MLB Network Radio

MLB Network Radio (formerly MLB Home Plate) is an American sports talk radio station on Sirius XM Radio that features Major League Baseball related talk shows, as well as archives and live reports.

MLB Home Plate launched in February 2005, as an incentive to entertain the new listeners who signed up for XM's Major League Baseball deal when the games were not on. MLB Network Radio is carried on XM channel 89, and was added to the "Best of XM" package on Sirius Satellite Radio on December 10, 2008, airing on channel 209.

First season on the air

MLB Home Plate launched at the start of the Major League Baseball season in 2005, ready to entertain the new customers who bought XM to hear their favorite teams. It launched with a full lineup, and several guests immediately. On day one of broadcast, José Canseco made the claim to his former manager turned Home Plate host Kevin Kennedy that Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire took steroids during the 1998 Home Run Chase. XM Satellite Radio even put out a press release about the broadcast. Around launch time, XM announced that they had signed Cal Ripken, Jr. to do a Saturday mid-morning show on Home Plate. The channel was aided throughout the season as XM's subscriber growth prediction exceeded what they expected, with retailers claiming that 15-17% of people who signed up for XM did it for baseball.

Baseball field

A baseball field, also called a ball field or a baseball diamond, is the field upon which the game of baseball is played. The term is also used as a metonym for baseball park.

Specifications

The starting point for much of the action on the field is home plate, which is a five-sided slab of whitened rubber, 17 inches square with two of the corners removed so that one edge is 17 inches long, two adjacent sides are 8½ inches and the remaining two sides are 12 inches and set at an angle to make a point. Adjacent to each of the two parallel 8½-inch sides is a batter's box. The point of home plate where the two 12-inch sides meet at right angles is at one corner of a ninety-foot square. The other three corners of the square, in counterclockwise order from home plate, are called first base, second base, and third base. Three canvas bags fifteen inches (38 cm) square mark the three bases. These three bags along with home plate form the four points at the corners of the infield.

All the bases, including home plate, lie entirely within fair territory. Thus, any batted ball that touches those bases must necessarily be in fair territory. While the first and third base bags are placed so that they lie inside the 90 foot square formed by the bases, the second base bag is placed so that its center (unlike first, third and home) coincides exactly with the "point" of the ninety-foot infield square. Thus, although the "points" of the bases are 90 feet apart, the physical distance between each successive pair of base markers is closer to 88 feet.

Home plate (disambiguation)

Home plate is a baseball term for the final base that a player must touch to score.

Home plate may also refer to:

See also

Home Plate (album)

Home Plate is the fifth album by Bonnie Raitt, released in 1975 (see 1975 in music).

Track listing

Personnel