Major League Baseball hasn’t even thrown its ceremonial first pitch to launch the 2026 season and my Atlanta Braves have already tried to ruin my life and left me longing for winter.

No, I’m not talking about the fact that two of their starting pitchers have already suffered injuries and will miss significant playing time, which means they’re just picking up right where they left off last year with injuries.

It’s worse than that.

For the past six years, around this time, I’ve written 700 to 800 word rants about all of the hoops I’m required to jump through just to watch most of the Braves’ regular season games.

Concerning the now defunct Bally Sports Network who used to carry the Braves in 2021, I’ve said things like, “What you’ve done since you bought the rights to broadcast the majority of the Atlanta Braves season from Fox has possibly been the worst management of a rollout I’ve seen since Heinz’s multicolored, blue, green and red ketchup.”

Then in 2022, referencing the previous quote, I said, “I was wrong. I grossly underestimated the incompetence that exists at Bally.”

At the time I was talking about how Bally promised an app that would let me, for a small fee, watch most of the regular season Braves games.

The app worked great if you had a cable or dish subscription to go along with it so you didn’t have to actually use the app.

Then I wrote a similar column in 2024, but in that one I was clearly at the end of my rope with the Atlanta franchise because even though they had the ability to launch their own platform and broadcast all of their games – like several other teams were doing and I made a very strong case for – they refused to.

And, since it was clear the Braves organization didn’t care about me, I spent most of that column trying to talk myself into changing allegiances to the Dodgers.

Why LA? Why not? They at least will buy championships and I’m a sucker for shiny objects.

But I didn’t.

And, in 2025, I broke down, busted out $500 and subscribed to a live TV service that carried the regional sports network that broadcast the Braves games.

Then I proceeded to watch my Braves lose 86 out of 162 games and finish behind the Miami Marlins.

But when we had that little flash of spring last week, I finally managed to put the pain of last year’s season in the rearview mirror and I began to get excited about a new baseball season.

Then the Braves dropped a press release and decided to punch me in the guts again.

I’ll quote that press release now.

“The Atlanta Braves today announced the launch of BravesVision, a multimedia platform owned and operated by the organization that will become the official local television home of the Braves beginning with the 2026 baseball season.”

It went on to say, “BravesVision will produce more than 140 games, as well as extensive pre-game and post-game programming, throughout the 2026 regular season and give fans across the organization’s six state territory multiple options to watch Braves games without blackouts…”

You may ask, dear reader, isn’t that exactly what you asked them to do in 2024? It is!

Now, I can’t prove that some high-ranking person in the Braves organization is an avid Rocket reader and I’m basically the whole reason we now have BravesVision.

But I can’t not prove that either.

But since you are an avid Rocket reader, dear reader, you’re probably also asking “So, what’s the problem?”

It’s simple.

First they took my joy, then they took my misery.

It’s my misery that matters. That’s how I fill up 50 Snippets columns each year.

If BravesVision is half as good as they say it will be, then I might not have anything left to complain about.

And what am I if I am not a catalog of grievances?