During the summer months, when Major League Baseball is in full swing, one of my personal pastimes was after Sunday dinner with the family, and my wife was putting our son to bed, was for me to turn on ESPN and listen to Jon Miller and Joe Morgan call Sunday Night Baseball as I cleared the table and did the dishes.
Well, it looks like my Sunday night summer past might have to change, because after 21 seasons of calling the Sunday night games for ESPN, both Joe Morgan and Jon Miller are out.
As being reported by USA Today Joe Morgan’s contract has now expired and ESPN does not plan to renew it, and where Jon Miller is still employed by ESPN, he will no longer do the play-by-play on television, but has been relegated to radio.
To be completely honest with you, I’m not a fan of change. Where I haven’t been watching Sunday Night Baseball for all 21 seasons, I have been watching it for the eight or nine, and for my money there isn’t a better duo to call any sport (let alone baseball) than Miller and Morgan.
The two have a great chemistry (as you would expect for working together for so long), and the way Miller calls a game and then the analysis by Morgan just completely sucks you in.
For me, it didn’t matter if my team wasn’t playing I was watching for two reasons: One, I love baseball, and two, I love watching Morgan and Miller.
Honestly, the move by ESPN baffles me, unlike what happened with Pat Summeral at Fox Sports, I didn’t notice any slip by the pair that would suggest they’ve gotten too old to do the games or anything like that.
I guess for ESPN it was time for a change, which is surprising since they still have the tired Chris Berman doing the NFL pre-game show.
One thing is clear though: ESPN (as far as baseball is concerned) has been passed over by the MLB network.
I was once a stark viewer of ESPN’s Baseball Tonight, but have since switched over to MLB Network’s MLB Tonight, which, if you haven’t seen it, has a unique feature where they take you to live games to show key at bats, and unlike Baseball Tonight, MLB Tonight runs for about three to four hours, constantly giving updates and highlights of games in progress.
Maybe it’s MLB Network’s encroachment on ESPN’s dominance that prompted the move.
However, I am certain that we’ll never know the real reason behind the change, but my hopes are that Morgan joins the MLB network (like the ESPN ousted Harold Reynolds) as a color commentator and then hopefully when Miller’s contract expires with the four letter network he’ll join his old partner and we the fans will once again hear baseball’s dynamic duo calling games again.
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