For 36 years and 865 broadcasts, ESPN has punctuated its deep ties to Major League Baseball each week with Sunday Night Baseball.
The Worldwide Leader aired its final national end-of-week game from Houston on Sunday with its MLB package set to end after the season. After the Seattle Mariners completed a road sweep that sent the Astros to the bottom of the AL Wild Card race, longtime ESPN announcer Karl Ravech signed off from Sunday Night Baseball for what could be the final time.
Ravech stuck to the script and kept it short while acknowledging a “very special so-long” to the audience at home.
“For my partners David Cone and Eduardo Perez, great friends, and all of us on our Sunday night crew, a very special so-long from Houston,” Ravech said. “We will see you again.”
ESPN will broadcast a big NL tilt on Wednesday as the New York Mets had to Chicago to take on the Cubs.
“Thanks to everybody for watching another season of Sunday Night Baseball,” Ravech added, choosing not to address the elephant in the room that it could be the final season of the beloved long-running series.
Karl Ravech’s sign-off from the final edition of “Sunday Night Baseball” on ESPN for the foreseeable future ⚾️📺 pic.twitter.com/sBSEkHHUVI
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) September 22, 2025
Next month, ESPN will air its final Wild Card round postseason games under the current deal.
MLB has not officially announced how it will reassemble ESPN’s package starting next season. But the latest reports suggest SNB will move to NBC (likely following the end of the NBA regular season) along with the Wild Card round, while ESPN will retain a package of midweek national games and take over the MLB.tv out-of-market subscription service, housing it within the new ESPN app.
Commissioner Rob Manfred recently confirmed these deals.
The wind-down of national MLB coverage on ESPN has been long and well-documented. First the network reduced the hallowed Baseball Tonight to a weekly program and cut down on baseball talk within studio shows. Now, the institution that is SNB is over for the Worldwide Leader.
The old ESPN package ended when it and MLB mutually opted out earlier this year. The replacement deal with NBC (which will also reportedly see Netflix take over the Home Run Derby) is set to last just three years, ending after the 2028 season.
At that point, ESPN could look to take over an even bigger package of games once again, with insiders speculating the network could even bid on the World Series.
So despite the sad end to SNB this week, Ravech certainly struck the proper tone given that ESPN and MLB could remain in business for years to come.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.