It’s been four years since Joe Buck has called a Major League Baseball game on national TV, but that silence will come to an end – at least temporarily – on opening day 2025.
Buck will broadcast the New York Yankees’ March 27 opener against the Milwaukee Brewers for ESPN.
It will be his first baseball game for the network since he left Fox Sports for a five-year, $75 million contract to become the voice of ESPN’s ‘Monday Night Football’ in 2022.
‘I feel like the right way to do it is to act like I’ve been doing it for the past four years, even though I haven’t,’ Buck said in an interview with The Athletic.
Buck, 55, called a record 24 World Series for Fox – including all five of the Yankees’ most recent championships dating back to 1996.
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‘It is exciting to think about doing the game at Yankee Stadium, where I’ve called World Series,’ he said. ‘I’m not saying that if it wasn’t the Yankees, I probably wouldn’t have done it, but that might be true. It’s the Yankees at home on Opening Day against a division winner.’
Buck said the assignment is not a precursor to him returning to call baseball games on a more regular basis. He said he accepted the opportunity as a favor to ESPN senior vice president Mark Gross, with whom he had developed a strong relationship through ‘Monday Night Football.’
Even though he admits he doesn’t follow baseball regularly anymore, Buck jumped at the offer.
‘I know what I’ve said in the past about this stuff, but I’m not really good at saying no and I think I inherited that from my dad,’ Buck said. ‘Because Mark asked me and I really love the guy and think the world of him, I said, ‘Yes.”
