This story was excerpted from Anthony DiComo’s Mets Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
NEW YORK -- To know Howie Rose is to understand two of the great passions of his life. One is the Mets, the team he grew up rooting for in Queens that became the focal point of his decades-long broadcasting career. For Rose, calling a Mets championship on the radio would be nirvana.
The other is the Beatles, another obsession born in the 1960s that has remained with Rose for the past seven decades. Sitting recently in the Mets’ press dining room, Rose bemoaned the fact that he had never had a close brush with any of the Fab Four.
That changed after Rose received an invitation to attend last week's Saturday Night Live, with Paul McCartney as the musical guest. Receiving clearance to leave the Mets’ Subway Series game against the Yankees a couple innings early, Rose made his way to 30 Rock, watched McCartney’s performance, then stuck around for the invitation-only afterparty.
There, just after 2 a.m., Rose enjoyed a brief exchange with the knighted musician. Given a chance to stammer a few words, the typically articulate broadcaster mustered something to the effect of: “Thank you for everything you meant in my life.”
“I’m looking at him. I’m shaking his hand. And I’m seeing 62 years coming before me in so many different ways,” Rose said. “Metaphorically, I’m looking at album covers, and I’m looking at every live performance, and I’m looking at the movies, and I’m looking at everything. This is a guy that I’ve cherished -- him and the Beatles -- since I was almost 10 years old.”
Although Rose, 72, has spent his career fraternizing with professional athletes, a rendezvous with McCartney felt different. To Rose, the Beatles were a touchstone. For millions of a certain age, the Beatles “changed the world,” he said, from the cultural norms they helped break down to the new ones they ushered in.
“I even said to one of the people that I was with, ‘There’s literally -- and I mean this, literally -- not a person on earth who could walk into this party right now that I would be any more interested in seeing or talking to than Paul McCartney,’” Rose said. “I mean no one. I don’t care who it is. That gives you an idea of how important it is to me.”
Rose, who has called Mets games in various capacities since the mid-1990s, burns to see a championship while he’s still working -- a hope that complicated his decision to retire after this season. While nothing outside of baseball can fill that void, meeting McCartney was more than a consolation prize.
Said Rose: “I’ll savor and cherish those few seconds forever.”