Joe Buck is making his return to the baseball booth, and he won’t be there long before doors begin to swing. The voice of ESPN’s Monday Night Football is set to rejoin the national Major League Baseball spotlight for the first time since 2021. According to The Athletic’s Andrew Marchand, Buck will be on the call for ESPN’s Opening Day broadcast of the New York Yankees vs. Milwaukee Brewers on Thursday, March 27.
This announcement arrives just days after St. Louis Cardinals president Bill DeWitt III playfully suggested Buck should “come back to reality” and call games for his hometown team. If only for this game, he is back on ESPN’s payroll. “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 told Marchand.
The Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers will lead ESPN’s doubleheader coverage of Major League Baseball’s Opening Day in 2025. The day will kick off with an afternoon game between the Yankees and Brewers at 3 p.m. ET, followed by the Dodgers facing the Detroit Tigers at 7 p.m. ET. Both games are exclusive to ESPN, which has left Michael Kay “red hot.” For 37 years, the Yankees’ play-by-play voice has either written or announced Opening Day, but this time, the job belongs to Joe Buck.
Though this won’t be Buck’s first baseball broadcast since departing from Fox—he participated in a Cardinals game last season alongside Chip Caray, marking a significant moment as it was the first time in 55 years that a Buck and a Caray shared the microphone, harking back to Joe’s father, Jack, and Chip’s grandfather, Harry.
However, this opportunity may be fleeting, as Major League Baseball can opt out of its current ESPN deal after the 2025 season, leaving Buck’s future with national broadcasts uncertain. If this is indeed his only chance, it’s understandable why he would seize it, even though baseball isn’t formally included in Buck’s ESPN contract. Mark Gross, the network’s senior VP of production who has established a strong rapport with Buck through Monday Night Football, reached out with a proposition: Would Buck be interested in calling Opening Day?
Buck initially hesitated. Although ESPN had previously approached him to do baseball in 2022, that plan fell through. He’s openly admitted he doesn’t follow the sport as closely as he once did. Yet, when Gross revealed the game would take place at Yankee Stadium, Buck was on board. “Why wouldn’t I?” Buck told The Athletic. “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. Because Mark asked me, and I really love the guy and think the world of him, I said, ‘Yes.’”
Gross even allowed Buck to choose his broadcast partners. He picked Joe Girardi for the Yankees’ take and Bill Schroeder for the Brewers, creating a fresh yet familiar booth for baseball’s grand opening.
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So, Joe Buck is back in baseball — if only for one night.
