Richard Sandomir wrote in The New York Times Friday about a reported deal between DirecTV and Major League Baseball for exclusive carriage of the Extra Innings PPV package (“Extra Innings Throws a Curve, and Fans Cry Foul”). There has been no announcement from MLB or DirecTV, and cable companies are continuing to negotiate with MLB to retain the carriage rights they’ve held since 2002. Assuming the reported deal is true, fans are understandably irate that that MLB would rip the games away from a cable audience that’s more than five times the size of DirecTV’s subscriber base. From Sandomir’s NYT piece:

[Yankees fan Jeanette] Bottone is part of the resentment expressed on fan forums, blogs and inside my e-mail inbox against a pending seven-year, $700 million deal that would shift Extra Innings this season into an exclusive arrangement with DirecTV after five seasons of being available to 75 million cable, DirecTV and Dish homes. A writer on the Cards Fan Union blog said, “I feel as though I’ve just had my teeth worked on with a drill that entered my body through my big toe.” On the umpbump.com fan site, a screed against the deal was titled, “MLB Only Needs 700 Million Reasons to Tell You to Drop Dead."