Courtesy MLB.com

(January 13, 2009) The Rays and Clear Channel Communications announced Tuesday that the club's 2009 regular-season games will be broadcast on 620 WDAE, The Sports Animal.

WDAE, with the strongest AM signal in Florida, will serve as the Rays' new flagship station and is the top-rated sports station in the Tampa-St. Petersburg market. Additionally, 17 Spring Training games will be broadcast, including eight games from Tampa Bay's new Spring Training facility in Charlotte County and nine road games.

"We are very proud to announce that WDAE 620-AM is the new flagship home of the Tampa Bay Rays," said Rays senior vice president/chief sales officer Mark Fernandez. "This partnership is another major milestone in the evolution of the Rays. WDAE is not only the dominant sports-talk station in the Bay area, it is also an iconic brand throughout the region."

WDAE sounded equally pleased with the new arrangement.

"Over the years, Clear Channel Radio Tampa Bay has always had an outstanding relationship with the Rays," said 620 WDAE program director Mike Killabrew. "All of our stations have enormous respect for the Rays organization and have had a lot of fun and success along the way. Other than Joe Maddon, Whitney Johnson or the rest of the 620 staff, no one is more excited than me WDAE gets to call itself the flagship of the Rays. This is a natural fit and just the beginning of a journey where we hope to build an even bigger fan base for a team which will one day bring the Bay area a World Series championship."

Play-by-play voices Andy Freed and Dave Wills and pregame/postgame host Rich Herrera will all be returning for their fifth season of Rays baseball. Also returning for the 2009 season will be the 30-minute pregame show, hour-long postgame show and weekly "Countdown to Opening Day" radio show, which will begin on Feb. 2 and continue throughout Spring Training.

The Rays are launching a weekly one-hour manager's show on WDAE outside of the game broadcast window.