For most people the baseball off-season is a much-needed break from the grind of a 162-game season, a breather away from our six-month-long national pastime, a time for teams to refocus and rebuild for next season, which seems so very far away. But the truth of the matter is that opening day 2015 will be here before you know it and if the seemingly endless dispute between Time Warner Cable (TWC) and DirecTV is not resolved before April 6, 2015, it could spell disaster for the Dodgers.

Although the actual numbers have not and will most likely never be revealed, it’s hard to believe that Honda, Jack in the Box, Lexus, Chevrolet and the other companies that undoubtedly spent a great deal of money to advertise on Time Warner Cable’s SportsNet LA (SNLA) are pleased with the return on their investment when an estimated 70% of the Dodgers television viewing audience never saw their ads this past season because of the yearlong TWC/DirecTV dispute.

One has to believe that major commercial sponsors are going to be reluctant to spend big bucks with SportsNet LA if their dispute with DirecTV isn’t soon resolved. (Video capture courtesy of SportsNet LA)

This is simple economics at work here – commercial sponsors pay Time Warner Cable to air their ads and Time Warner Cable pays the Dodgers a guaranteed $8.5 billion (with a “b”) over the next 24 years. That’s roughly $1.5 million PER GAME.

Simply put, if TWC isn’t making money off of SNLA, how can they continue to pay that kind of money to Guggenheim Baseball Management group – aka: the Dodgers? It’s not ticket sales, parking fees or the number of Dodger Dogs sold that pay Kershaw, AGon, Kemp, Greinke, Crawford, Ryu and Puig their multi-million dollar salaries, it’s the Dodgers television rights deal with Time Warner Cable that does.

It is hard to believe that the dispute between TWC and DirecTV will continue into a second season, but it most certainly could – and that could prove disastrous for everybody involved in this mess. And while TWC has no choice but to charge DirecTV a fee to carry their 24/7/365 All Dodgers All The Time SNLA programming (to help defray the cost of that $8.5 million contract), it is DirecTV that is trying to come across as the good guy by saying that they refuse to charge their subscribers an increased fee to air Dodger games.

I’d be willing to bet that most Dodger fan/DirecTV subscribers would gladly pay a few extra bucks a month to watch every Dodger game and listen to Hall of Fame broadcaster Vin Scully call every home game. Even during the off-season SportsNet LA is still All Dodgers All The Time. If there are DirecTV subscribers who don’t want SportsNet LA, give them the option to decline it without charge. Where is the difficulty here? And if DirecTV forces every LA-based DirecTV subscriber to buy the SNLA package then they are anything but the good guy in this dispute.

And then there’s KDOC – the local television channel that aired the final six regular season Dodgers home games free of charge throughout Southern California – even for those with DirecTV. Preliminary ratings showed that KDOC’s telecast of the September 22 extra-inning game against the hated Giants generated a 3.47 household rating in Los Angeles, and a 6 share. In contrast, that same game aired on SportsNet LA received only a 1.12 household rating and a 2 share. In layman’s terms this means that KDOC drew three times as many viewers than SportsNet LA did.

It’s highly unlikely that Time Warner Cable will allow KDOC to continue this practice for all or even part of the 2015 season, but it showed just how badly Dodger fans miss their beloved team on TV – and if this didn’t send a clear message to DirecTV, nothing will.

The point to all of this is that this multi-million dollar high-stakes silliness of holding Dodger fans hostage needs to be resolved right here and right now during the off-season. If it is put off until spring (or later) a win-win situation will become a lose-lose situation for everyone.

Come on guys – do the right thing here.