A Mets Hall of Fame class who specializes in fairness

He sat in the audience and watched, like a proud grandfather at a graduation ceremony. Fred Wilpon, 86, owned the Mets as their new crop of Hall of Famers—Howard Johnson, Al Leiter, and broadcasters Gary Cohen and Howie Rose—impressed the team. At a pre-ceremony press conference on Saturday, Wilpon beamed.

He did not participate in the celebration on the field. That set a stage for new owner, Steven A. Cohen, whose generous spending and reverence for Mets history have made him the steward the fans have always wanted.

But say this a lot for Wilpon, who bought into the team in 1980 and sold to Cohen in 2020: Despite all the dysfunction that often overshadowed his Mets, he never muzzled the franchise’s votes. Cohen and Rose have been mainstays of the booth since the 1980s, combining genuine fandom with a journalist’s instinct to tell it like it is.

The Wilpons – like many owners – can be quite sensitive to criticism. But they always understood the value of a credible broadcast as a conduit to the fans.

“I never called the booth, never called them again after that, never told them they couldn’t be as honest as they need to be,” Wilpon said on Saturday. “You don’t want them to be mean, but be honest. And they were.”

When the Mets debuted in 1962, Rose was eight years old – the exact age when a team and a sport can hold you for life. A native of Bayside, Queens, Rose said his old friends at P.S. 205 would “cry in the schoolyard” at the idea of ​​him being a Mets Hall of Famer.

On the other hand, Rose said, is it really as absurd as the Miracle Mets who won the World Series in 1969? That triumph, he said, was transformative: with relentless work and faith, he learned, almost anything was possible.

Rose earned a spot on the Mets’ radio team doing pregame and postgame in 1987, and after years as their TV voice, he returned to radio towards the end of Bob Murphy’s long tenure. Unsure of himself in that medium, Rose once questioned Murphy out loud during a commercial break about his future. Murphy, who was 30 years older and stingy with praise, patted Rose on the thigh and told him he was fine.

“That meant everything to me and still does,” Rose said. “So when I think of Murph, it’s not just the cheery summaries and all the great phone calls, it’s that at the end I felt like I had his approval.”

Cohen, 65, later wanted to play shortstop for the Mets. Instead, he broadcast as a student at Columbia, working his way through the minors—Spartanburg, Durham, Pawtucket—before landing with the Mets in 1989.

It’s hard to imagine a more engaging broadcasting trio than Cohen and his SNY analysts, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez. They are erudite and witty without being condescending, sharply focused on the action while remembering to have fun.

To a Mets fan, they feel like family; Roger Angell, the Hall of Fame baseball writer who died last year at age 101, said he never missed a broadcast.

“I’m not really good with moments,” Cohen said when asked about his favorite phone calls. “My feeling has always been that the most important part of a broadcaster’s job isn’t what they do in the 15 seconds of a big play happening, but more how they settle in with fans during the 500 hours you’re on the air. during a season.”

Leiter, who grew up supporting the Mets and spent seven seasons as a standout, made a nice connection: The last time the Mets anchored a broadcaster was 1984, the same year Leiter was drafted (by the Yankees) from Bayville High School in New Jersey. Then it was Murphy, Ralph Kiner and Lindsey Nelson, the soundtrack to Leiter’s childhood on the Jersey Shore.

“I grew up with those guys,” said Leiter, “as generations have now grown up with Howie and Gary.”

As a fan and player, Leiter said, he always wanted his hometown broadcasters to take a liking to the team. It made sense, he said, since the vast majority of viewers were fans. Still, a pollyannaish view would go too far.

“That was my whole thing as a player: when I stank, I was okay with the analysis that I didn’t do well,” said Leiter, now well into his own TV career. “Don’t get into what you think he’s thinking, just the execution or lack of execution.”

He added: “I think with Howie and Gary, the balance of it, being fans of the team and proud of that, is to be sharp sometimes – as a fan is. We get upset when we see things we don’t like, but we still love the team.”

For fans who share in that tradition, it’s helpful that sons of Shea Stadium like Cohen and Rose also act as Mets historians — a role officially filled by Jay Horwitz, the paternal team’s publicist who was also honored Saturday.

Cohen rightly noted that Johnson, a switch-hitting third baseman, had long been an underrated figure in Mets history. He had three seasons of 30 homers and 30 stolen bases, a feat matched only by Barry and Bobby Bonds and Alfonso Soriano.

For Johnson, the last of those seasons came in 1991, more than half a lifetime ago.

“There’s probably not a day that goes by that we don’t think about that, being able to play the game we did when we were 25, playing at that level,” said Johnson, 62. “Every time you get out of bed, there’s a reminder that was a long time ago. They’re almost two different people. And the older we get, that person gets further and further away. And I don’t like that. I want to know that person who was still playing. I want to know who that person was.”

That’s the point of days like Saturday: to honor the past of the people who made a difference for the Mets. Fortunately, some of those people still do.