ESPN will feature the Cubs twice on Sunday Night Baseball in April and May 2021

Major League Baseball has a schedule for 2021 that begins April 1. The Cubs will host the Pirates at Wrigley Field that day.

That is, if the pandemic doesn’t have other ideas for baseball next year.

That’s a story for another time; today, ESPN announced its Sunday Night Baseball schedule for April and May 2021, along with three games in July and one in September. (It will not surprise you to learn that the latter four games involve the Red Sox, Mets and Yankees.)

The Cubs will be on the Worldwide Leader’s featured Sunday Night game twice in the first two months of the season: April 18 at Wrigley Field against the Braves, and May 23 vs. the Cardinals in St. Louis. Both those games will begin at 6 p.m. CT.

The ESPN press release announcing these (and other) games did not mention the network’s SNB announcers. Matt Vasgersian, Alex Rodriguez and Buster Olney did commentary on SNB games in 2020; I haven’t found anything online indicating these three won’t continue, but it’s interesting that ESPN’s release didn’t mention any of them.

Here’s the rest of the Sunday Night Baseball schedule announced by ESPN Friday morning. The network says other games will be added later, generally two weeks in advance. Note that times listed below are Eastern time.