A new baseball season, a new commissioner … and the same-old hustle being perpetrated upon baseball fans in Hawaii.

Bud Selig is gone, but one of the more lamentable legacies of his tenure, the infernal TV blackout of some West Coast teams, endures here.

For the seventh consecutive season Major League Baseball is back to pulling the plug on dozens of games.

What makes the whole thing more egregious is that while the NFL last month announced an enlightened end to its 40-year blackout policy for the 2015 season, baseball has dug in at the plate.

The Federal Communications Commission announced seven months ago it was no longer reinforcing sports TV blackouts. But just when a new day seemed to be dawning and a new face, Rob Manfred, appeared in the commissioner’s office, MLB is continuing to stubbornly cling to its "home territory" scheme, the manner in which teams and some cable and satellite operators partition broadcast areas.

Under it, teams can declare whole states as part of their territorial sphere no matter how geographically distant or how much fans there might protest.

That’s how Hawaii wound up being home for the San Francisco Giants, Oakland A’s, Los Angeles Dodgers, Angels, San Diego Padres and Seattle Mariners.

How the Toronto Blue Jays missed out on the gravy train remains a mystery. But the Mariners, in recent seasons, have at least seen fit to issue waivers.

By staking a claim to Hawaii, teams can force their fans here — or the local cable systems — to shell out for specific packages involving the designated regional network of each club, buy DirecTV or endure blackouts. MLB even blacks out in-market games on Extra Innings and MLB.TV, if you happen to reside in a team’s broadcast territory.

MLB and club officials maintain that TV rights holders pay their teams for geographic exclusivity and they are required to protect their TV partners.

The 50th State isn’t the only one being hijacked. Howard Driver, a Philadelphia attorney handling a class action suit on behalf of fans, cites Hawaii, Nevada and Iowa, all claimed by four or more teams, as the most flagrant examples of the territorial grab.

But ours is the only state where fans can’t jump in a car or hop on a bus to get to an MLB game.

As Phil Kinnicutt of Kailua writes, "My favorite example of how absolutely nonsensical it can get is what happens when the A’s play the Red Sox at Fenway Park in Boston (and) the games are blacked out in Hawaii."

Jim Loomis notes that sometimes even "rebroadcasts" of Red Sox games involving West Coast teams are blacked out.

With the Dodgers and Padres having their own channels, the situation is easing for some fans. Though, curiously in Southern California, a majority of fans can’t get Dodgers games.

But if you are a follower of the Giants, who have won three of the past five World Series, that’s not much comfort even with KITV jumping in to offer a 15-game package of Giants games on its MeTV beginning April 22.

It is a new season, but MLB is running the same old greedy squeeze play.

Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.