Daily Sports: Day-Night AL East Baseball On Thursday

A day-night doubleheader in major league baseball is the cornerstone of daily sports action on TV for Thursday, and the AL East race is at the heart of it.

We went through Wednesday without a Yankee game being nationally broadcast, and apparently the networks are starving for more. So the matinee finale of the Yanks’ four-game set in Texas will be shown to the MLB Network audience at 2 PM ET.

Three of these four games were on national TV, and the entire Yankees-Red Sox series this past weekend was on either MLB Network, Fox or ESPN. With a big home series against Tampa Bay coming up, we’ll see if New York can keep getting foisted on the national audience. Although at least these are genuinely important games against good teams, as the Pinstripes try and keep their playoff hopes alive.

The prime-time game on Thursday will be split between Tampa Bay-Boston, as the two AL East leaders play their own finale of a four-game set. Other viewers will get a good National League game, as the Phillies meet the Cardinals. Coverage begins at 7 PM ET on MLB Network.

There’s not a lot available outside of live baseball, although if you’re really starving for football you can watch a live Canadian Football League game, as Edmonton meets Montreal at 7:30 PM ET on ESPN2. I don’t follow the CFL enough (well actually I don’t follow it at all) to know the implications of the game, if either is any good or what noteworthy players might be in action. But to each his own.

TheSportsNotebook will have an NL East-based feature today as we check in on that division. MLB coverage this week is taking a division each day, and our earlier National League feature looked at the state of the Arizona Diamondbacks’ bullpen.