The first
night game in Major League Baseball history occurred on May 24, 1935, when the
Cincinnati Reds beat the
Philadelphia Phillies 2–1 at
Crosley Field.[1] The original plan was that the Reds would play seven night games each season, one against each visiting club.[2] Night baseball quickly found acceptance in other Major League cities and eventually became the norm; the term "day game" was subsequently coined to designate the increasingly rarer afternoon contests.
Monday Night Baseball was born on October 19, 1966, when
NBC signed a three-year contract to televise the game. Under the deal, NBC paid roughly
$6 million per year for the 25 Games of the Week, $6.1 million for the
1967 World Series and
1967 All-Star Game, and $6.5 million for the
1968 World Series and
1968 All-Star Game. This brought the total value of the contract (which included three Monday night telecasts each season) up to $30.6 million.
The last non-expansion/non-relocated team to play all their home games in the daytime were the
Chicago Cubs; they played their first official night game in
Wrigley Field on August 9, 1988, and beat the
New York Mets 6–4, one night after their initial attempt at night baseball (against the
Philadelphia Phillies) was rained out before it became official.[3] The Cubs still play the fewest home night games of any major league club (35 per season, as of 2014).
Starting with the
2022 season,
TBS' weekly games were moved from
Sunday afternoons to
Tuesday nights. The Tuesday night program was expected to include a 30-minute studio show before and after each game.[12]
In 2010, Jon Miller and Joe Morgan began their 21st consecutive season working together for ESPN. Among U.S. network television sportscasters, only
Pat Summerall and
John Madden (who called
NFL games for
CBS and
Fox from
1981 to
2001) have had a similar length partnership in the booth. Following the 2010 season, ESPN announced that the television contracts of Miller and Morgan would not be renewed.[16] Miller was offered, but chose to decline, a continued role with ESPN Radio.[17]
Play-by-play announcer
Dan Shulman joined color commentators Orel Hershiser and
Bobby Valentine as the new Sunday Night Baseball crew beginning in
2011.[19] In an essential trade deal, following the hiring of Valentine as the
Boston Red Sox manager, his predecessor
Terry Francona was hired to join Shulman and Hershiser for the 2012 season.[20] Francona stayed with ESPN for only one season before he was hired by the
Cleveland Indians to be their manager for the
2013 season. Francona was replaced by
John Kruk, who had been part of the Baseball Tonight team since 2004. Like Miller and Morgan before them, Shulman and Hershiser also formed the lead team on ESPN Radio's
World Series coverage. Prior to the
2014 season, Hershiser left ESPN to become an analyst for the Dodgers on
SportsNet LA, and was replaced by
Curt Schilling; however, Schilling's subsequent diagnosis of and treatment for an undisclosed form of
cancer led to his being unavailable to ESPN for most of the season.[21] Shulman and Kruk worked as a two-man booth until Schilling joined them in September.[22]
In
2012, Fox would revive the Baseball Night in America title (previously used for The Baseball Network's games) for a series of Saturday night games.[24] Unlike The Baseball Network, Fox did not carry every game that was scheduled for a given Saturday, only choosing five to six games to distribute to its
affiliates.
On August 30, 2015, former softball player Jessica Mendoza joined the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast team as a color commentator. For the
2016 MLB season, former Yankees player Aaron Boone joined Shulman and Mendoza in the broadcast booth as the second color commentator for SNB. Shulman stepped down at the conclusion of the
2017 season,[25] while Boone left the booth after being named new
Yankees manager.[26]
On July 8, 2016, NHL on NBC broadcaster
Mike Emrick called his first MLB regular-season game at
PNC Park when the
Pirates hosted the
Chicago Cubs for MLB Network with
Bob Costas. The Pirates won the game, 8–4, with Emrick calling some of the action.
On January 23, 2018, ESPN announced that
Alex Rodriguez and
Matt Vasgersian would join the SNB crew for the 2018 season as analyst and play-by-play respectively.[27]
In 2000, as part of an exclusive contract Fox signed with MLB, that coverage passed to
Fox Family Channel and was reduced to one game per week. After the 2000 season, Fox also gained rights to the entire postseason and moved a large portion of its Division Series coverage to Fox Family. This lasted for one season due to
The Walt Disney Company making a bid for Fox Family. As part of the negotiations Fox Family was renamed
ABC Family and
ESPN gained the rights to Fox Family and FX's MLB coverage, although the 2002 Division Series aired on ABC Family due to contractual issues, but with ESPN production, a sign of things to come at
ABC Sports. Control of the overall contract remained with Fox, meaning they could renegotiate following the 2006 season and not allow ESPN to retain its postseason coverage. For the 2007 season, Fox did exactly that, and
TBS is now the cable home of the postseason as part of its
new baseball contract.
For the 2000 and 2001 seasons, the Fox network's then-sister cable channel, Fox Family (later ABC Family, now
Freeform) carried a weekly Major League Baseball game on
Thursday nights (a game that had previously aired nationwide on
Fox Sports Net from 1997 to 1999), as well as select postseason games from the
Division Series. Among the noteworthy games that aired on Fox Family was the October 4, 2001, game between the
San Francisco Giants and the
Houston Astros, during which
Barry Bonds hit his 70th
home run of the season, which tied the all-time single season record that
Mark McGwire had set only
three years earlier (Bonds broke the record the next night). Meanwhile, the Fox Broadcasting Company's other sister cable channel
FX, aired numerous Saturday night Major League Baseball contests in 2001, including
Cal Ripken Jr.'s final game at
Camden Yards. FX also aired one game in the Major League Baseball postseason each year from 2001 to 2005, on the first Wednesday night of
League Championship Series week when the league scheduled two games at the same time. On that night, Fox distributed one game to local affiliates with the availability of coverage being based on region, and the other game aired on the corresponding
cable affiliate of FX, the main
DirecTV or
Dish Network channel, or an alternate channel on the
satellite providers.
As part of its 2001 purchase of Fox Family, in addition to rights to the Thursday night game,
The Walt Disney Company acquired the MLB rights that were also held by FX. Those two game packages were moved to
ESPN beginning with the
2002 baseball season; however, the playoff games remained on ABC Family for one additional year due to contractual issues. A deal was reached to move those playoff games to ESPN, which produced the games for ABC Family, starting with the
2003 season. Although the games aired on networks owned by Disney, Fox kept the exclusive negotiation rights to renew the contract after the
2006 season. Fox chose not to renew its rights to the Division Series, which went to
TBS as part of its
new baseball contract.
From
2000 to
2005, ESPN's
Wednesday night broadcasts consisted of a doubleheader, usually airing the first game at 7pm ET on ESPN and the second at 10pm ET on ESPN2. The second part of the doubleheader was discontinued after 2005 season.
ESPN Thursday Night Baseball aired on either
ESPN or
ESPN2 from 2003 to 2006 and featured one game per week. It aired every Thursday at either 1 p.m. ET, 7 p.m. ET, 7:30 p.m. ET or 8:00 ET.
Castrol served as the presenting sponsor for the telecasts. The play-by-play commentator was
Chris Berman along with either
Joe Morgan or
Eric Karros as color commentator. In 2006,
Duke Castiglione joined the broadcast as the field reporter. ESPN Thursday Night Baseball was discontinued after the 2006 season because the broadcast rights to the package were lost to
TBS. TBS shows the games on Sunday afternoons that
ESPN previously aired on Thursday nights. The games were then moved to ESPN and ESPN2. Thursday Night Baseball was replaced with MLS Primetime Thursday.[28]
On April 9, 2009,
MLB Network aired its first ever self-produced live baseball telecast. The network typically produces 26 non-exclusive live games a year during the regular season. And since one or both teams'
local TV rights holders also carry the games, the MLB Network feed is subject to
local blackouts. In that event, the cities in the blacked-out markets will instead see a
simulcast of another scheduled game via one team's local TV rights holder.
Longtime
NBC Sports broadcaster
Bob Costas is one of the
play-by-play voices of the broadcasts.[29]Matt Vasgersian also does play-by-play on some games.
Jim Kaat,
John Smoltz, and
Tom Verducci provide
color commentary.[30] The network produces 26 non-exclusive live games a year during baseball season and since 2012 two League Division Series games. Since one or both teams'
local TV rights holders also carry the games, the MLB Network feed is subject to
local blackouts. In that event, the cities in the blacked-out markets will instead see a
simulcast of another scheduled game via one team's local TV rights holder. MLB Network Showcase typically airs on Tuesday,
Thursday or Friday nights.
On January 5, 1989,
Major League Baseball signed a
$400 million deal with
ESPN, who would show over 175 games beginning in
1990. For the next four years, ESPN would televise six games a week (Sunday Night Baseball, Wednesday Night Baseball and
doubleheaders on Tuesdays and Fridays), as well as multiple games on
Opening Day,
Memorial Day,
Independence Day, and
Labor Day. Unlike ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball, Monday Night Baseball is not exclusive, but unlike Wednesday Night Baseball, Monday Night Baseball since 2007 co-exists with the local markets' carriers and is not always subject to blackout; ESPN can show teams up to three times a year in local markets alongside the local broadcasts.
For CBS' coverage of the
1991 All-Star Game from
Toronto, CBS started their broadcast at the top of the hour with the customary pregame coverage. And then, because
American PresidentGeorge H.W. Bush and
Canadian Prime MinisterBrian Mulroney were throwing out the first ball, there was a slight delay from the 8:30 p.m.
EDT start. The game eventually started about 15–20 minutes late. Presumably this, along with CBS' low ratings for baseball, and the costs of doing pregame coverage, led to them starting the prime time broadcasts at 8:30 for the final two years of the contract, with little or no pregame content.
In
1991,
CBS didn't come on the air for baseball for weeknight LCS telecasts until 8:30 p.m.
ET. Instead, they opted to show programming such as Rescue 911 at 8 p.m. rather than a baseball pregame show.[32]
As CBS' baseball coverage[33][34][35][36] progressed, the network dropped its 8:00 p.m. pregame coverage[37] (in favor of airing
sitcoms such as Evening Shade), before finally starting their coverage at 8:30 p.m.
Eastern Time. The first pitch would generally arrive at approximately 8:45 p.m. Perhaps as a result,
Joe Carter's
World Series clinching
home run off
Mitch Williams in 1993, occurred at 12 a.m. on the
East Coast.
In 1994, ABC and NBC began a package[38] included coverage of games in
prime time[39] on selected nights throughout the regular season (under the branding Baseball Night in America),[40] along with coverage of the
postseason and the
World Series.[41] Unlike previous broadcasting arrangements with the league, there was no national "
game of the week"[42] during the regular season;[43] these would be replaced by multiple weekly regional[44] telecasts on certain nights of the week. Additionally, The Baseball Network had exclusive coverage windows; no other broadcaster could televise MLB games during the same night that The Baseball Network was televising games.
After the All-Star Game was complete,[45] ABC took over coverage with what was to be their weekly slate of games.[46] ABC was scheduled to televise six[47] regular season games on Saturdays[48] or Mondays[49] in
prime time. NBC[50][51] would then pick up where ABC left off by televising six more regular season Friday night[52][53] games. Every Baseball Night in America game was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m.
Eastern Time (or 8 p.m.
Pacific Time if the game occurred on the
West Coast[54]). A single starting time gave the networks the opportunity to broadcast one game and then, simultaneously, cut to another game when there was a break in action.
The networks had exclusive rights for the twelve regular season dates, in that no regional or national cable service (such as
ESPN or
superstations like
Chicago's
WGN-TV[55] or
Atlanta's
WTBS) or over-the-air[56] broadcaster was allowed[57] to telecast a Major League Baseball game on those dates. Baseball Night in America[58] (which premiered[59] on July 16, 1994) usually aired up to fourteen games[60] based on the viewers' region (affiliates chose games of local interest to carry) as opposed to a traditional coast-to-coast format.[61] Normally, announcers who represented each of the teams playing in the respective games were paired with each other. More specifically, on regional Saturday night broadcasts and all non-"national" broadcasts, TBN let the two lead announcers from the opposing teams call the games involving their teams together.
Games involving either of the two Canadian-based MLB teams at the time, the
Toronto Blue Jays and
Montreal Expos, were not always included in the Baseball Night in America package. Canadian rightsholders were allowed to broadcast the games. When
TSN (which owned the cable rights to the Blue Jays and Expos) covered the games in Canada, they re-broadcast the BNIA feed across their network. Typically, if the Blue Jays were idle for the day, the Expos would be featured on TSN. Also,
CBET (the
CBC affiliate in
Windsor, Ontario) would air Blue Jays games if the
Detroit Tigers were not playing at home that night or if the Blue Jays were scheduled to play in Detroit. Whether or not the game would air in the opposing team's market would depend on which time zone they were from, or if they shared a market with another team.
All of the 1994 games aired on ABC; due to the strike[62][63] NBC was unable[64] to air its slate of games, which were supposed to begin on August 26.[65][66]
From
1996-
2000,
NBC aired LDS games on Tuesday/Friday/Saturday nights.
Fox aired LDS games on Wednesday/Thursday nights, Saturdays in the late afternoon, plus Sunday/Monday nights (if necessary). Meanwhile,
ESPN carried many afternoon LDS contests. At this point, all playoff games were nationally televised (mostly in unopposed timeslots).
In 1997, as part of the contract with Major League Baseball it had signed the year before,
Fox gained an additional outlet for its coverage. Its recently launched cable sports network,
Fox Sports Net, was given rights to two Thursday night games per week, one for the Eastern and Central time zones and one for the Mountain and Pacific time zones.
As part of its coverage of
Mark McGwire's bid to break
Roger Maris's single-season home run record in 1998, Fox aired a Sunday afternoon game between the
Cincinnati Reds and
St. Louis Cardinals on September 6 and a Tuesday night game between the
Chicago Cubs and the Cardinals on September 8 of that year (McGwire hit his record-breaking 62nd home run of the season in the latter game, which earned a 14.5 rating share for Fox, and remains the network's highest-rated regular season Major League Baseball telecast to this day).
USA's coverage became a casualty of the new $1.2 billion TV contract between Major League Baseball, ABC and NBC beginning in 1984 and lasting through 1989. One of the provisions to the new deal was that local telecasts opposite network games had to be eliminated.[67]
NBC also would normally television two
prime time games during the regular season (not including All-Star Games). Generally, NBC would broadcast one game on a Tuesday and the other on a Friday. They however, would have to compete against local teams'
over-the-air broadcasts, putting NBC at risk of hampering its ratings.
Had the
1984 ALCS between the
Detroit Tigers and
Kansas City Royals gone the full five games (the last year that the League Championship Series was a best-of-five series), Game 5 on Sunday October 7, would have been a 1 p.m.
ET time start instead of being in
prime time. This would have happened because one of the
presidential debates between
Ronald Reagan and
Walter Mondale was scheduled for that night. In return,
ABC was going to broadcast the debates instead of a baseball game in prime time.
Al Trautwig[74] interviewed the Detroit Tigers from their clubhouse following their pennant clinching victory in Game 3.
Game 5 of the 1984 World Series at
Detroit's
Tiger Stadium had a starting time of 4:45 p.m.
ET, following a 1:30 p.m. start for Game 4. These were the last outdoor World Series games to start earlier than
prime time in the eastern United States (Game 6 in
1987, the last daytime World Series contest, was indoors at the
Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in
Minneapolis).
On Thursday, October 10, 1985, NBC didn't come on the air for Game 2[75] of the
NLCS until 8:30 p.m.
ET to avoid disrupting The Cosby Show at 8 (similarly to how the network aired the soap opera Return to Peyton Place, before Game 5 of the
1972 World Series, rather than a pre-game show).[76] NBC would do the same thing for Thursday night games in subsequent postseasons.
In
1985, ABC announced that every game of the World Series would be played under the lights for the biggest baseball audience possible.
By
1986, ABC only televised 13 Monday Night Baseball games. This was a fairly sharp contrast to the 18 games to that were scheduled in
1978. Going into
1987, ABC had reportedly purchased 20 Monday night games but only used eight of those slots.
NBC's broadcast of Game 7 of the 1986 World Series (which went up against a Monday Night Football game between the
Washington Redskins and
New York Giants on ABC) garnered a
Nielsen rating of 38.9 and a 55 share, making it the highest-
rated single World Series game to date. Game 7 had been scheduled for Sunday, but a rain-out forced the game to Monday. NBC's telecast of the Series ended with the song "Limelight" from Stereotomy, penultimate album of
The Alan Parsons Project.
Although Al Michaels, Jim Palmer and Tim McCarver had done the 1985 and 1987 World Series together as well as the 1986 All-Star Game, ABC did not team them on a regular basis on Monday Night Baseball until
1988 (after three 'experiments' in
1987).
ABC's coverage of Game 2[77] of the
1988 NLCS[78] didn't start until 10 p.m. ET due to a
presidential debate. This is the latest ever scheduled start for an LCS game.
Game 6 of the
1988 World Series, was scheduled to start at 5 p.m. ET on Saturday, October 22, but that game wasn't necessary. This is the last time a World Series game was scheduled outside of prime time.
Game 3 of the
1989 World Series (initially scheduled for October 17) was delayed by 10 days due to the
Loma Prieta earthquake. The earthquake struck at approximately 5:04 p.m.
Pacific Time. After about a 15-minute delay (
ABC aired a rerun of Roseanne and subsequently, The Wonder Years in the meantime), ABC was able to regain power via a backup generator.
On October 13, 1971, the
World Series held a night game for the very first time.[86] Commissioner
Bowie Kuhn, who felt that baseball could attract a larger audience by featuring a prime time telecast (as opposed to a mid-afternoon broadcast, occurring when most fans either worked or attended school), pitched the idea to NBC. An estimated 61 million people watched Game 4 on NBC; television
ratings for a World Series game during the daytime hours would not have approached such a record number.
For World Series night games, NBC normally began baseball coverage at 8:00 p.m.
Eastern Time with a
pre-game show (with first pitch occurring around 8:20 to 8:25 p.m.). However, in
1986 and
1988, for Game 5 of the World Series (on Thursday night), NBC's coverage did not begin until 8:30. This allowed the network to air its highly rated sitcom The Cosby Show in its normal Thursday 8:00 p.m. timeslot. NBC went with carrying a very short pre-game show and got to first pitch at around 8:40 p.m. Eastern Time.
In 1972,[87] NBC began televising prime time regular-season games on Mondays, under a four-year contract worth $72 million. In 1973, NBC extended the
Monday night telecasts (with a local
blackout) to 15 consecutive games. NBC's last Monday Night Baseball game aired on September 1, 1975, in which the
Montréal Expos beat the
Philadelphia Phillies, 6–5. Curt Gowdy called the games with Tony Kubek from 1972 to 1974, being joined in the 1973 and 1974 seasons by various guest commentators from both within and outside of the baseball world (among them Dizzy Dean,
Joe DiMaggio,
Satchel Paige,
Bobby Riggs,
Dave DeBusschere,
Howard Cosell, Mel Allen,
Danny Kaye and
Willie Mays).
Jim Simpson and
Maury Wills called the secondary backup games. Joe Garagiola hosted the pre-game show, The Baseball World of Joe Garagiola, and teamed with Gowdy to call the games in 1975.
During NBC's telecast of the Monday night
Dodgers–
Braves game on April 8, 1974, in which
Hank Aaron hit his record-breaking 715th career home run,[88] Kubek criticized Commissioner
Bowie Kuhn on-air for failing to be in attendance at
Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta on that historic night; Kuhn argued that he had a prior engagement that he could not break.
Starting in 1975, Joe Garagiola and Curt Gowdy alternated as the Saturday Game of Week play-by-play announcers with Tony Kubek doing color analysis. Then on weeks in which NBC had Monday Night Baseball, Gowdy and Garagiola worked together. One would call play-by-play for 4½ innings, the other would handle color analysis. Then in the bottom of the 5th inning, their roles switched.
In
1976, ABC picked up the television rights[89] for Monday Night Baseball[90] games from
NBC. For most of its time on ABC, the Monday night games were held on "dead travel days" when few games were scheduled. The team owners liked that arrangement as the national telecasts didn't compete against their stadium box offices. ABC on the other hand, found the arrangement far more complicated. ABC often had only one or two games to pick from for each telecast from a schedule designed by Major League Baseball. While trying to give all of the teams national exposure, ABC ended up with far too many games between sub .500 clubs from small markets.
For Game 2 of the
1976 World Series, NBC and Major League Baseball experimented with a Sunday night telecast.
In
1979, the start of ABC's Monday Night Baseball coverage was moved back to June, due to poor ratings during the May
sweeps period. In place of April and May prime time games, ABC began airing Sunday Afternoon Baseball games in September.[91] The network also aired one Friday night game (
Yankees at
Angels) on July 13 of that year.
In 1979,[92] 22 teams (all but the
Atlanta Braves,
Houston Astros,
New York Mets, and
St. Louis Cardinals) participated in a one-year
cable deal with
United Artists Television and
Columbia Pictures Television, then-owners of the USA Network.[93] The deal involved the airing of a Thursday night Game of the Week[94] in markets at least 50 miles (80 km) from a major league park.[95] The deal earned Major League Baseball less than $500,000, but led to a new two-year contract for 40–45 games per season.[96][97] The program ran through the 1983 season.[98][99] With USA's Thursday night coverage, it ended
ABC's
Monday night broadcast's position as the exclusive national, prime time television franchise for Major League Baseball.[91]
The second game of the night was typically broadcast from the
West Coast. The games were usually
blacked-out in the competing teams' cities.[100][101][102] Once in a while, when USA aired a repeat of the telecast late at night, local cities were allowed to show the rerun.[103]
Despite temporarily losing the Game of the Week package in
1961,
ABC still televised several games in
prime time (with
Jack Buck returning to call the action). This occurred as
Roger Maris[104][105] was poised to tie and subsequently break
Babe Ruth's regular season home run record of 60. As with all Major League Baseball games in those days, the action was totally
blacked out[106] of major league markets. As a matter of fact, as documented in the
HBO film 61*, the Maris family was welcomed into ABC's
Kansas City, Missouri, affiliate
KMBC-TV so they could watch the in-house feed of the game, which was blacked out of Kansas City.
Sports Illustrated, noting that the game “began at 4 p.m. in California and ended at 11 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time,” reported “an estimated 55 million people watched the game, compared with 12 million viewers for the 1966 All-Star Game, played in the afternoon.”
The
1969 game was originally scheduled for the evening of Tuesday, July 22, but heavy rains forced its postponement to the following afternoon. As of 2022, the 1969 contest remains the last All-Star Game to date to be played earlier than
prime time in the Eastern United States.
^
Jane Gross (July 12, 1981).
"Sports on cable". The New York Times. USA agreed to the baseball limitations rejected by
ESPN and shows a Thursday-night game in cities that do not have a major-league team. In New York City, Manhattan Cable broadcasts USA's programs, but cannot televise the weekly baseball game because the Yankees and Mets declined to grant the waivers necessary under major-league statutes.
The first
night game in Major League Baseball history occurred on May 24, 1935, when the
Cincinnati Reds beat the
Philadelphia Phillies 2–1 at
Crosley Field.[1] The original plan was that the Reds would play seven night games each season, one against each visiting club.[2] Night baseball quickly found acceptance in other Major League cities and eventually became the norm; the term "day game" was subsequently coined to designate the increasingly rarer afternoon contests.
Monday Night Baseball was born on October 19, 1966, when
NBC signed a three-year contract to televise the game. Under the deal, NBC paid roughly
$6 million per year for the 25 Games of the Week, $6.1 million for the
1967 World Series and
1967 All-Star Game, and $6.5 million for the
1968 World Series and
1968 All-Star Game. This brought the total value of the contract (which included three Monday night telecasts each season) up to $30.6 million.
The last non-expansion/non-relocated team to play all their home games in the daytime were the
Chicago Cubs; they played their first official night game in
Wrigley Field on August 9, 1988, and beat the
New York Mets 6–4, one night after their initial attempt at night baseball (against the
Philadelphia Phillies) was rained out before it became official.[3] The Cubs still play the fewest home night games of any major league club (35 per season, as of 2014).
Starting with the
2022 season,
TBS' weekly games were moved from
Sunday afternoons to
Tuesday nights. The Tuesday night program was expected to include a 30-minute studio show before and after each game.[12]
In 2010, Jon Miller and Joe Morgan began their 21st consecutive season working together for ESPN. Among U.S. network television sportscasters, only
Pat Summerall and
John Madden (who called
NFL games for
CBS and
Fox from
1981 to
2001) have had a similar length partnership in the booth. Following the 2010 season, ESPN announced that the television contracts of Miller and Morgan would not be renewed.[16] Miller was offered, but chose to decline, a continued role with ESPN Radio.[17]
Play-by-play announcer
Dan Shulman joined color commentators Orel Hershiser and
Bobby Valentine as the new Sunday Night Baseball crew beginning in
2011.[19] In an essential trade deal, following the hiring of Valentine as the
Boston Red Sox manager, his predecessor
Terry Francona was hired to join Shulman and Hershiser for the 2012 season.[20] Francona stayed with ESPN for only one season before he was hired by the
Cleveland Indians to be their manager for the
2013 season. Francona was replaced by
John Kruk, who had been part of the Baseball Tonight team since 2004. Like Miller and Morgan before them, Shulman and Hershiser also formed the lead team on ESPN Radio's
World Series coverage. Prior to the
2014 season, Hershiser left ESPN to become an analyst for the Dodgers on
SportsNet LA, and was replaced by
Curt Schilling; however, Schilling's subsequent diagnosis of and treatment for an undisclosed form of
cancer led to his being unavailable to ESPN for most of the season.[21] Shulman and Kruk worked as a two-man booth until Schilling joined them in September.[22]
In
2012, Fox would revive the Baseball Night in America title (previously used for The Baseball Network's games) for a series of Saturday night games.[24] Unlike The Baseball Network, Fox did not carry every game that was scheduled for a given Saturday, only choosing five to six games to distribute to its
affiliates.
On August 30, 2015, former softball player Jessica Mendoza joined the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast team as a color commentator. For the
2016 MLB season, former Yankees player Aaron Boone joined Shulman and Mendoza in the broadcast booth as the second color commentator for SNB. Shulman stepped down at the conclusion of the
2017 season,[25] while Boone left the booth after being named new
Yankees manager.[26]
On July 8, 2016, NHL on NBC broadcaster
Mike Emrick called his first MLB regular-season game at
PNC Park when the
Pirates hosted the
Chicago Cubs for MLB Network with
Bob Costas. The Pirates won the game, 8–4, with Emrick calling some of the action.
On January 23, 2018, ESPN announced that
Alex Rodriguez and
Matt Vasgersian would join the SNB crew for the 2018 season as analyst and play-by-play respectively.[27]
In 2000, as part of an exclusive contract Fox signed with MLB, that coverage passed to
Fox Family Channel and was reduced to one game per week. After the 2000 season, Fox also gained rights to the entire postseason and moved a large portion of its Division Series coverage to Fox Family. This lasted for one season due to
The Walt Disney Company making a bid for Fox Family. As part of the negotiations Fox Family was renamed
ABC Family and
ESPN gained the rights to Fox Family and FX's MLB coverage, although the 2002 Division Series aired on ABC Family due to contractual issues, but with ESPN production, a sign of things to come at
ABC Sports. Control of the overall contract remained with Fox, meaning they could renegotiate following the 2006 season and not allow ESPN to retain its postseason coverage. For the 2007 season, Fox did exactly that, and
TBS is now the cable home of the postseason as part of its
new baseball contract.
For the 2000 and 2001 seasons, the Fox network's then-sister cable channel, Fox Family (later ABC Family, now
Freeform) carried a weekly Major League Baseball game on
Thursday nights (a game that had previously aired nationwide on
Fox Sports Net from 1997 to 1999), as well as select postseason games from the
Division Series. Among the noteworthy games that aired on Fox Family was the October 4, 2001, game between the
San Francisco Giants and the
Houston Astros, during which
Barry Bonds hit his 70th
home run of the season, which tied the all-time single season record that
Mark McGwire had set only
three years earlier (Bonds broke the record the next night). Meanwhile, the Fox Broadcasting Company's other sister cable channel
FX, aired numerous Saturday night Major League Baseball contests in 2001, including
Cal Ripken Jr.'s final game at
Camden Yards. FX also aired one game in the Major League Baseball postseason each year from 2001 to 2005, on the first Wednesday night of
League Championship Series week when the league scheduled two games at the same time. On that night, Fox distributed one game to local affiliates with the availability of coverage being based on region, and the other game aired on the corresponding
cable affiliate of FX, the main
DirecTV or
Dish Network channel, or an alternate channel on the
satellite providers.
As part of its 2001 purchase of Fox Family, in addition to rights to the Thursday night game,
The Walt Disney Company acquired the MLB rights that were also held by FX. Those two game packages were moved to
ESPN beginning with the
2002 baseball season; however, the playoff games remained on ABC Family for one additional year due to contractual issues. A deal was reached to move those playoff games to ESPN, which produced the games for ABC Family, starting with the
2003 season. Although the games aired on networks owned by Disney, Fox kept the exclusive negotiation rights to renew the contract after the
2006 season. Fox chose not to renew its rights to the Division Series, which went to
TBS as part of its
new baseball contract.
From
2000 to
2005, ESPN's
Wednesday night broadcasts consisted of a doubleheader, usually airing the first game at 7pm ET on ESPN and the second at 10pm ET on ESPN2. The second part of the doubleheader was discontinued after 2005 season.
ESPN Thursday Night Baseball aired on either
ESPN or
ESPN2 from 2003 to 2006 and featured one game per week. It aired every Thursday at either 1 p.m. ET, 7 p.m. ET, 7:30 p.m. ET or 8:00 ET.
Castrol served as the presenting sponsor for the telecasts. The play-by-play commentator was
Chris Berman along with either
Joe Morgan or
Eric Karros as color commentator. In 2006,
Duke Castiglione joined the broadcast as the field reporter. ESPN Thursday Night Baseball was discontinued after the 2006 season because the broadcast rights to the package were lost to
TBS. TBS shows the games on Sunday afternoons that
ESPN previously aired on Thursday nights. The games were then moved to ESPN and ESPN2. Thursday Night Baseball was replaced with MLS Primetime Thursday.[28]
On April 9, 2009,
MLB Network aired its first ever self-produced live baseball telecast. The network typically produces 26 non-exclusive live games a year during the regular season. And since one or both teams'
local TV rights holders also carry the games, the MLB Network feed is subject to
local blackouts. In that event, the cities in the blacked-out markets will instead see a
simulcast of another scheduled game via one team's local TV rights holder.
Longtime
NBC Sports broadcaster
Bob Costas is one of the
play-by-play voices of the broadcasts.[29]Matt Vasgersian also does play-by-play on some games.
Jim Kaat,
John Smoltz, and
Tom Verducci provide
color commentary.[30] The network produces 26 non-exclusive live games a year during baseball season and since 2012 two League Division Series games. Since one or both teams'
local TV rights holders also carry the games, the MLB Network feed is subject to
local blackouts. In that event, the cities in the blacked-out markets will instead see a
simulcast of another scheduled game via one team's local TV rights holder. MLB Network Showcase typically airs on Tuesday,
Thursday or Friday nights.
On January 5, 1989,
Major League Baseball signed a
$400 million deal with
ESPN, who would show over 175 games beginning in
1990. For the next four years, ESPN would televise six games a week (Sunday Night Baseball, Wednesday Night Baseball and
doubleheaders on Tuesdays and Fridays), as well as multiple games on
Opening Day,
Memorial Day,
Independence Day, and
Labor Day. Unlike ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball, Monday Night Baseball is not exclusive, but unlike Wednesday Night Baseball, Monday Night Baseball since 2007 co-exists with the local markets' carriers and is not always subject to blackout; ESPN can show teams up to three times a year in local markets alongside the local broadcasts.
For CBS' coverage of the
1991 All-Star Game from
Toronto, CBS started their broadcast at the top of the hour with the customary pregame coverage. And then, because
American PresidentGeorge H.W. Bush and
Canadian Prime MinisterBrian Mulroney were throwing out the first ball, there was a slight delay from the 8:30 p.m.
EDT start. The game eventually started about 15–20 minutes late. Presumably this, along with CBS' low ratings for baseball, and the costs of doing pregame coverage, led to them starting the prime time broadcasts at 8:30 for the final two years of the contract, with little or no pregame content.
In
1991,
CBS didn't come on the air for baseball for weeknight LCS telecasts until 8:30 p.m.
ET. Instead, they opted to show programming such as Rescue 911 at 8 p.m. rather than a baseball pregame show.[32]
As CBS' baseball coverage[33][34][35][36] progressed, the network dropped its 8:00 p.m. pregame coverage[37] (in favor of airing
sitcoms such as Evening Shade), before finally starting their coverage at 8:30 p.m.
Eastern Time. The first pitch would generally arrive at approximately 8:45 p.m. Perhaps as a result,
Joe Carter's
World Series clinching
home run off
Mitch Williams in 1993, occurred at 12 a.m. on the
East Coast.
In 1994, ABC and NBC began a package[38] included coverage of games in
prime time[39] on selected nights throughout the regular season (under the branding Baseball Night in America),[40] along with coverage of the
postseason and the
World Series.[41] Unlike previous broadcasting arrangements with the league, there was no national "
game of the week"[42] during the regular season;[43] these would be replaced by multiple weekly regional[44] telecasts on certain nights of the week. Additionally, The Baseball Network had exclusive coverage windows; no other broadcaster could televise MLB games during the same night that The Baseball Network was televising games.
After the All-Star Game was complete,[45] ABC took over coverage with what was to be their weekly slate of games.[46] ABC was scheduled to televise six[47] regular season games on Saturdays[48] or Mondays[49] in
prime time. NBC[50][51] would then pick up where ABC left off by televising six more regular season Friday night[52][53] games. Every Baseball Night in America game was scheduled to begin at 8 p.m.
Eastern Time (or 8 p.m.
Pacific Time if the game occurred on the
West Coast[54]). A single starting time gave the networks the opportunity to broadcast one game and then, simultaneously, cut to another game when there was a break in action.
The networks had exclusive rights for the twelve regular season dates, in that no regional or national cable service (such as
ESPN or
superstations like
Chicago's
WGN-TV[55] or
Atlanta's
WTBS) or over-the-air[56] broadcaster was allowed[57] to telecast a Major League Baseball game on those dates. Baseball Night in America[58] (which premiered[59] on July 16, 1994) usually aired up to fourteen games[60] based on the viewers' region (affiliates chose games of local interest to carry) as opposed to a traditional coast-to-coast format.[61] Normally, announcers who represented each of the teams playing in the respective games were paired with each other. More specifically, on regional Saturday night broadcasts and all non-"national" broadcasts, TBN let the two lead announcers from the opposing teams call the games involving their teams together.
Games involving either of the two Canadian-based MLB teams at the time, the
Toronto Blue Jays and
Montreal Expos, were not always included in the Baseball Night in America package. Canadian rightsholders were allowed to broadcast the games. When
TSN (which owned the cable rights to the Blue Jays and Expos) covered the games in Canada, they re-broadcast the BNIA feed across their network. Typically, if the Blue Jays were idle for the day, the Expos would be featured on TSN. Also,
CBET (the
CBC affiliate in
Windsor, Ontario) would air Blue Jays games if the
Detroit Tigers were not playing at home that night or if the Blue Jays were scheduled to play in Detroit. Whether or not the game would air in the opposing team's market would depend on which time zone they were from, or if they shared a market with another team.
All of the 1994 games aired on ABC; due to the strike[62][63] NBC was unable[64] to air its slate of games, which were supposed to begin on August 26.[65][66]
From
1996-
2000,
NBC aired LDS games on Tuesday/Friday/Saturday nights.
Fox aired LDS games on Wednesday/Thursday nights, Saturdays in the late afternoon, plus Sunday/Monday nights (if necessary). Meanwhile,
ESPN carried many afternoon LDS contests. At this point, all playoff games were nationally televised (mostly in unopposed timeslots).
In 1997, as part of the contract with Major League Baseball it had signed the year before,
Fox gained an additional outlet for its coverage. Its recently launched cable sports network,
Fox Sports Net, was given rights to two Thursday night games per week, one for the Eastern and Central time zones and one for the Mountain and Pacific time zones.
As part of its coverage of
Mark McGwire's bid to break
Roger Maris's single-season home run record in 1998, Fox aired a Sunday afternoon game between the
Cincinnati Reds and
St. Louis Cardinals on September 6 and a Tuesday night game between the
Chicago Cubs and the Cardinals on September 8 of that year (McGwire hit his record-breaking 62nd home run of the season in the latter game, which earned a 14.5 rating share for Fox, and remains the network's highest-rated regular season Major League Baseball telecast to this day).
USA's coverage became a casualty of the new $1.2 billion TV contract between Major League Baseball, ABC and NBC beginning in 1984 and lasting through 1989. One of the provisions to the new deal was that local telecasts opposite network games had to be eliminated.[67]
NBC also would normally television two
prime time games during the regular season (not including All-Star Games). Generally, NBC would broadcast one game on a Tuesday and the other on a Friday. They however, would have to compete against local teams'
over-the-air broadcasts, putting NBC at risk of hampering its ratings.
Had the
1984 ALCS between the
Detroit Tigers and
Kansas City Royals gone the full five games (the last year that the League Championship Series was a best-of-five series), Game 5 on Sunday October 7, would have been a 1 p.m.
ET time start instead of being in
prime time. This would have happened because one of the
presidential debates between
Ronald Reagan and
Walter Mondale was scheduled for that night. In return,
ABC was going to broadcast the debates instead of a baseball game in prime time.
Al Trautwig[74] interviewed the Detroit Tigers from their clubhouse following their pennant clinching victory in Game 3.
Game 5 of the 1984 World Series at
Detroit's
Tiger Stadium had a starting time of 4:45 p.m.
ET, following a 1:30 p.m. start for Game 4. These were the last outdoor World Series games to start earlier than
prime time in the eastern United States (Game 6 in
1987, the last daytime World Series contest, was indoors at the
Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome in
Minneapolis).
On Thursday, October 10, 1985, NBC didn't come on the air for Game 2[75] of the
NLCS until 8:30 p.m.
ET to avoid disrupting The Cosby Show at 8 (similarly to how the network aired the soap opera Return to Peyton Place, before Game 5 of the
1972 World Series, rather than a pre-game show).[76] NBC would do the same thing for Thursday night games in subsequent postseasons.
In
1985, ABC announced that every game of the World Series would be played under the lights for the biggest baseball audience possible.
By
1986, ABC only televised 13 Monday Night Baseball games. This was a fairly sharp contrast to the 18 games to that were scheduled in
1978. Going into
1987, ABC had reportedly purchased 20 Monday night games but only used eight of those slots.
NBC's broadcast of Game 7 of the 1986 World Series (which went up against a Monday Night Football game between the
Washington Redskins and
New York Giants on ABC) garnered a
Nielsen rating of 38.9 and a 55 share, making it the highest-
rated single World Series game to date. Game 7 had been scheduled for Sunday, but a rain-out forced the game to Monday. NBC's telecast of the Series ended with the song "Limelight" from Stereotomy, penultimate album of
The Alan Parsons Project.
Although Al Michaels, Jim Palmer and Tim McCarver had done the 1985 and 1987 World Series together as well as the 1986 All-Star Game, ABC did not team them on a regular basis on Monday Night Baseball until
1988 (after three 'experiments' in
1987).
ABC's coverage of Game 2[77] of the
1988 NLCS[78] didn't start until 10 p.m. ET due to a
presidential debate. This is the latest ever scheduled start for an LCS game.
Game 6 of the
1988 World Series, was scheduled to start at 5 p.m. ET on Saturday, October 22, but that game wasn't necessary. This is the last time a World Series game was scheduled outside of prime time.
Game 3 of the
1989 World Series (initially scheduled for October 17) was delayed by 10 days due to the
Loma Prieta earthquake. The earthquake struck at approximately 5:04 p.m.
Pacific Time. After about a 15-minute delay (
ABC aired a rerun of Roseanne and subsequently, The Wonder Years in the meantime), ABC was able to regain power via a backup generator.
On October 13, 1971, the
World Series held a night game for the very first time.[86] Commissioner
Bowie Kuhn, who felt that baseball could attract a larger audience by featuring a prime time telecast (as opposed to a mid-afternoon broadcast, occurring when most fans either worked or attended school), pitched the idea to NBC. An estimated 61 million people watched Game 4 on NBC; television
ratings for a World Series game during the daytime hours would not have approached such a record number.
For World Series night games, NBC normally began baseball coverage at 8:00 p.m.
Eastern Time with a
pre-game show (with first pitch occurring around 8:20 to 8:25 p.m.). However, in
1986 and
1988, for Game 5 of the World Series (on Thursday night), NBC's coverage did not begin until 8:30. This allowed the network to air its highly rated sitcom The Cosby Show in its normal Thursday 8:00 p.m. timeslot. NBC went with carrying a very short pre-game show and got to first pitch at around 8:40 p.m. Eastern Time.
In 1972,[87] NBC began televising prime time regular-season games on Mondays, under a four-year contract worth $72 million. In 1973, NBC extended the
Monday night telecasts (with a local
blackout) to 15 consecutive games. NBC's last Monday Night Baseball game aired on September 1, 1975, in which the
Montréal Expos beat the
Philadelphia Phillies, 6–5. Curt Gowdy called the games with Tony Kubek from 1972 to 1974, being joined in the 1973 and 1974 seasons by various guest commentators from both within and outside of the baseball world (among them Dizzy Dean,
Joe DiMaggio,
Satchel Paige,
Bobby Riggs,
Dave DeBusschere,
Howard Cosell, Mel Allen,
Danny Kaye and
Willie Mays).
Jim Simpson and
Maury Wills called the secondary backup games. Joe Garagiola hosted the pre-game show, The Baseball World of Joe Garagiola, and teamed with Gowdy to call the games in 1975.
During NBC's telecast of the Monday night
Dodgers–
Braves game on April 8, 1974, in which
Hank Aaron hit his record-breaking 715th career home run,[88] Kubek criticized Commissioner
Bowie Kuhn on-air for failing to be in attendance at
Fulton County Stadium in Atlanta on that historic night; Kuhn argued that he had a prior engagement that he could not break.
Starting in 1975, Joe Garagiola and Curt Gowdy alternated as the Saturday Game of Week play-by-play announcers with Tony Kubek doing color analysis. Then on weeks in which NBC had Monday Night Baseball, Gowdy and Garagiola worked together. One would call play-by-play for 4½ innings, the other would handle color analysis. Then in the bottom of the 5th inning, their roles switched.
In
1976, ABC picked up the television rights[89] for Monday Night Baseball[90] games from
NBC. For most of its time on ABC, the Monday night games were held on "dead travel days" when few games were scheduled. The team owners liked that arrangement as the national telecasts didn't compete against their stadium box offices. ABC on the other hand, found the arrangement far more complicated. ABC often had only one or two games to pick from for each telecast from a schedule designed by Major League Baseball. While trying to give all of the teams national exposure, ABC ended up with far too many games between sub .500 clubs from small markets.
For Game 2 of the
1976 World Series, NBC and Major League Baseball experimented with a Sunday night telecast.
In
1979, the start of ABC's Monday Night Baseball coverage was moved back to June, due to poor ratings during the May
sweeps period. In place of April and May prime time games, ABC began airing Sunday Afternoon Baseball games in September.[91] The network also aired one Friday night game (
Yankees at
Angels) on July 13 of that year.
In 1979,[92] 22 teams (all but the
Atlanta Braves,
Houston Astros,
New York Mets, and
St. Louis Cardinals) participated in a one-year
cable deal with
United Artists Television and
Columbia Pictures Television, then-owners of the USA Network.[93] The deal involved the airing of a Thursday night Game of the Week[94] in markets at least 50 miles (80 km) from a major league park.[95] The deal earned Major League Baseball less than $500,000, but led to a new two-year contract for 40–45 games per season.[96][97] The program ran through the 1983 season.[98][99] With USA's Thursday night coverage, it ended
ABC's
Monday night broadcast's position as the exclusive national, prime time television franchise for Major League Baseball.[91]
The second game of the night was typically broadcast from the
West Coast. The games were usually
blacked-out in the competing teams' cities.[100][101][102] Once in a while, when USA aired a repeat of the telecast late at night, local cities were allowed to show the rerun.[103]
Despite temporarily losing the Game of the Week package in
1961,
ABC still televised several games in
prime time (with
Jack Buck returning to call the action). This occurred as
Roger Maris[104][105] was poised to tie and subsequently break
Babe Ruth's regular season home run record of 60. As with all Major League Baseball games in those days, the action was totally
blacked out[106] of major league markets. As a matter of fact, as documented in the
HBO film 61*, the Maris family was welcomed into ABC's
Kansas City, Missouri, affiliate
KMBC-TV so they could watch the in-house feed of the game, which was blacked out of Kansas City.
Sports Illustrated, noting that the game “began at 4 p.m. in California and ended at 11 p.m. Eastern Daylight Time,” reported “an estimated 55 million people watched the game, compared with 12 million viewers for the 1966 All-Star Game, played in the afternoon.”
The
1969 game was originally scheduled for the evening of Tuesday, July 22, but heavy rains forced its postponement to the following afternoon. As of 2022, the 1969 contest remains the last All-Star Game to date to be played earlier than
prime time in the Eastern United States.
^
Jane Gross (July 12, 1981).
"Sports on cable". The New York Times. USA agreed to the baseball limitations rejected by
ESPN and shows a Thursday-night game in cities that do not have a major-league team. In New York City, Manhattan Cable broadcasts USA's programs, but cannot televise the weekly baseball game because the Yankees and Mets declined to grant the waivers necessary under major-league statutes.