channel and other parts don't?  South Jersey gets the Baseball Channel and Philadelphia doesn't?  It'll be the equivalent of chaos - dogs and cats living together - mass hysteria.

What should have been a simple business right of Major League Baseball - deciding the fate of a premium package of games - has grown into little more than a quagmire.  Let MLB does what it wants - if baseball fans vacate in droves, so be it.  But given that fewer than half of Extra Innings subcribers come via cable, I don't think that's going ot happen.