Joe Buck's long-awaited MLB return adds fun wrinkle to Yankees' broadcast schedule

New York Yankees fans planning to stay home and take in the Opening Day experience without the 42 degree temperatures and entire offseason's worth of drunkenness were given an added gift on Tuesday.

For the first time since 2021, ESPN's Joe Buck will step into the booth and call a national baseball game, and he'll be adding his gravitas more specifically to the Yankees vs. Brewers opener, which will take place at Yankee Stadium on March 27.

Last season, opening on the road in Houston felt two or three degrees too strange — that is, until the Yankees went and swept the four-game set anyway. Opening in the Bronx this year, plus the added bonus of Buck making things feel a little bit like the 2003 ALCS, might even be enough to make you forget it's an interleague series with the Brew Crew on the docket instead of a standard rivalry.

Flanking Buck, and giving him local flavor, will be Joe Girardi from the Yankees' booth and Brewers analyst Bill Schroeder, as well as former Dallas Cowboys quarterback Troy Aikman (luckily that is a lie).

Joe Buck's return to baseball will be Opening Day on ESPN for Yankees vs. Brewers showdown

Buck's Yankees-Brewers MegaCast represents an ironic reintroduction for the fan favorite; his father called Cardinals games for decades, and the younger Buck made his local debut in St. Louis. Brewers fans might not love someone who was previously associated with their hated rival making a triumphant return in their booth on Opening Day, but hey, that's what Schroeder is for.

Buck wasn't viewed quite so fondly in his glory days with FOX, but then again, that was only because every baseball fan believes that every announcer hates their favorite team, specifically. That is very obviously not true. The only announcer who hates the Yankees is John Smoltz.

These days, his combination of "earnestly serious" and "subtly silly" is missed on national broadcasts, even though Joe Davis is a fantastic successor. We'll miss Tim McCarver, but hopefully another ex-catcher in Girardi is able to fill the on-field expert role with similar panache.