NY Mets Opening Day scheduled for 1pm vs. Pirates without Gary, Keith, and Ron

It all begins on March 26 at 1pm for the 2026 New York Mets. Opening Day will play on at Citi Field and those in attendance will be treated to the familiar sights and sounds at the ballpark. Maybe some late March cloud coverage, too.

Anyone not in attendance may need to rearrange their work schedule. The game will now start at 1pm on a Thursday without the comfort of hearing Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez, and Ron Darling. The game is set to be broadcast on NBC and Peacock, making us wait a little extra to hear those voices in regular season action.

What could potentially be a matchup of Paul Skenes vs. Nolan McLean to start the year won’t be called by GKR. It could be worse. It could be Apple.

It won’t take long for Mets fans to find somewhere new to watch games in 2026

At least this doesn’t appear to be exclusively on Peacock. Even Joe Benigno can accidentally find NBC by pushing enough buttons on his “clicker.”

The full broadcast schedule across all of the national networks has yet to come out. NBC/Peacock have become the new home for Sunday night baseball with ESPN (the worldwide leader in sports once) moving away from baseball. It would be like if MTV stopped playing music videos. Wait a second…

There’s never an acceptable time to move away from the familiar hometown voices to a national one. Something is generally missing. Those broadcasts are made for the non-fan who just likes the sport. Someone is bound to call him “Owen McQueen” and we’re going to get incorrect facts about Juan Soto’s contract and maybe even some false claim about how Marcus Semien got to Queens in the first place.

With any luck, there are going to be a whole slew of Mets games in 2026 where GKR are absent. It’s called the MLB playoffs.

Until then, we bite the bullet and find a radio or download an app. Mute the television if needed. But also give it a try first because not every national broadcast is as brutal as others. Just be sure, if you plan to subscribe to Peacock, that you do it ahead of time to rewatch The Office once through before the MLB season begins.