Another man's opinion, but I'll have cable as long as that's where sports are. The fact that I can't watch baseball on my Boxee/AppleTV/ETC means it's not the only set top box I'm going to use. I'd happily pay a good amount for it, like MLB.tv (which is great if you don't like the home team), but there's just not a way for me to do that currently.
I agree, but local TV and radio stations keep online services from streaming sports events to people in that area.
Also, sports is somewhat unique in that the value is all in seeing it live. Personally speaking, once I know the final score of a game, watching a replay of it is worthless. Highlights are one thing, but watching the entire game when you already know who wins, makes no sense to me.
The NFL is at least mostly on OTA broadcasts that can be picked up well with a cheap antenna. There are only a few OTA broadcast baseball games with my team per season (when it's the Fox Saturday Baseball game). All the others are on a regional sports network, Sun Sports. They're in HD and look great, but cable/satellite is the only way to get them.
