{"id":834006,"date":"2025-03-14T13:12:17","date_gmt":"2025-03-14T18:12:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/14\/joe-buck-to-call-yankees-brewers-opening-day-game-his-first-national-mlb-broadcast-since-2021\/"},"modified":"2025-03-14T13:12:17","modified_gmt":"2025-03-14T18:12:17","slug":"joe-buck-to-call-yankees-brewers-opening-day-game-his-first-national-mlb-broadcast-since-2021","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2025\/03\/14\/joe-buck-to-call-yankees-brewers-opening-day-game-his-first-national-mlb-broadcast-since-2021\/","title":{"rendered":"Joe Buck to call Yankees-Brewers Opening Day game, his first national MLB broadcast since 2021"},"content":{"rendered":"
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<\/span>\"INGLEWOOD,<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Joe Buck will return to the Major League Baseball<\/a> national booth for the first time in four years when he calls the domestic Opening Day game between the New York Yankees and the Milwaukee Brewers on ESPN March 27.<\/p>\n

Buck, who has called the most World Series on TV in history, said it is a one-off assignment and not a precursor to a full return to baseball. He plans to focus on the two teams and the pageantry of Opening Day, not himself.<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel like the right way to do it is to act like I\u2019ve been doing it for the past four years, even though I haven\u2019t,\u201d Buck told The Athletic<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Buck, 55, relinquished his national baseball broadcasts after calling his 24th World Series in October 2021. In early 2022, he left his longtime broadcasting home of Fox Sports to become the voice of ESPN\u2019s \u201cMonday Night Football\u201d on a five-year, $75 million contract. Last year, Buck did a local St. Louis Cardinals broadcast with Chip Caray.<\/p>\n

Baseball is not part of Buck\u2019s deal with ESPN, but Mark Gross, a senior VP of production for the network, recently resumed oversight over baseball. Gross developed a strong relationship with Buck through their work on \u201cMonday Night Football.\u201d<\/p>\n

A few weeks ago, Gross called Buck to ask if he would do Opening Day. Buck was intrigued. When Gross said the game is at Yankee Stadium, Buck was fully sold, even though he had expressed reluctance to return to baseball \u2014 which he doesn\u2019t follow as closely \u2014 since leaving Fox.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy wouldn\u2019t I,\u201d Buck said. \u201cI know what I\u2019ve said in the past about this stuff, but I\u2019m not really good at saying no and I think I inherited that from my dad. Because Mark asked me and I really love the guy and think the world of him, I said, \u2018Yes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Gross gave him the option of picking his partners. Buck chose Joe Girardi to give the Yankee perspective and Bill Schroeder for the Brewers.<\/p>\n

The allure of Yankee Stadium didn\u2019t hurt. Buck called all five of the Yankees\u2019 championships during the Derek Jeter run in the late 1990s through the CC Sabathia\/Alex Rodriguez-led championship in 2009.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s fun,\u201d Buck said. \u201cIt is exciting to think about doing the game at Yankee Stadium, where I\u2019ve called World Series. I\u2019m not saying that if it wasn\u2019t the Yankees, I probably wouldn\u2019t have done it, but that might be true. It\u2019s the Yankees at home on Opening Day against a division winner.\u201d<\/p>\n

There will be some focus on Buck, but the advice of his late father, Jack, the legendary baseball and football announcer, still echoes in his head. When Joe was 19, Jack drove him to Louisville for Joe\u2019s first Triple-A broadcasting job.<\/p>\n

\u201c\u2018Just remember, nobody cares who is calling the game,\u2019\u201d Buck recalled during the long drive. \u201c\u2018Nobody cares if the announcer is cold. Nobody cares that the announcer played golf the day before and what you shot. Just do the game \u2014 and that is why people are there.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

(Photo: Ric Tapia \/ Getty Images)<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Andrew Marchand<\/a><\/strong> is a Sr. Sports Media Columnist for The Athletic. He previously worked for the New York Post and ESPN, where he predominantly covered sports media and baseball. In 2023, Marchand was named one of five finalists for The Big Lead’s “Insider of the Year” in all of sports.<\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Read More<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Feb. 18, 2025 Updated Feb. 19, 2025 Joe Buck will return to the Major League Baseball national booth for the first time in four years when he calls the domestic Opening Day game between the New York Yankees and the Milwaukee Brewers on ESPN March 27. Buck, who has called the most World Series on<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":834007,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[30608,142488],"tags":[20830,142487],"class_list":{"0":"post-834006","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-athletic","8":"category-yankees-brewers","9":"tag-athletic","10":"tag-yankees-brewers"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=834006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/834007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=834006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=834006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=834006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}