Very funny: TBS strikes out on biggest stage.

Not quite Heidi, not quite the Preakness, and not quite FOX cutting away to NASCAR right before the final out, but still an epic embarrassment for Turner Sports.

The TBS broadcast of Game 6 of the 2008 American League Championship Series was delayed until 8:28 PM Saturday night due to technical difficulties. Viewers missed the first twenty minutes of the game, including a B.J. Upton home run.

The techinical difficulties began at approximately 7:55 PM, “just prior to the studio show throwing it over to Tampa to the broadcast crew for the game.” Instead of baseball, viewers were treated to Dick Clark’s Bloopers and Practical Jokes and an episode of The Steve Harvey Show.

In a statement, TBS explained the minor catastrophe.

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.

The Boston Globe paraphrases TBS Director of PR Jeff Pomeroy: “[T]he failure of the routers was unprecedented and prevented TBS from broadcasting a live message of any kind, including an informational scrawl at the bottom of the screen.” Quoting Pomeroy directly: “It’s never happened before.”

Imagine having unprecedented technical difficulties at the start of the biggest baseball game in the history of the network. Someone should call the TBS Funny Hotline to see whether this warrants a loud guffaw or mild chuckle.