Anthony Rieber: The Subway Series was spared from ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball. How do Yankees and Mets fans feel about this?
The Yankees' Ben Rice hits a home run In the first inning against the Mets at Yankee Stadium on Sunday. Credit: Newsday/Thomas A. Ferrara
There is so little good news for fans who watch sports on TV that we wanted to share some that you might have missed.
Both Subway Series games that were played on Sundays this season were played in the afternoon and were carried by YES and SNY.
The games were not moved to the night. They were not broadcast by ESPN on “Sunday Night Baseball.”
Sunday baseball in the daytime. Games that end in the late afternoon and not late night. Getting to hear your hometown announcers.
It’s a rare win for sports fans in this era of cable and streaming and having to ask “what channel is the game on?” far more than we ever had to before.
This Sunday, Mets fans got to listen to Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling. Yankees fans got to hear Michael Kay, Paul O’Neill and David Cone.
And it wasn’t only the viewing public that got a win. Ticket-buyers — usually the first folks to get treated like afterthoughts by sports leagues and their broadcast partners — didn’t have to get home bleary-eyed on a work night after a Sunday Subway Series game.
Fans with tickets to the Yankees’ 2-0 win in the Bronx on Sunday and the Mets’ 7-6, 10-inning victory on May 17 at Citi Field did not have to deal with the game shifting from day to night because ESPN thought the whole country needed to see it.
That happened for decades. It became the way things were. It stunk, but we all just accepted it. Until this season.
What changed? Well, ESPN doesn’t carry baseball on Sunday nights anymore. It gave up the package before this season.
NBC has “Sunday Night Baseball” now, but neither Sunday Subway Series game was ripped away by the network and moved to nighttime.
On Saturday, I jokingly asked fans on X if they missed the ESPN Sunday night Subway Series games. Two fans from Long Island were nice enough to follow up in an email exchange.
Steven Attias, Woodbury: “Why I don’t miss ESPN Sunday night games (including Subway Series)
1) I hate ‘on-field, in-game interviews’.
2) I want my Gary, Keith & Ron!!
3) As a former Mets plan-holder, I hate when games are ‘stolen’ from our planned times and moved to late night.
4) Sunday games are supposed to be family-friendly. Moving them to night games creates all kinds of issues with school (and work) on Monday.”
Phil Pivnick, Oceanside: “I have a 40-game weekend plan for the Mets. I’ve had it for years. I never had any desire to go to an 8 p.m. Sunday night start. And when you tried to sell the tickets on the secondary market, it seemed like no one else wanted to go. Even against the Yanks, which should have been a hot ticket. It never was because of the Sunday night start.”
These two fellows likely speak for a lot of Mets fans (and a lot of Yankees ones, we suspect).
For decades, Yankees fans had to put up with Sunday games against the Mets and Red Sox being moved to night and broadcast by ESPN. When it was Yankees-Red Sox, if you wanted to see a montage of Babe Ruth and Ted Williams and Alex Rodriguez fighting Jason Varitek and Pedro Martinez throwing Don Zimmer to the ground, ESPN was the place for you!
But things have been different this season.
Just recently, the Yankees hosted the Red Sox in a four-game series in late August that included a day-night doubleheader on Saturday.
The Friday night game was an Apple TV exclusive (yuck). The Saturday night game was on Fox. But the other two games were on YES and were in the afternoon.
Half a victory! Hey, we’ll take it.
Anthony Rieber covers sports media and business and professional sports (you know, games and trades and things). He has worked at Newsday since Aug. 31, 1998, and has been in his current position since Jan. 1, 2026.
