It was announced this past week that Howie Rose, a fixture for the Mets on television and radio for four decades, will retire. Howie is the kid who grew up in the cheap seats at old Shea Stadium and whose distinctive voice and style and love of the game finally took him all the way to the team’s Hall of Fame. He became one of those baseball voices, one that will be remembered by Mets fans even after he steps away from his microphone for good. That’s just the way it is in baseball, and always has been.
There is still no relationship like this in sports, the one between a team’s play-by-play announcers and the fans listening to them on radio or TV, just because of all those days and nights that begin with Opening Day and then carry us from spring to summer and finally into fall. Even in a world where radio doesn’t have the power or reach it once did, it still has both in baseball.
The late Pete Hamill, a Brooklyn kid, once described what it was like to be in Brooklyn when the great Red Barber was the voice of the old Dodgers this way:
“You could walk down the street past all those open windows in the summer and feel as if you weren’t missing a pitch.”
Here’s something Bob Costas, a Hall of Fame voice of baseball himself, said to me on Friday about Howie Rose:
“When Howie talks about Casey Stengel’s original Mets, or Tom Seaver’s Miracle Mets, it’s not from study, it’s from memory and from the heart. His listeners know that and they feel that connection. A connection that has deepened with every game he has called.
“In the best sense, Howie is a throwback. A true radio broadcaster who understands the theater of the mind that baseball on the radio should be. Listen to his call of Pete Alonso’s stunning Wild Card Series-winning homer against the Brewers two years ago. He captures all the excitement and surprise, sure. But he also has the presence of mind to note every telling detail: Exactly where the ball was hit ... he follows Alonso almost step for step around the bases ... he gets his teammates waiting for him at home plate ... he captures the Mets' delirious reaction and the stunned disbelief of the Brewers and their fans. All that and more. The ideal combination of the excitement of a fan and the attention to detail of a first rate radio craftsman.
“This season should be one long appreciation tour for a guy who was steeped in Met history and in the process became part of that history himself.”
Every baseball fan who loves listening to games understands completely what Bob is talking about, because they’ve lived it themselves. I grew up in Upstate New York, a long way from Yankee Stadium, and when I listened to Yankee games on the radio as a kid myself, I listened to Mel Allen. And when I finally met Mr. Allen one day in the media dining room at the old Stadium, when that voice was coming from across the table, I did feel like a kid again and wanted to ask for an autograph, before realizing there was no way for him to autograph all those days and nights.
For Mets fans, it has been like that with Howie Rose, someone who once left them for treatment of bladder cancer at the end of the 2021 season but was back for the start of the ’22 season. Howie had previously announced that he would work only half the games for the ’26 season -- and all the postseason games if the Mets make it back there -- but now tells his fans that after this season he will retire for good.
“I’ve always felt that the fans and I connected because I’ve readily acknowledged that we’re kindred spirits,” Howie told me the other day. “The same passion and love for the Mets that they have is identical to what I experienced growing up. For me, it was in those light green seats in Shea Stadium’s upper deck. For current fans, it’s wherever they sit at Citi Field, but the feeling is the same. It’s one of total investment. I hope that’s come through on the air, but most importantly, my goal has always been to earn their trust and not just see things through a blue and orange lens. Hopefully I’ve achieved that.”
Of course he has, in a career that began with him doing pregame and postgame shows on the radio, moving to television, finally becoming the radio voice of the Mets 20 years ago.
But again: This isn’t just a New York story, or a Mets story. This is a baseball story. It is about the connection all fans feel for their own voices, for their own teams. Howie’s signature call at the end of Mets games has always been this: “Put it in the books.” It has been a book you didn’t want to put down, across all his own baseball days and nights, written by the kid who made it from those light green seats at old Shea to the broadcast booth, and proceeded to do what all the great ones do: Made you feel as if you were taking in a ballgame with him.