MLB on Five was a sports television programme on Channel 5 in the UK providing live coverage of Major League Baseball games, broadcast between 1997 and 2008. It was usually broadcast on Sunday (going into Monday morning) and Wednesday nights (going into Thursday). The Sunday broadcasts usually began at around 1 am BST leading into the live Sunday Night Baseball telecast, while the Wednesday programme began at various times and the game was usually shown with a one- to two-hour delay. Five also provided live coverage of the All-Star Game and World Series. Regular-season game commentary was taken direct from ESPN; All-Star Game and World Series broadcasts typically used the MLB International feed. History 1997 – 2001 The show was first broadcast on Opening Day in 1997 with a game between the defending World Series champion New York Yankees and the Seattle Mariners. It was initially part of the channel's "Live & Dangerous" late night sport strand; however, by the 1998 season it had been separated and renamed MLB on Five. For its first eighteen months, the show was sponsored by Coors Extra Gold, complete with break bumpers with the voice-over "Major League Baseball: a taste of real America in association with Coors Extra Gold". By June in the 1998 season, this sponsorship deal had ended, and the show did not have a sponsor after that time. The original hosts of the show were Tommy Boyd and Todd Macklin. Macklin had originally been hired as a producer for the show and was only put into the analyst role when no one else could be found. "Did Elvis like baseball?" enquired Boyd in one exchange. "Could he eat it?" replied Macklin. A little over a month into the show's first season, Boyd phoned in ill before a show and never returned (joking references were still occasionally made long afterwards on the show about his lengthy illness). Boyd has since made comments stating that he hated baseball, including describing it as "glorified rounders". After a few shows with a number of guest hosts, Jonny Gould was brought in on a three-show trial and remained the host until the show's conclusion. During these first few years, the popularity of the show blossomed with audiences reaching over one million (a huge figure for a show broadcast in the early hours of the morning) during the 2000 World Series. During this time the show also