Recorded Sports

Every fall the FP Gal and I go through at least one moment of tension when I want to be home in time for a game to start and she's upset with me because the DVR will record it. Her point is that I can still see it, so I should just be patient and wait. My point? Well, it's different when it is recorded. It just is.
You don't find that compelling? Then read this article here listing reasons why the recorded experience just isn't the same. Excerpt:

1. The removal of commercials erodes drama: If I record a sporting event, there's no way I'm sitting through the commercials. That would be like volunteering for a DUI. One of the central pleasures of self-recorded TV is eliminating our forced exposure to advertising. Yet this is probably an error, at least when consuming sports. It's during those moments when nothing is happening that the drama of a game becomes most palpable; this is why static sports like baseball and golf generally feel more gut-wrenching than fluid sports like soccer and hockey. By purposefully skipping all the game breaks, I'm inadvertently skipping the gaps that manufacture tension. I should probably just sit through every commercial and let the tension build. But I'll never do that, because that would make me an idiot.

By the way, this is completely true. Football especially has a rhythm that is build up with the time between plays. Take out those few seconds and the game is entirely different and exhausting. The commercial time adds to this, though not as perfectly. (On the other hand, I'm very happy to fast forward through the half-time show. The twelve minute break can be well used to get food or something but usually it's just too long. And Bog save us from various network attempts to entertain us during that time. Yes NBC, I'm looking at you.)
My feeling with baseball is a little different here. My MLB.tv subscription has been largely used in letting me watch games the next morning. I don't wait on the results and I skip the bad losses but I watch most of the games this way. Of course, baseball games aren't nearly as important on a game by game basis. It's more the dailiness of them that counts.
So what am I saying? Yes, it matters if it's live. It just does.