The 2026 Little League World Series came to a close on Sunday afternoon, and so did Karl Ravech\u2019s 33-year tenure at ESPN.<\/p>\n
Ravech, 61, was handed his pink slip<\/a> as part of a larger round of layoffs<\/a> that also swept up Ryan Clark, Cam Newton, David Lloyd, Tom Pelissero, Stephania Bell, Bart Scott, and Charles Davis earlier this summer. He was perhaps the most decorated name on the list, given everything he\u2019d done for the network as the longtime face of its baseball coverage, but ESPN chairman Jimmy Pitaro framed the cuts<\/a> as a byproduct of folding the newly acquired NFL Network into the company\u2019s larger structure.<\/p>\n Ravech, according to a new profile in The Washington Post,<\/a> learned of his layoff from a reporter requesting comment while standing on an Amtrak platform in Philadelphia. He was readying himself to ride back to Connecticut when he was informed of his fate, news that ESPN\u2019s own higher-ups had not yet shared with him. He called the experience \u201csurreal<\/a>\u201d in a separate Westwood One radio appearance, and later told the Post that the three hours riding back \u201cwere a lot.\u201d<\/p>\n And while he shouldered one of the heaviest broadcasting workloads at the network, ESPN never once raised the possibility of easing that slate or scaling back his pay before deciding to part ways with one of its longest-tenured employees. He\u2019s said he would have welcomed that conversation, whatever form it took, but that ESPN never brought it to him.<\/p>\n \u201cI would\u2019ve been willing to talk,\u201d he told WaPo\u2019s Noah White. \u201cBut I never heard anything.\u201d<\/p>\n And according to the Post, it\u2019s not like Ravech was making nothing. He was pulling in somewhere in the low-to-mid seven figures, a respectable number by any normal measure but far short of what ESPN now pays its true headliners. Pat McAfee reportedly earns around $30 million a year and is currently negotiating an extension<\/a> that could push closer to $60 million. Stephen A. Smith signed a five-year, $100 million deal last winter.<\/p>\n Of course, ESPN could\u2019ve found him a softer landing, like it has with many of its own.<\/p>\n When Jessica Mendoza had to be removed from Sunday Night Baseball because of an egregious editorial misstep<\/a> by the network, she was allowed to remain with ESPN\u2019s MLB coverage, but in a lesser role. Booger McFarland was pulled from Monday Night Football and landed in a studio where he is a key personality for the network. Sean McDonough, Steve Levy, and Joe Tessitore were all given a crack as announcers on Monday Night Football and didn\u2019t work out, but because they were popular internally, they all continue to play major roles for the network. Pablo Torre and Bomani Jones continued with other assignments when High Noon was canceled. Even Max Kellerman, pushed out of First Take when his fit there stopped making sense, resurfaced with This Just In.<\/p>\n But like Tony Reali<\/a>, Ravech got no such long-term role to fall back on. Instead, he showed up in the ESPN booth just over a week later<\/a>, calling a Nationals-Braves game alongside Eduardo P\u00e9rez. He\u2019d chosen to work out the rest of his contracted summer dates, Little League World Series included, and called his last MLB game on Aug. 24<\/a>, working the Little League Classic with P\u00e9rez and Buster Olney at Historic Bowman Field.<\/p>\n What comes next remains unclear, even to Ravech. He\u2019s said he\u2019d like to keep calling games somewhere, ESPN included, but as of Sunday\u2019s finish he has no real sense of what that looks like. Leaving Williamsport has hit him harder than most of the rest of it, he told the Post, describing the goodbye as almost funeral-like in how it felt. He\u2019s been open about wanting to call the Little League World Series for as long as he\u2019s able. He\u2019s also been realistic about the fact that nothing, including that, lasts forever.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s hard to leave it behind,\u201d he told WaPo. \u201cIt\u2019s almost like I\u2019m being eulogized. \u2026 I\u2019m here because I love the Little League World Series, like so many other people here. I\u2019ve spent so much time here, seen the Series grow. If I could, I\u2019d call this for the rest of my life. But things change.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 Little League World Series came to a close on Sunday afternoon, and so did Karl Ravech\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1035144,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[30],"tags":[171,383489,173,67,132,68],"class_list":["post-1035143","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-karl-ravech","tag-tv","tag-united-states","tag-unitedstates","tag-us"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/117190911900116001","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035143","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1035143"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1035143\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1035144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1035143"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1035143"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1035143"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}