MESA, Ariz. — The breakup of ESPN and Major League Baseball was a shocker to those of us who looked at the partnership as a match made in heaven, or at least the baseball equivalent in Dyersville, Iowa.
Since they presented their vows back in 1990, ESPN helped spread the gospel of baseball through the Steroids Era, the start of bat flipping and other showboating and with so many Yankees-Red Sox games that you knew every step of the famous scene in which Red Sox ace Pedro Martinez threw down elderly Yankees coach Don Zimmer.
The introduction of the K-Zone in 2001 changed the way we watch baseball. It showed which ball and strike calls were incorrect, ensuring umpire Angel Hernandez would be a trending topic on Twitter, which was not yet invented.
But, alas, the sides grew apart in recent years and “mutually agreed” to end their national TV deal after the 2025 season, a conscious uncoupling that was a bit rockier than the end of the Theo Epstein-Joe Maddon bromance in 2019.
Now comes the ESPN Baseball Farewell Tour, which could rival the “Saturday Night Live” 50th anniversary show in hype and hubris. They could even bring back some of the ESPN favorites of the past, such as Keith Olbermann and Jon Miller, along with some of the more polarizing cast members like Curt Schilling and Chris Berman.
The ending, like most broken marriages, has gotten ugly. In a highlight package, you could pair it with Berman yelling, “Back, back, back … gone.”
ESPN wasn’t happy paying about $550 million per year over the next three years and exercised its opt-out clause before the March 1 deadline. It was kind of like a major-league team saying goodbye to an overpaid slugger with a couple years left on his contract, though at least the slugger still gets his guaranteed money. MLB is left holding the bag.
In a memo to owners that The Athletic obtained, Commissioner Rob Manfred wrote that MLB did not think it was “beneficial … to accept a smaller deal to remain on a shrinking platform,” taking a parting shot at the network that helped sell baseball for decades until cord-cutting became a thing in the Streaming Era.
We can expect MLB to hook up with one of the younger, prettier streamers like Apple TV+ that talks a good game but hasn’t been able to replicate the ESPN experience with its younger play-by-play men and women and “hipper” analysts of diverse hair colors.
Comparing Apple to ESPN is like comparing the Colorado Rockies to the Los Angeles Dodgers. They might play the same game, but they’re not in the same ballpark. ESPN is the king, for all its faults. Apple is beloved only by a generation of fans born after the Red Sox broke their curse.
Like a spurned lover, Manfred wrote that in the last bargaining round, ESPN “declined to purchase the inventory we subsequently sold to Apple and Roku,” adding that “Sunday Night Baseball” ratings were up 6% in 2024 and the wild-card round on ESPN was “the most watched ever.” He also pointed to the fact ESPN was available in 53.6 million homes in December, down from a peak of more than 100 million in 2011.
It’s not me, it’s you!
“Furthermore, we have not been pleased with the minimal coverage that MLB has received on ESPN’s platforms over the past several years outside of the actual live game coverage,” he wrote.
We can only assume he’s referring to the network’s football-centric coverage of the NFL and college football on “SportsCenter” in September and October during baseball’s pennant races and postseason. ESPN is only giving the viewers what they want, and what they want is more cowhide.
Instead of whining, MLB should just thank ESPN for promoting the game over the last 35 years and move on.
Back in 1989, when ESPN signed a four-year, $500 million deal to bring baseball to the cable sports giant starting in 1990, the relationship was beautiful to behold.
“In the next six to nine months, you`ll see more involvement of the merchandising of baseball on ESPN than you have ever seen before,” declared Bryan Burns, an MLB senior vice president. “A new day is dawning. It’s much more of a partnership deal.”
That was also the dawn of “Baseball Tonight,” the show that ran nightly during the entire season and made the term “web gem” part of the baseball vernacular — inadvertently leading to fielders trying to make spectacular plays to watch themselves on the nightly highlight packages.
And we ate it up, even watching reruns at 2 in the morning. Olbermann, a baseball encyclopedia with a sense of humor, was the perfect host. Tim Kurkjian, a Hall of Fame baseball writer, gave quirky stats and told stories of the olden days when dinosaurs like Earl Weaver roamed the earth. It was the perfect mixture of highlights, history, humor and stats.
But the network discontinued “Baseball Tonight” in 2017, the first sign of the eventual souring of the marriage. ESPN and MLB signed a new deal in 2021, renewing their vows but reducing the number of games. The love was gone, despite the sides pretending to be perfectly content for the kids.
There was much to criticize ESPN for over the years, including the overdose of Yankees-Red Sox games and employing the misanthropic Schilling and repeat PED offender Álex Rodríguez. For my money, the heyday was when Miller and Joe Morgan were calling games in the 1990s and 2000s. A “Sunday Night Baseball” telecast coming to your team’s ballpark was a special thing.
Alas, all good things must come to an end, whether it’s ESPN televising baseball or the Yankees ditching their longstanding policy on facial hair.
It was a strong marriage for many years, and maybe this final season will bring out the best in both. Perhaps ESPN can schedule the final “Sunday Night Baseball” game at Wrigley Field and have Cubs President Jed Hoyer give Karl Ravech and his crew a “3” and “5” from the old center-field scoreboard, commemorating the 35 years of their partnership.
Thanks for the memories, ESPN.
And remember, nothing in baseball lasts forever — except for the players union’s resistance to a salary cap.
