The hits just keep on coming for ESPN.
Just weeks after ESPN gutted many high-profile personalities, longtime broadcaster Dan Shulman announced he will step away from “Sunday Night Baseball,” the weekly primetime baseball broadcast, after this year to restore balance between his professional and private life.
Shulman, a stalwart for ESPN’s baseball broadcasts for 20 years, revealed to Sports Illustrated that he is remarrying next year and decided that he wanted to stay longer at his home in Toronto.
“I certainly have mixed emotions about it but at the end of the day I chose to strike a better balance between my personal life and professional life,” Shulman told SI. “I’m grateful to ESPN for giving me this opportunity, and equally grateful that they agreed to let me reconfigure my situation in order to make this work. It was not an easy choice. I have been thinking about it for months. I still want to accomplish certain things professionally but getting the balance in my personal life was the important thing. The older we get I think we sometimes reprioritize and I guess I’m doing that.”
In his 20th year calling baseball for ESPN, Shulman became the signature voice of “Sunday Night Baseball” in 2011, most recently joined in the booth by ex-Yankee Aaron Boone and Jessica Mendoza.
While Shulman won’t be around on Sundays next year, Mark Gross, ESPN’s senior VP of production, said in a statement that Shulman will stick around for other baseball coverage, including MLB Postseason on ESPN Radio and weekly games, as well as continue his role as the key play-by-play guy for ESPN’s college basketball coverage.
“Dan has been the voice of ‘Sunday Night Baseball’ for seven years and we thank him for his tremendous contributions to that important franchise,” Gross said. “We look forward to Dan’s continued multi-platform presence at ESPN.”
The surprising move was indeed Shulman’s decision — and not the product of the Worldwide Leader’s recent layoffs.
“I can’t control what people think but I know what the truth is and I am telling you in all sincerity this originated 100 percent from me,” Shulman said. “I called [senior vice president, production and remote events,] Mark Gross about a month ago and said can I come to Connecticut and sit with you. I told him I had some things that were going on in my life that I wanted to talk to him about.”