Barry Bloom and Thomas Harding of MLB.com were robbed at gunpoint early Tuesday morning outside Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati.

A young man dressed in red stole $500 in cash from Bloom and $100 from Harding, along with credit cards.

“I thought the guy was a fan as he approached, but he said, ‘We can do this the easy way or the hard way,’” Bloom told Hall of Fame baseball writer Hal McCoy. “I started to walk away and he began yelling at me and pulled this big gun that looked like a Glock. He said, ‘Put your wallets on the ground.’ We did and he picked them up and ran off.”

Who carries $500 in their wallet, let alone when they are at work? That robber hit the meda jackpot.

If someone robbed me, they would be lucky to get $20 from me.

We found out yesterday that Sunday Night Baseball featuring the New York Yankees taking on the Boston Red Sox delivered strong ratings for ESPN.

Now comes word from Major League Baseball that Yankees-Red Sox delivered strong ratings for FOX Sports and MLB Network as well.

Saturday’s afternoon game was the most watched non-prime regular season MLB telecast on FOX in more than three years with 4.10 million average viewers. For the season, FOX Saturday Baseball is averaging 2.97 million viewers, up 5 percent compared to last year’s 2.83 million viewers after 19 weeks.

On Friday night, the MLB Network telecast of Yankees-Res Sox was the network’s highest-rated game of the season with an average of 563,000 viewers. It was second all-time behind last year’s MLB debut of Stephen Strasburg for the Washington Nationals.

Despite getting arrested 4th of July weekend for allegedly driving while intoxicated, Spero Dedes was formally introduced as the radio voice of the New York Knicks, according to the New York Post.

“Spero is one of the top play-by-play announcers in the country, and we’re excited that he is returning home to New York and joining MSG Networks,” said Dan Ronayne, MSG executive vice president.

Dedes will also back up MSG play-by-play announcer Mike Breen.

“I can remember walking into the Garden for my first Knicks game as a teenager and feeling the magic of the place,” said Dedes, who was the radio play-by-play announcer for the Los Angeles Lakers. “I’ve been in love with this franchise ever since. When I was a broadcast student at Fordham all I dreamt about was what it would feel like to be a Knicks announcer and now it’s become reality. I’m truly humbled by this opportunity, and having my family close to me again means a great deal.”

The NBC Sports Group will announce Monday that the Versus network will be renamed the NBC Sports Network, effective Jan. 2.

“This is more than just a name change for Versus,” NBC Sports Group boss Mark Lazarus told USA Today in a statement. “It’s a complete repositioning of the brand.”

The change takes place one day after the NHL Winter Classic on NBC.

The network’s programming has come a long way since the Outdoor Life Network days. Let’s see what other changes NBC has on the horizon for the network in 2012.