Glad I checked my spam

I usually skip over PR emails asking for pub on the site, but I have to say Sirius XM really deserves a shout on this one. Amongst the congratulatory foreign lottery messages, and emails from friends stranded in England in desperate need of $1200, I found this gem. The satellite radio giant will be providing extensive coverage of the Futures Game, a fantastic event that gets the shaft every year.

From Sirius XM:
NEW YORK – June 30, 2009 – SIRIUS XM Radio (NASDAQ: SIRI) announced today that it will offer baseball fans an exclusive radio broadcast of the XM All-Star Futures Game on Sunday, July 12, two days before the 2009 MLB All-Star Game. The XM All-Star Futures Game will be played at Busch Stadium in St. Louis and features top minor league prospects from the U.S. and abroad.

Veteran major league pitcher Jim Kaat will be the game analyst for the broadcast, which will air live starting with the pre-game at 2:00 pm ET on XM channel 175. Scott Graham, host of SIRIUS XM’s Baseball This Morning talk show, will be the play-by-play voice.

Former Major League Baseball pitcher and longtime broadcaster Jim Kaat, also known as “Kitty,” won 283 games during his 25-year career in Major League Baseball. Best known for his time with the Minnesota Twins, the southpaw won 16 consecutive Gold Gloves from 1962-1977. Following his retirement after the 1983 season, Kaat moved to the broadcast booth, covering three World Series for CBS from 1990-1992, and becoming an analyst for New York Yankees baseball from 1995-2006, where he won seven Emmy Awards. Kaat is now a color commentator for MLB Network’s Thursday Night Baseball series.

Scott Graham has spent over 20 years as a radio and television sportscaster. His work has covered Major League Baseball, the NFL, college football and basketball, and a variety of other sports from golf to volleyball. He has been a play-by-play broadcaster for the Philadelphia Phillies, ESPN, FOX, CBS and a number of national and regional television and radio networks.

The XM All-Star Futures Game showcases the brightest talent currently in the minor leagues. Rosters include up to two players from each MLB farm system who are assigned to U.S. and World teams based on place of birth. The World team defeated the U.S. team 3-0 in last year’s XM All-Star Futures Game at Yankee Stadium. This year, Hall of Fame shortstop Ozzie Smith will manage the U.S. team and his former Cardinals teammate, Jose Oquendo, now the third base coach for St. Louis, will manage the World team.

XM Radio airs every game of the 2009 MLB season live, including the 2009 MLB All-Star Game. XM listeners can hear every game from all 30 Major League teams on XM channels 175 to 189. A schedule of upcoming MLB games on XM can be found at www.xmradio.com/mlb.

In addition to live play-by-play coverage, SIRIUS XM offers baseball fans 24-hour coverage of the game on MLB Home Plate, the only radio channel dedicated to covering Major League Baseball seven days a week, 365 days a year. Now available to both XM and SIRIUS subscribers (XM channel 175, SIRIUS channel 210 with the “Best of XM” programming package), MLB Home Plate offers the most comprehensive radio coverage of the Major Leagues with a daily lineup of talk shows hosted by baseball experts and insiders like Cal Ripken Jr., Bill Ripken, Rob Dibble, Jim Duquette, Kevin Kennedy, Buck Martinez and others.

For more information, please visit www.xmradio.com/mlb.

As many of you know, The Fowl Balls attended last year's Futures Game, and we have always been big fans. To see Sirius XM make this push for the game, as well as securing the most underrated announcer of our time in Jim Kaat, is refreshing to the bordering-on-psychotic baseball fan.