Phillies fans tuning in to watch Friday’s game against the Miami Marlins will hear a familiar voice, just not the one they normally see on TV.
Tom McCarthy, in his 15th season as the television voice of the Phillies on NBC Sports Philadelphia, was on hand to call the team’s fifth-straight win Thursday. But McCarthy won’t be calling the rest of the series against the Marlins because he’ll be more than 1,300 miles away in Buffalo, calling the Bills’ Week 1 matchup against the Arizona Cardinals for CBS.
It’s McCarthy’s 11th season calling NFL games for CBS, and he expects to call six to 10 games for the network. This year he’ll be the play-by-play voice in a three-person booth that also features Jay Feely and former offensive lineman Ross Tucker, who calls Eagles preseason games on NBC10.
“Ross and I have done so many games together, and I’ve known him since he was a sophomore in college, because I called his games at Princeton,” McCarthy said.
Replacing McCarthy in the booth on NBC Sports Philadelphia will be a familiar voice to Phillies fans — Scott Franzke, the team’s longtime radio announcer on 94.1 WIP and other stations throughout the Delaware Valley. Calling this weekend’s games alongside Franzke will be analyst Rubén Amaro Jr., the former Phillies general manager in his third season on the network.
One empty seat creates another. Filling in for Franzke will be pre- and postgame host Gregg Murphy, who is finishing up his fourth season with the team after a long career at NBC Sports Philadelphia and its predecessor, Comcast SportsNet. He’ll broadcast the rest of the Marlins series alongside veteran announcer Larry Andersen, who is calling more games this season after having reduced his workload in recent years.
CBS has also tapped McCarthy to call the Week 2 matchup between the Los Angeles Chargers and Carolina Panthers, which will cause him to miss two Phillies games against the New York Mets. Franzke will call those games as well, pairing with John Oliver’s favorite baseball announcer, John Kruk. Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt will join Franzke and Kruk in the booth during the Phillies-Mets game on Sunday, Sept. 15.
McCarthy was also supposed to work in Week 4 for CBS, but pulled back because of how the Phillies season is playing out down the stretch.
“I think there’s going to be some stuff coming down to the wire that last week of the season I want to be around for,” McCarthy said.
McCarthy will also call the Thursday Night Football matchup between the Bills and Miami Dolphins on Thursday for Westwood One, but won’t miss time on NBC Sports Philadelphia because the Phillies are off that night.
The Eagles are scheduled to play on CBS three times, but Jim Nantz and Tony Romo are slated to call all three games. That includes the Eagles’ Week 10 matchup against the Dallas Cowboys on Nov. 10, the first time CBS has broadcast a game featuring the two NFC East rivals in more than three decades. McCarthy holds the distinction of being the only announcer not named Jim Nantz to call games alongside Romo, which he did in 2021 when Nantz had COVID.
McCarthy has never worked an Eagles game on TV for CBS, but he was able to call the Birds’ playoff loss to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in 2021 on radio for Westwood One alongside NBC Sports Philadelphia analyst and former Eagles quarterback Ron Jaworski.
“Harry Kalas used to leave every week in September to do NFL Films and Notre Dame games, stuff like that,” McCarthy said. “I’m just grateful [the Phillies] still allow it, and we work together to make sure I’m around for the important stuff.”
Phillies scheduled for one more Apple TV+ game
Phillies fans aren’t out of the streaming woods yet.
The Phillies’ Sept. 20 matchup against the New York Mets — who have surged into the wild-card race — will stream exclusively on Apple TV+’s Friday Night Baseball package
Apple hasn’t announced the broadcast team for the game. The tech giant streams two games each Friday and has two announcing duos — Wayne Randazzo with Dontrelle Willis, and Alex Faust with Ryan Spilborghs. Heidi Watney — the inspiration for Matt Damon’s character’s name in The Martian — and Tricia Whitaker are Apple TV+’s stadium reporters. Though McCarthy and Kruk called a Phillies-Diamondbacks game on AppleTV+ back in June.
Last year, Apple TV+ raised its price to $9.99 a month, but there is a two-month free trial for new and returning subscribers. One cool feature is you can switch to WIP’s audio while streaming the game on Apple TV+ without the headache of trying to sync the feeds.