Morgan Planning to Turn Two With a New York Doubleheader

Joe Morgan will have rare doubleheader duty Wednesday as ESPN’s lead baseball commentator works the Dodgers-Mets playoff opener and then tries to speed through New York traffic to do the Yankees-Tigers series.

He will get some help -- a police escort.

First, he will join play-by-play announcer Gary Thorne and fellow commentator Steve Phillips at Shea Stadium for Game 1 of the Dodgers’ best-of-five series, which begins at 1 p.m. PDT.

Then he will race from that game with the hope of arriving at Yankee Stadium -- about 10 miles away across the Triborough Bridge -- in time to join play-by-play partner Jon Miller for the first pitch as the Yankees play host to the Detroit Tigers for Game 2 of that series. That telecast is scheduled to begin at 5 p.m. PDT.

And this will be after he works Game 1 today of the Oakland Athletics-Minnesota Twins with Miller, scheduled to begin at 10 a.m. PDT.

Game 1 of the Yankees-Tigers series is tonight on Fox at 5:15, with Joe Buck and Tim McCarver announcing.

The telecast of Game 2 of the Dodgers-Mets series will start on Fox at 5 p.m. Thursday with Thom Brennaman and Steve Lyons. Vin Scully can be heard on KFWB 980 and the Dodgers’ radio network during the entire series, handling the first three and final three innings of each game. Charley Steiner and Rick Monday will work together on the middle three.

KSPN 710, ESPN Radio’s L.A. affiliate, will broadcast a full schedule of postseason games, including the Dodgers-Mets series. XM Satellite Radio is also broadcasting the postseason.

There will be postgame coverage after each Dodgers game on either FSN Prime Ticket or FSN West.

Game 3 of the Dodgers-Mets series will tentatively be Saturday at 1 p.m. and televised by Fox. If there is a Game 4 in the A’s-Twins series, it will be played Saturday at 1 p.m. and televised by FX.

If there is a Game 4 in the Dodgers-Mets series, it will tentatively be played Sunday at 1 p.m. and televised by ESPN. Game 5 would be a 5:15 PDT Monday night game in New York and televised by Fox.

This could be the last year ESPN televises postseason baseball for a while. In July, a new seven-year postseason television contract that takes effect next year gave the first round to TBS, one of the two league championship series to Fox and the World Series to Fox. The other league championship series is still up for grabs, and ESPN is said to be the favorite to acquire it. But Comcast, which owns Versus, formerly OLN, is also in the hunt for that series.

larry.stewart@latimes.com