Yankees Prepared To Boycott ESPN Over Schedule Disagreement

The New York Yankees biggest opponent of this young MLB season seems to be Mother Nature. About a third of the way through the season the Yankees have had seven games either postponed or suspended. Thanks to their scheduling issues the Yankees are adding ESPN to their list of opponents.

That means you have to find ways to fit these games back into your schedule. It's not such a big deal when it happens against division teams like Tampa Bay(rained out on April 2nd) or Baltimore(Postponed on 5/31 & 6/3) because you will play them so many times you can normally fix that with a four game series instead of three or a double header. The real problem are teams like the Tigers and Nationals considering you are only scheduled to travel to Detroit and Washington once each. Regardless of all that when seven of your first 61 games are rescheduled things get a little crazy.

Here's where ESPN comes in, the Mother-ship used it's right to Flex a 1 pm Yankees @ Blue Jays on Sunday 8th to the 8 pm Sunday Night Baseball game. This is a right given to ESPN by the Players Association in the current CBA. So here's where it gets a bit sticky. The Yankees players voted to play a double header in Baltimore on July 9th thinking the Sunday game would stay at 1pm.

The New York Post's Andrew Marchand is reporting that if ESPN leaves the Yankees/Blue Jays game at 8pm the Yankees "Boycott" ESPN.

In an effort to change the time of the July 8 “Sunday Night Baseball” telecast, the Yankees are threatening to boycott ESPN personnel all year, according to sources with knowledge of the team’s thinking.

“It is a tool in the toolbox,” one source said.

Yankees manager Aaron Boone, a former ESPN analyst, has been vocal in saying that the July 8 game in Toronto that was pushed back from 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. should be reversed to its original time.

The main reason that ESPN is so reluctant to move the game back is they have an All Star selection show scheduled for 7pm on July 8th right before the Yankees game.