NBC opens its summer Sunday Night Baseball stretch on Sunday night with a Chicago Cubs-St. Louis Cardinals matchup, the kind of game that turns a weekly broadcast slot into a national event. It is the first of the network's weekly Sunday night baseball games that will run until Labor Day, with only July 12 skipped because of the All-Star break.

The pairing gives NBC an immediate test with one of baseball's most familiar rivalries, and it comes with a booth that mixes star power and local familiarity. Jason Benetti will be joined by Albert Pujols, who won three NL MVP awards with the Cardinals, and Jim Deshaies, the former Cubs pitcher who now works on the club's local broadcasts and has been a longtime friend of Benetti's. The game is also the first Cubs-Cardinals contest on NBC since June 3, 1989, when the clubs met in the network's old Saturday afternoon Game of the Week window.

That return carries extra weight because NBC is using this summer to try to make Sunday night baseball feel like a real broadcast appointment again. The network has already drawn at least 1.8 million viewers for its two Sunday night games on linear television, while most of the early-season Sunday games were streamed on Peacock and one opening day doubleheader helped launch the package. averaged 1.83 million for Sunday night last year, its best mark since 2017, so NBC is stepping into a slot where audience expectations are already clear.

The setup also reflects how NBC has chosen to stage its baseball rights. This is the first year of a three-year deal that gives the network Sunday night games and the Wild Card rounds after opted out of its previous MLB agreement, and NBC now has a weekly Sunday night sports window it can build around because of its NFL and NBA coverage. The baseball schedule reaches beyond Sunday night's Cubs-Cardinals game, too, with Yankees-Red Sox on June 28, Padres-Dodgers on July 5, Dodgers-Yankees on July 19 and Giants-Red Sox on Aug. 23, before a Cardinals-Giants matchup closes the run on Labor Day.

For NBC, the question is no longer whether it can get attention on opening weekends. It is whether that audience holds through the long summer stretch, when the games are on broadcast TV and the network has a chance to make Sunday night baseball matter again.