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Monday, April 11, 2022

NYC Radio: MLB Easy To Find, Free On The Radio


There is only one certainty when it comes to locating the broadcast of a Mets or Yankees game this season:   You can always find it on the radio, according to Bob Raissman at The NY Daily News.

That’s 162 dates of consistency for the Mets, on WCBS 880 AM, and the Yankees on WFAN 660 AM / 101.9 FM. Or as one of the mouths who works the Mets on the radio, Howie Rose, likes to say, you can “put it in the books.” Count on it. Just like death, taxes, and stupidity on sports-talk radio.

Raismann states Major League Baseball, and some of its member clubs like the Mets and Yankees, have found new markets for their TV rights and new ways to gouge fans. They are selling everything that isn’t nailed down. MLB’s television Gnomes have cut deals with multiple streaming services. Checking your “local baseball TV listings” is now akin to reading Tolstoy’s War and Peace.

On any given night or day, Yankees or Mets games could air on YES, SNY, Fox (Ch.5), WPIX-TV (Ch. 11), FS1, ESPN, TBS, MLBN, Amazon, AppleTV+, Peacock, YES app, SNY app. So, baseball fans, already paying through the nose for cable subscriptions, are also being asked to pay more monthly to subscribe to the streaming services. Then, they have to deal with the technology it takes to access those services and pray that it all works.

There is a segment of both fan bases who won’t want to either 1) Pay up, especially with inflation running rampant 2) Install 3) Hunt down the games.

Raissman adds Radio games are easy to find and free. You can even listen without a password, night or day.  Guess what? It’s always on the same stations. It’s anxiety — and glitch — free. Most of the time, baseball on the radio is a beautiful thing.

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