Despite the fact that they’ve made the MLB post-season each of the last three years, and the World Series two of the last three years, Texas is still not necessarily a prime destination for big baseball games, at least not in the minds of Fox.
Joe Buck and Tim McCarver will call a Texas Rangers regular season game for the first time in 15 years
The duo have not sat in on a Rangers game since 1998.
Rick Yeatts
In fact, Saturday’s Rangers game against the St. Louis on Fox will be the first time the network’s big game duo of Joe Buck and Tim McCarver will sit in on a Texas regular season game during their current run of success. They’ll call the 7 p.m. ET start, which will air in 50 percent of the country. But the network’s “apathy” toward the Rangers goes back much further than that.
The two have called regular season Rangers games in the past, though separately. McCarver will be calling his first Rangers game since September of 2011. Buck hasn’t done one since August of 2006. However, the last time the duo called a Texas regular season game together? Well, I did a little research (thanks to the wonderful sports TV record-keepers The506) and found out... it was August 15, 1998. That’s fifteen years ago. Naturally, the Rangers were playing at Yankee Stadium that day.
We’re not here to shame Buck or McCarver, or even Fox Sports, for this oversight. Buck doesn’t do that much baseball anymore, maybe a dozen games each season. And they obviously called the Rangers ALCS against Detroit and their two World Series. But lets face it, this really shows off how New York/Boston/St. Louis/Chicago-centric the network is during the regular season. In the time since Buck last worked a Rangers game (2006), he’s called dozens of Mets games, and New York hasn’t had a post-season berth since 2006. This is a team that’s won two of the last three American League pennants!
Kudos to Fox for getting Buck and McCarver out there this week, as it looks like the Rangers are destined for at least a Wild Card spot this year. Though even they’d have to admit that it’s crazy how long its taken them to get to a Rangers game.
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