Monday, June 8, 2009

History of the Mets on the air

Over at NeverForget 69, I found a good (but sorry to say, slightly inaccurate) history of the Mets broadcasting, from Bob Murphy, Lindsay Nelson, and Ralph Kiner to the days of choosing between Gary, Keith, Ron, and Ralph and Howie and Wayne. You can get the abridged version on Wikipedia, but it's always better with stories and context.

For me (and this really only starts with the 1987 season), I always liked Gary Cohen, Howie Rose, Ted Robinson, and Bob Murphy. Three guys who grew up Mets fans around the same time period and the one who is forever the voice of the Mets. It got too confusing for a while in the early 2000s figuring out who would be on TV for any given game (between Howie Rose, Ted Robinson, Gary Thorne/Dave O'Brien, Tom Seaver, and Fran Healy).

  • Ted Robinson is a great Tennis broadcaster (actually, the best in the business).

  • Gary Cohen's style on radio is the best I've ever heard. I always loved when he would do what I called a "replay" of a play to fill in some blanks. He was a great hockey announcer who called 3 Olympic Hockey tournaments on the radio in the 1990s. Somewhere, I have some audio clips of that.

  • Howie Rose is the Mets historian.

  • Bob Murphy lived the history of the Mets from 1962 to 2003. A set of classic (or miscellaneous) Mets radio highlights isn't complete without at least a few Bob Murphy clips.

Who are the only 3 people to call a Mets local broadcast of a World Series game? And who from that list took part in more than 1 World Series?