 | This article includes alist of references,related reading, orexternal links,but its sources remain unclear because it lacksinline citations. Please helpimprove this article byintroducing more precise citations.(May 2015) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
 | This articleneeds additional citations forverification. Please helpimprove this article byadding citations to reliable sources in this article. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Major League Baseball on ESPN Radio" – news ·newspapers ·books ·scholar ·JSTOR(March 2007) (Learn how and when to remove this message) |
 | |
| Genre | Major League Baseball |
|---|---|
| Running time | 3 hours (approximate) |
| Country of origin | US |
| Home station | ESPN Radio (1998–present) |
| Starring | Jon Sciambi Doug Glanville Marc Kestecher |
| Original release | March 31, 1998 (1998-03-31) – present |
Major League Baseball on ESPN Radio is the brand name for exclusive play-by-play broadcast presentation ofMajor League Baseball onESPN Radio. The coverage had most recently been presented byIndeed along withAutoZone for the postseason; previous presenting sponsors includedWendy's,Barbasol,Nesquik,DraftKings,Xerox,AutoZone,Excedrin,United States Postal Service andMercedes-Benz.
In 1997,ESPN Radio outbidCBS Radio to become the exclusive national radio broadcaster ofMajor League Baseball beginning the following year. CBS Radio had been the national radio broadcaster since1976.
The agreement lasted seven years through 2004 and gave ESPN Radio the rights to broadcast numerous games includingSunday Night Baseball, SaturdayGame of the Week,Opening Day and holiday games, September weekday pennant race games, theAll-Star Game andHome Run Derby, and all of the playoffs, including theWorld Series.
In 2004, ESPN Radio extended the deal with a five-year,$55 million dollar contract extension through the2010 season.
The agreement also added a weekly program devoted to baseball, which becameThe Baseball Show from 3 p.m.ET to 7 pm. ET on Sundays during the regular season. The program was hosted byJohn Seibel andSteve Phillips.
On February 20, 2025, ESPN announced that it was mutually opting out of its agreement to carry Major League Baseball following the2025 season.[1] Besides television, this opt out agreement would have also affected ESPN's radio and streaming coverage.[2] However, on November 19, it was announced that ESPN Radio would retain their rights to MLB coverage, includingSunday Night Baseball and the postseason.[3]
As previously mentioned, in beginning in the 1998 season, ESPN Radio took over fromCBS Radio as the official, national radio broadcaster forMajor League Baseball. The network's contract with MLB currently runs through 2028, and as of 2022,Major League Baseball on ESPN Radio is part of ESPN Radio’s main lineup, instead of in an opt-in/opt-out basis as in previous years. However, affiliates retain the ability to opt out of broadcasts involving in-market teams during the regular season.
The games include Opening Day,Sunday Night Baseball, Saturday games (usually the same matchup as the Sunday Night game with case-by-case exceptions, mainly due to start time conflicts), holiday games (duringMemorial Day,Independence Day andLabor Day; occasionally broadcast as doubleheaders) and September pennant race games. ESPN Radio holds exclusive radio rights to theAll-Star Game andHome Run Derby. The postseason (including theWild Card Games,Division Series,League Championship Series andWorld Series) is a semi-exclusive arrangement. The participating teams' flagship stations are allowed to air play-by-play using their own announcers and production. The national ESPN Radio feed may, however, be carried live on another station in those markets as well (for instance,WHB inKansas City aired the ESPN feed ofKansas City Royals postseason games in 2014 and 2015, competing directly with the Royals Radio Network broadcast onKCSP). If affiliate stations on the teams' radio networks wish to carry coverage of postseason games they must use the national feed. Since the inauguralWorld Baseball Classic in March 2006, the semi-finals and the championship have also been broadcast as part ofMajor League Baseball on ESPN Radio. The network also broadcast theMLB at Field of Dreams game in 2021.
In addition to affiliate stations on AM/FM radio, ESPN Radio's game broadcasts are carried as part ofSirius XM Radio's MLB coverage (with Sunday night games also being simulcast onMLB Network Radio). However, they are not included in the subscription "Gameday Audio" package onMLB.com with the exception of the All-Star Game, for which no other radio play-by-play feed is available.
Since June 2011, the games can also be heard online at ESPN Radio.com and on mobile devices via the ESPN app and other applications such asTuneIn. They can also be heard on televisions using connected devices (such as video game consoles) via their respectiveiHeartRadio and TuneIn apps. Previously, rights restrictions prevented ESPN Radio.com from live-streaming the games. Despite MLB not enforcing blackouts for radio coverage, game coverage on the ESPN mobile app and TuneIn are restricted to listeners in the United States and that are located outside the markets of both teams involved in that broadcast, regardless if said teams are home or away.
As of 2022, the primary ESPN Radio crew forSunday Night Baseball consists ofplay-by-play announcerJon Sciambi andcolor analystDoug Glanville. In 2010, Sciambi succeededGary Thorne, who had called play-by-play in 2008–09; Thorne had succeededDan Shulman, did so from 2002 to 2007; Shulman, in turn, had been preceded byCharley Steiner from 1998 to 2002. Glanville succeededChris Singleton, who served as analyst from 2011-2021. Singleton, in turn, succeededDave Campbell, who was an analyst from 1999 to 2010. Campbell replacedKevin Kennedy as analyst in 1999, after the latter had worked with Steiner in the network's inaugural season of coverage.Marc Kestecher currently serves as the network's primaryBaseball Tonight studio host, with Jim Basquil or Kevin Winter substituting for him if Kestecher was unavailable due to scheduling conflicts (mainly with hisNBA on ESPN Radio play-by-play duties); he was preceded byJoe D'Ambrosio from 1998 to 2007.
For other regular season games (especially Saturday games) as well as select Sunday night games, different play-by-play announcers are used with Glanville remaining as analyst (or, if Ganville is unavailable, a substitute analyst). This is mainly due to Sciambi’s unavailability as he is also the play-by-play announcer forChicago Cubs games televised on theMarquee Sports Network as well as a backup announcer forSunday Night Baseball on ESPN television. Backup play-by-play announcers forMLB on ESPN Radio includedJohn Schriffen,Karl Ravech, Mike Couzens, andRoxy Bernstein among others.
Sciambi and Glanville also call theAll-Star Game and Home Run Derby each year.
As of 2018, Dan Shulman called theWorld Series and one of the twoLeague Championship Series with Singleton each year (Jessica Mendoza joined this crew in 2020, whileEduardo Pérez joined in 2021, in place of Singleton, who was co-hosting the pregame and postgame segments with Kevin Winter), while Sciambi calls the other LCS with Mendoza. Various other announcers work the network's secondary regular-season,Wild Card Game andDivision Series broadcasts as needed. Starting in the2023 season, Sciambi would also call the World Series and a League Championship Series, succeeding Shulman in those roles.
For the2020 season, due to theCOVID-19 pandemic, Sciambi and Singleton called each gameworking remotely, rather than at the ballpark. For the 2020 postseason, they and all of ESPN Radio's announcers called the games from the ESPN studios inBristol, Connecticut.
| Preceded by | Major League Baseball national radio broadcast partner 1998 –2025 | Succeeded by TBA |
Links to related articles | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
