There aren't many worse ways for a business to treat its customers than to restrict access to its product. This seems like basic economics, and basic marketing, and basic public relations, but it's not basic when it comes to Major League Baseball. When it comes to the custodians of that kind of product, the customer is not always right.

In fact, the customer -- the customer lining up with money in his hand, mind you -- is irrelevant.

And when it comes to MLB's apparently inevitable decision to sign an exclusive deal with DirecTV to carry its Extra Innings package -- and thereby deny access to the product to 70 million current and potential customers -- calling the paying customer "irrelevant" is the nicest possible phrasing.

For $700 million over seven years, MLB is willing to give DirecTV exclusivity. This will take the games off a basic cable package and force fans who want to continue watching nearly every game every night to purchase DirecTV. It's an incredibly horrendous business decision.

I confess to taking this personally. I bought the package for the first time last year from my friendly local cable operator and immediately lost interest in the rest of my life. That's only a minor exaggeration; having the ability to surf through to find the best game every night, not tied to the fortunes of the local teams -- I mean, what else is there? Sitting there on a warm summer night, watching the last out of a game in San Diego and then quickly switching to Los Angeles to catch the final six or seven outs of the Dodgers game -- I'm not sure I can go on without it.

(Oh, and it had the added bonus, boss, of allowing me to do practical research on players I needed to profile for The Magazine.)

But that's over. Tough luck for me and a lot of others, including a lot of elderly people who love baseball, can't get to games and might not have the benefit of a south-facing roof.

As many others, most eloquently King Kaufman on Salon.com and Sen. John Kerry, have pointed out, what does MLB care? The bean-arrangers in the business office don't give a damn that I sit there with my four baseball-mad sons and talk about everyone from Tampa Bay to Seattle. They don't give a damn about the old guy in the retirement home who makes his way through the day with a ballgame as his companion.

For 700 million scoots over seven years, why would they care about such minutiae?

They don't care because they employ a simple law, the one that says if you got 'em by the gray hairs, you'll have 'em forever. What am I going to do, hate baseball? Stop watching the games I do get to protest those I don't?

That won't happen, and they know that.

So there.

This week's list

• And why should he? The man's got DirecTV: Bud Selig said he isn't going to go out of his way to be in attendance when Barry Bonds breaks Hank Aaron's home run mark.

• Party at A.J. Smith's house! Marty Schottenheimer, fired.

• Dateline Tuscaloosa: Nick Saban would like to report, before you even ask, that Nick Saban is not even remotely interested in the job as head football coach of the San Diego Chargers.

• A question with no bad answer: The great college basketball debate -- Oden or Durant?

• Add this to the list of sports events that are officially out of control: College football letter of intent day.

• Just for the heck of it: Olden Polynice.

• The good news is, Vegas has 'em at 1-1 odds to win the NIT: Duke is out of the Top 25 rankings.

• Details, details -- get out of here with your details: UCLA goes to Morgantown, W.Va., for an early morning game -- Pacific time, anyway -- in the middle of the Pac-10 season without its starting point guard and we're supposed to believe it's a major upset?

• This year's college basketball passing-a-stone look goes to: Sean Sutton.

• A guy worth rooting for: Red Sox pitcher Jon Lester, reporting for camp.

• Hey, Sean Taylor, two things: 1) that was the Pro Bowl, and; 2) that was a punter.

• If you've ever been in an NBA discussion and asked, "I wonder whatever happened to (obscure player's name here)," I've got your answer: Whoever he is, he's playing for the Atlanta Hawks.

• One day you're Cinderella, the next you're the Cincinnati Bengals: A couple of guys allegedly drive around with pot and mushrooms, and suddenly Gonzaga is no longer viewed as the sweet little underdog.

• And finally, he also thinks he might be the father of Anna Nicole's baby because he saw Anna once on TV: On the topic of John Amaechi's coming out, 76er Shavlik Randolph professed to be fine with sharing a locker room with a homosexual teammate, "as long as you don't bring your gayness on me, I'm fine."

Tim Keown is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. Sound off to Page 2 here.