Roger Clemens is heading back into an NBC Sports baseball booth, and this time it comes with Yankees-Red Sox on Sunday Night Baseball. NBC Sports said Clemens will join Jason Benetti for the June 28, 2026 broadcast from Fenway Park at 7 p.m. ET, marking the network’s first carry of the rivalry since 1995.
The assignment fits the scale of the game as much as the name attached to it. Clemens won seven Cy Young Awards and spent 24 MLB seasons with the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Yankees and Astros, which makes him one of the most recognizable former pitchers available for a rivalry broadcast that NBC Sports is treating like an event. Bob Costas will host the pregame show, Will Middlebrooks will join Benetti in the booth, and Anthony Rizzo will provide Inside the Pitch commentary from the batter’s perspective.
The timing also gives NBC Sports a current baseball story to hang the return on. The Yankees enter at 46-31 and lead the American League East by two games, while the club leads the American League with a 3.37 ERA, 115 home runs, 375 RBI and 81 stolen bases. Ben Rice leads the Yankees with 22 home runs, 53 RBI, a.288 batting average and 15 doubles, and Jazz Chisholm ranks fourth in MLB with 23 stolen bases. Those numbers matter because NBC Sports is not selling this as a nostalgia act alone; it is selling a marquee rivalry game with two teams that have been productive enough to justify the spotlight.
The Red Sox bring their own edge into the telecast, even if the broader numbers are less imposing. They are eighth in the American League with a.242 batting average, while Willson Contreras leads the club with a.281 batting average, a.525 slugging percentage, a.901 OPS, 16 home runs and 45 RBI. Aroldis Chapman is tied for fourth in the American League with 14 saves, which gives the broadcast a late-game angle if the game tightens the way rivalry games often do.
What NBC Sports did not explain is why Clemens, specifically, was the choice for this return. The network is leaning on a pitcher with deep ties to both clubs and a career that still carries weight in any Yankees-Red Sox discussion, but the reason for putting him in this booth now is left unstated. That omission matters because the broadcast is being framed as a milestone and a reunion at once, and the selection of Clemens is the clearest sign that NBC Sports wants the telecast to feel like more than a routine Sunday night game.
The last Yankees-Red Sox game NBC Sports cited came on Sept. 8, 1995, when New York beat Boston 8-4 at Yankee Stadium. Nearly three decades later, the network is bringing the rivalry back in a slot built for maximum attention, with Clemens in the booth, Costas on the pregame show and Fenway Park as the backdrop. The next thing that matters is simple: on June 28, the broadcast will show whether NBC Sports is reviving a baseball standard or just borrowing from its past.
