Alex Rodriguez to call Mets' season opener vs. Nationals on ESPN
Portrait of Matt Vasgersian and Alex Rodriguez, announcers for ESPN's Sunday Night Baseball. Credit: Kohjiro Kinno / ESPN Images/Kohjiro Kinno / ESPN Images
Alex Rodriguez, Matt Vasgersian and Buster Olney will work Thursday night’s Mets-Nationals opener for ESPN, the network announced.
The game is ESPN’s prime time national exclusive, meaning it will not also be seen on SNY.
SNY’s first regular-season telecast will be on Saturday.
While it is no surprise ESPN would assign its No. 1 announcing team to the opener, the subplot is that Rodriguez was part of a group that made a bid to buy the Mets before Steve Cohen landed the team.
Mets-Nationals is one of four games ESPN will carry on Thursday, along with Blue Jays-Yankees, Dodgers-Rockies and Astros-Athletics. ESPN’s coverage of the Yankees game will be blacked out in the New York area, where YES will carry the game.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
