Joe Buck will be back in the baseball broadcast booth this season for ESPN, at least for one game.
The venerable sports broadcaster, and the voice of the World Series on Fox from 1996-2021, will be behind the mic when the Worldwide Leader kicks off its revamped MLB broadcast package with a Mets-Dodgers game on April 15.
Buck revealed the news while appearing on the “SI Media with Jimmy Traina” podcast on Thursday.
The Wednesday game in Los Angeles will be the first broadcast of a 30-game package ESPN — which will no longer air “Sunday Night Baseball or the wild-card playoff round — has with MLB.
Buck stopped regularly calling baseball games after 2021 when he made the jump from Fox to ESPN, but has since made a pair of appearances in the baseball broadcast booth.
He called ESPN’s opening day broadcast of the Yankees and Brewers game in 2025 after being on the call for a midseason contest between the Cardinals and Rangers on Bally Sports Midwest in July 2024.
Buck explained Thursday that it was easier to prepare for broadcasts earlier in the season than later, especially for a sport he hasn’t been involved in regularly.
“For someone who hasn’t been involved in the game for four years, and I did do Opening Day last year, I think it’s easier to do the launch off of the beginning of a season because it’s looking back,” Buck said. “It’s a Dodger game, I think it’s Dodger-Mets, so there’s a lot to talk about. I mean, I could probably do it right now. The Dodgers, half their lineup’s going to end up in the Hall of Fame. They’re easy names.”
He added that as seasons go on, accepting a gig later in the year or in the playoffs would be tough to do “without putting myself in solitary confinement for a month and trying to catch up with everything that’s gone on.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
