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Like most Americans, I had the full intention of watching the inauguration proceedings of our 44th President, Barack H Obama (nice move on the H, publicist) by way of the internets. However, in what I can only assume is one in a growing series of conspiracies against me, I couldn’t get any video players to work without brutal lag time. Everywhere.

What’s that? You’re so fascinated by this story you want some details? Well ok…

1) CNN/Facebook: The first station on this whistlestop tour. CNN was broadcasting along side facebook statuses that were updating as the inauguration went along. A cool idea, but unfortunately my computer didn’t think I should have the octoplayer plugin installed, so it never did. I figured maybe I should try a major network so I went to…

2) NBC: I was able to watch a good chunk of it here. The problem was as I went further into the coverage the lag would increase with it. The jumps and hiccups became too much, so I ventured on to…

3) CBS: Pretty much the same experience as above. Kudos to NBC and CBS for doing the best they could, there was just to much traffic for the stream to work well. Ultimately a little disappointing given these are major networks, but that is a lot of people trying to watch. Hence I decided to visit…

4) Fox News: Follow my logic progression here. News outlets are lagging because of the crazy traffic trying to watch this thing. Fox News is known as a conservative news network. This is an inauguration for a Democratic president. Ergo, Fox News won’t have a lot of people on the site which means less lag (ya know, since less people will be clogging the internet tubes). Amazingly this site was the worst. I not only couldn’t get video but the audio I was getting was lagging too. My guess is either they weren’t expecting a lot of traffic either or my comp was just acting wonky. Or it was a huge conspiracy by the Fox Network to not broadcast the liberal events. But that doesn’t make much sense. With almost all hope lost I decide to…

5) Try CNN.com again but using Safari: It still got a big ol’ FAIL but here is what is interesting about it. The first time I visited there I was in Firefox and auto-logged in to Facebook so any of my friends’ status updates were posted. Most of them were “Yay!” or or “watching at work ” or “history was just born right in front of my face”. However, Safari doesn’t know me so I just got anyone’s status update when I was in the CNN viewer. No censorship or filter, any facebook status update was broadcast to my player. It was a really interesting dichotomy. All of a sudden there were some opinions from the other side who were concerned about taxes, experience, and many of the other common criticisms of Obama. Of course, they were in Facebook status form so they weren’t exactly eloquent but it served as a healthy reminder that we live in a country with diverse perspectives and that while some of us are celebrating, there is another chunk who still goes into this next presidency with trepidation and fear.

I blacked out after having that moment of enlightenment (ironic). When I came to I still hadn’t found a way to watch the Obamauguration (I am gonna copyright that) but after doing some business related work I wondered when MLB opening day was. I went to mlb.com. When I got there my face went like this —-> :-O

MLB.com was providing live coverage of the inauguration. At first I thought “wow. This seems ridiculous.” But then I realized that if you have a video player, why not broadcast the inauguration? Add in the fact that their bandwidth is equipped to broadcast several live games all at once and you magically have a website with awesome streaming video. Not only did they do inauguration coverage but also discussed at length the relationship between baseball and the presidency, which was really interesting.

My favorite part was the news crawl for the broadcast. I actually laughed at the “important” news stories they had flashing at the bottom of the screen. No depressing stories about wars or the economy. It was vital information such as the latest on the contracts of Nick Markakis and Jonathan Broxton. I mean, just look at that optimistic, happy window trying to sling jerseys and renewing hope that Omar Vizquel will be playing next year.

Now this is news I can get behind.

Thank you, MLB.com. Our country owes you a huge debt of gratitude.