John Buccigross was not going to take Ben McDonald’s NHL diss lying down.
During the Cubs-Padres Wild Card Game, ESPN announcers Kevin Brown, Jessica Mendoza, and McDonald were on the call.
Brown and McDonald are the regular Baltimore Orioles broadcast team working one of the four Wild Card series that ESPN has the rights to. So they are definitely comfortable bantering with one another, but maybe McDonald didn’t feel the need to be #TeamBristol where some of the other folks calling postseason games would. Or he just really, really, really doesn’t like hockey.
As Brown read a promo for ESPN’s opening night NHL coverage, he asked McDonald about a potential Florida Panthers three-peat. That turned into McDonald revealing that he is anything but a hockey guy.
“There is zero chance I’ll be watching, I’m just gonna be honest with you.” – ABC/ESPN MLB analyst Ben McDonald with a ringing endorsement of ESPN’s NHL Opening Night coverage. pic.twitter.com/OaWXf68hsy
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) October 1, 2025
Whatever the case, his comments went viral on Monday. And they quickly gained steam throughout the hockey universe. And one prominent voice who weighed in was longtime ESPN hockey host and play-by-play man John Buccigross. He fired back at Ben McDonald by noting his lack of postseason appearances throughout his own baseball career.
Zero is also how many postseason innings Ben McDonald pitched in his MLB career. https://t.co/LhynoYjQW9
— BucciOT.Com (@Buccigross) October 1, 2025
Ouch!
For the record, Ben McDonald pitched nine years in the majors between the Orioles and the Brewers with a 78-70 career win-loss record.
It’ll be great to see what happens next in this. Ben McDonald and Kevin Brown are known to have a laugh in the booth, so they will probably revel in having fun with upsetting the entire hockey world and creating a stir. We’re not sure if John Buccigross and company think it’s so much of a joking matter, but maybe they can let bygones be bygones and McDonald can make an appearance on an ESPN NHL broadcast later this season to make amends.
Hopefully this ends with the two coming to some kind of hockey-baseball peace accords and this doesn’t go the way of a civil war like we’ve seen with tennis and pickleball.