Sports fans will generally allow networks to get away with any number of things. Among them: Strange start times, egotastic announcers and commercials that never seem to end.

But the one thing fans cannot — and should not — forgive is a broadcast that doesn't start on time because of technical difficulties.

Unfortunately, that's what TBS just did to every baseball fan across the nation, allowing a glitch to prevent fans from seeing the start of Game 6 of the ALCS between the Red Sox and Rays. Instead of seeing B.J. Upton's first-inning blast off Josh Beckett or Coco Crisp being picked off of first, they found a repeat of the Steve Harvey Show instead.  MLB.com reported that a "router failure" was at the root of the problem. 

This goes without saying, but that's absolutely inexcusable during any postseason game, let alone a potentially decisive game that's finally starting to capture some imaginations. Maybe Bud Selig will finally figure out why people criticize him for putting his postseason games on a cable channel.

UPDATE — TBS has released the following statement:

"Two circuit breakers in our Atlanta transmission operations tripped causing the master router and its backup — which are necessary to transmit any incoming feed outbound — to shut down. This impacted our live feed from being distributed to any of the other networks in the Turner portfolio and caused the delay in our coverage. Both our primary and backup routers were impacted by this problem. We apologize to baseball fans for this mishap that caused a delay in our coverage."

For more Big League Stew posts from the Rays-Red Sox series, click here.

Related: 2008 MLB playoffs, 2008 ALCS - Red Sox vs. Rays