Play ball! The Cincinnati Reds return to the airwaves Sunday with the spring training opener from Goodyear, AZ, the start of seven months of Reds games on radio.
All 28 spring games will be broadcast on iHeartMedia's WLW-AM or WSAI-AM. There are no internet-only games on Reds.com scheduled this spring, unlike recent years.
Reds flagship WLW-AM will broadcast 19 games, beginning with the Reds-Cleveland game at 3:05 p.m. Sunday. WSAI-AM will air nine games, mostly weekday games. The pregame show begins a half-hour before the first pitch except when pre-empted by the Hot Stove League on Wednesdays (March 3, 17 and 24).
Half of the Reds Cactus League schedule in Arizona will be night games. Those games will start in Cincinnati at 8:05 p.m. or 9:05 p.m., with one game at 10:05 p.m. on Friday March 19 when the Reds play the Giants. Here's a link to the Reds spring schedule.
Play-by-play announcer Tommy Thrall will call the games with Jeff Brantley or others from Arizona ball parks, says Dave "Yiddy" Armbruster, Reds radio producer-director and iHeartMedia's sports operations director.
"Unfortunately, we can only go to the ball park for the game," he says. "We don't have access to the (training) complex or practice fields."
Last year Thrall and Brantley broadcast Reds regular season away and home games from Great American Ballpark. They did road games by watching TV monitors.
Fox Sports Ohio has not released its Reds spring TV schedule.
FSO and WKRC-TV will telecast the Reds Opening Day game against the Cardinals at 4:10 p.m. Thursday, April 1, with the club's new TV team, play-by-play announcer John Sadak and Hall of Famer Barry Larkin. FSO is expected to carry all 162 Reds games this year again.
