| Monday Night Baseball | |
|---|---|
 ABC'sMonday Night Baseball logo as used from 1976 to 1981(1978–81 variant pictured) | |
| Genre | American baseball game telecasts |
| Presented by | Various commentators |
| Country of origin | United States |
| Original language | English |
| No. of seasons | 53 |
| Production | |
| Production locations | Various MLB stadiums(game telecasts) |
| Camera setup | Multi-camera |
| Running time | 180 minutes or until game ends |
| Production companies | Major League Baseball NBC Sports (1966–1975) ABC Sports (1976–1988) ESPN (1992–2021) |
| Original release | |
| Network | NBC |
| Release | May 30, 1966 (1966-05-30) – September 1, 1975 (1975-09-01) |
| Network | ABC |
| Release | April 12, 1976 (1976-04-12) – August 1, 1988 (1988-08-01) |
| Network | ESPN |
| Release | April 13, 1992 (1992-04-13) – August 30, 2021 (2021-08-30) |
| Related | |
| Baseball Tonight ESPN Major League Baseball Major League Baseball on ABC Major League Baseball on NBC Wednesday Night Baseball Sunday Night Baseball | |
Monday Night Baseball is an American live game telecast ofMajor League Baseball (MLB) that aired on Monday nights during the regular season.
Earlier incarnations ofMonday Night Baseball aired onNBC and thenABC in the 1970s and 1980s.
These games formerly aired weekly onESPN. The game started at 7 p.m. ET, followingSportsCenter, and usually lasted around three hours leading up to an hour-longBaseball Tonight. The program sometimes aired onESPN2 rather than ESPN, often due toNBA playoff coverage in April and May, and preseasonMonday Night Football coverage in August.
Beginning with the2022 Major League Baseball season, ESPN significantly reduced their MLB schedule, which included cutting theirMonday Night Baseball games. Monday night games now occasionally air onFox Sports 1 as part of their irregularly scheduled weeknight games, and onMLB Network as part of theirMLB Network Showcase package.
Monday Night Baseball began on October 19, 1966, whenNBC signed a three-year contract to televise the game. Under the deal, NBC paid roughly$6 million per year for the 25Games of the Week, $6.1 million for the1967 World Series and1967 All-Star Game, and $6.5 million for the1968 World Series and1968 All-Star Game. This brought the total value of the contract (which included three Monday night telecasts each season) up to $30.6 million.
From1972–1975 NBC televised Monday games under a contract worth $72 million.[1] In1973, NBC extended the Monday night telecasts to 15 straight (with a localblackout). September 1, 1975 saw NBC's lastMonday Night Baseball game, in which theMontreal Expos beat thePhiladelphia Phillies 6–5.
Curt Gowdy called the Monday night games withTony Kubek from 1972 to1974, the pair being joined in 1973 and 1974 by various guest commentators from both in and out of the baseball world.Jim Simpson andMaury Wills called the secondary backup games.Joe Garagiola hosted NBC'spregame show,The Baseball World of Joe Garagiola, and teamed with Gowdy to call the games in 1975.
ABC would pick up the television rights forMonday Night Baseball games in the following year.[2] Just like withMonday Night Football, ABC brought in the concept of the three-man-booth (originally composed ofBob Prince,Bob Uecker, andWarner Wolf as the primary crew) to their baseball telecasts.[3]
Ratings were typically poor for ABC's Monday night games, and by1986,ABC only televised 13Monday Night Baseball games. This was a fairly sharp contrast to the 18 games to that were scheduled in1978.The Sporting News suggested that ABC paid Major League Baseball to not make them televise the regular season, opining that the network only wanted the sport for October anyway. 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 ABC games didn't compete against their stadium box offices and local telecasts. The network, 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 a surplus of games involving games between either small-market teams and/or teams with losing records.
In1989, the final year of ABC's contract with Major League Baseball, ABC moved the baseball telecasts toThursday nights in hopes of getting a leg up against NBC'sThe Cosby Show. The network also aired some late-season games on Sunday afternoons.
ESPN occasionally carried Monday night games after signing television rights deals with MLB in 1990, though the main regular broadcasts wereSunday Night Baseball and theWednesday Night Baseball doubleheader. The network began carrying Monday night games regularly as part of the eight-year television contract that ESPN signed in 2005, replacing the second Wednesday night game. UnlikeSunday Night Baseball, the game was non-exclusive, meaning it would also be carried by the teams' local broadcasters, and telecasts were typically blacked out in the participating teams' markets.[4][5][6]
Because ESPN broadcastsMonday Night Football beginning with pre-season games in mid-August, late seasonMonday Night Baseball games would either move to ESPN2 or ESPN would broadcast a doubleheader as part ofWednesday Night Baseball. On some occasions, ESPN scheduled two games to air simultaneously, with one game airing on ESPN and the second on ESPN2. Both telecasts were branded with theWednesday Night Baseball name, but one featured the Monday night announce team.
In 2021, ESPN agreed to a new contract with Major League Baseball through the 2028 season. However, the deal included only around 30 exclusive broadcasts, 25 of which would take place onSunday Night Baseball, thus ending regular Monday Night Baseball broadcasts.[7][8][9][10] As part of these five non-Sunday games, ESPN did air one Monday Night Baseball game in 2022 and 2024.[11][12]