TAMPA, Fla. -- Nine innings. Nine players. Nine in the booth?
It made perfect sense to the YES Network, which unveiled the game's first nine-person broadcast team as part of its promotional campaign for the 2018 season. The entertaining spot premiered during Friday's Grapefruit League telecast between the Yankees and Red Sox.
YES assembled its lineup of heavy hitters for the promo: Michael Kay (play by play), Ken Singleton (analyst), Paul O'Neill (food analyst), John Flaherty (cleanup analyst), Meredith Marakovits (field analyst), Bob Lorenz (candy analyst), Jack Curry (music analyst), Nancy Newman (B.P. analyst) and David Cone (sabermetrics).
The spot also features Yankees general manager Brian Cashman, faux-confessional interviews with Greg Bird, Brett Gardner, Didi Gregorius, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, and the visual of Carsten Sabathia crowding into a packed George M. Steinbrenner Field elevator.
"I guess everything really is bigger in New York," Stanton says.