Joe Buck is leaving postseason baseball in his past.
The longtime play-by-play man revealed on “Sports Media with Richard Deitsch” that he was offered the chance to call playoff baseball on ESPN last year, but turned it down — and its a choice he’s still comfortable with.
“As you and I sit here right now on April 10, I don’t even know who’s got the postseason anymore,” Buck said on the episode that dropped Saturday. “I assume ESPN’s got a game, maybe they don’t… Well, there you go — NBC has the Wild Card, so I’m not going to be doing that. That was on the table last year, if it was something that I wanted to do. When ESPN had their games in the early round, it just was at a bad time.
“We were doing a Broncos game, and I would’ve had to do the old stuff — leave in the middle of the night, go do a Tuesday night game after ‘Monday Night Football.’ And believe me, I’m the luckiest guy in the world; I wrote a book about that, that I got to do any of it. But I just feel like that’s a chapter of my life that really, it’s an itch that doesn’t need to be scratched anymore. I’ve done all that stuff.”
Buck, who moved to the Worldwide Leader in 2022, could’ve been on the postseason call when ESPN still counted MLB among it’s package of deals; it opted out of its $550 million annual deal to renegotiate one that doesn’t include playoff baseball.
He’s called 24 World Series during his illustrious career, and returned to the booth to call the Yankees’ Opening Day game against the Brewers last season. He’ll do Wednesday’s Mets-Dodgers game for ESPN’s Jackie Robinson Day broadcast alongside SNY’s Ron Darling, SportsNet LA’s Orel Hershiser and ESPN’s Buster Olney, but seems much more comfortable with his current duties as ESPN’s “Monday Night Football” voice.
He’s in the midst of a five-year deal estimated to be worth $60 million-$75 million over five years — and he’s in it for the long haul.
“If you reached through my computer screen right now and handed me a contract to continue my time at ESPN, I would sign it without even looking at it,” Buck told Deitsch for Sports Business Journal last week. “I’ve loved every second of it, and I am hopeful that I’m at ESPN for the rest of my career. That’s as plain as I can say it and as honest as I can say it and maybe it’s stupid of me to say.
“If something gets thrown at me and I have to shift, I’ll shift. But I would be hopeful to stay right where I am until I’m finished.”
That would seemingly be in the football booth.