Thursday Night Baseball

Thursday Night Baseball
Starring	Bob Costas Matt Vasgersian Rich Waltz Al Leiter Joe Magrane Dan Plesac Harold Reynolds Jim Kaat Mitch Williams Sam Ryan
Theme music composer	David Robidoux
Country of origin	United States
Production
Running time	3 hours (approximate)
Release
Original network	MLB Network
Picture format	480i (SD) 720p (HD)
Original release	April 9, 2009 – present

Thursday Night Baseball (also known as MLB Network Showcase) is the title of a presentation of Major League Baseball on cable and satellite channel MLB Network (self-produced by MLB Network), that premiered on April 9, 2009. Longtime NBC Sports broadcaster Bob Costas is one of the play-by-play voices of the broadcasts.Matt Vasgersian also does play-by-play on some games. Al Leiter, Joe Magrane, Dan Plesac, Harold Reynolds, Mitch Williams and Jim Kaat provide color commentary. The network produces 26 non-exclusive live games a year on Thursday nights. Since one or both teams' local TV rights holders also carry the games, the MLB Network feed is subject to local blackouts. In that event, the cities in the blacked-out markets will instead see a simulcast of another scheduled game via one team's local TV rights holder.

From 1979–1983, the USA Network broadcast Major League Baseball games under the Thursday Game of the Week banner.

The series began April 26, 1979 with a doubleheader: Cleveland at Kansas City (Jim Woods/Bud Harrelson) followed by Baltimore at California (Monte Moore/Maury Wills). The second game of the night was typically, based out of the West Coast. The games were usually blacked out of the competing teams' cities. Once in a while, when USA did a repeat of the telecast late at night, local cities were allowed to show the rerun.