Thursday Night Baseball

History

From 1979 through 1983, Thursday night baseball was a fixture on the USA Network. The first broadcast, a doubleheader, took place on April 26, 1979. The early game featured Cleveland against Kansas City, with Jim Woods and Bud Harrelson calling the action, while the late game, typically a West Coast matchup, saw Baltimore face California with Monte Moore and Maury Wills. These games were usually blacked out in the home cities of the teams playing, though local markets could sometimes air a late-night replay. For the 1980 and 1981 seasons, Woods was joined by Nelson Briles, who replaced Harrelson, for the early games. An exception occurred on October 2, 1980, when Woods worked a game in Montreal with his former Boston Red Sox radio partner Ned Martin. Moore and Wes Parker, who replaced Wills, handled the late games. In 1982, the doubleheaders didn’t begin until June 17. Before that date, Moore and Parker called single games. Once the doubleheaders started, they moved to the late game for the rest of the year, while Eddie Doucette, taking over for Woods, and Briles handled the early game. The following year, 1983, USA again delayed the start of doubleheaders until June. During September 1982, Steve Zabriskie and Al Albert filled in for Doucette, with Steve Grad also occasionally substituting. Albert also replaced Doucette for at least one game in 1983. A few years later, in 1989, ABC began airing Thursday night Major League Baseball games. ABC had been broadcasting Monday Night Baseball and some Sunday afternoon games since 1976. That year marked the end of ABC’s continuous baseball coverage, as well as NBC’s, which had aired Saturday afternoon games since 1966 and MLB games since 1947. CBS then took over as the exclusive national broadcast network for baseball with a four-year contract running from 1990 to 1993.