by Ron Darling
This was only partly true. Early on in Timmy’s playing career, which ran from 1959 to 1980 (covering four decades!), he was the Cardinals’ primary catcher. He even finished second in the National League MVP voting in 1967, the year the Cardinals won the World Series, so he was certainly an impact player for a stretch. However, during the back-half of his career, he was mostly a backup catcher—and he’s probably best remembered for his role as the exclusive catcher of future Hall of Famer Steve Carlton.
Ralph was always putting Timmy in his place like that—and Ralph was such a favorite of the Mets’ fan base by that point Timmy knew he couldn’t push back in anything more than a halfhearted way. It would be like lashing out at everyone’s favorite uncle over Christmas dinner.
One of Ralph’s best lines, which he took to trotting out with more and more frequency as his time in the booth grew longer and longer, was another way to remind Tim and the listeners at home that he was once one of the game’s most feared hitters, leading the league in home runs in each of his first seven seasons with the Pirates.
The line: “Home run hitters drive Cadillacs. Singles hitters drive Fords.”
This was mostly true. Ralph said it first during his playing days, and it got a lot of attention, and it found its way into the broadcast from time to time—like one of his greatest hits! He’d been at this Mets job since just about forever, so I think Ralph sometimes fretted that the fans no longer remembered him as a player. This was mostly true as well, but only because Ralph hung around the game for so long that most of the folks who’d seen him play were dead and gone. And so let the record show that for a while in there he was a true rock star of the game—a real ladies’ man, too. He used to date Elizabeth Taylor, and Ava Gardner, and Raquel Welch, and a host of other beautiful starlets. A great many of those celebrity-driven dalliances came about because Bing Crosby was a part-owner of the Pirates during Ralph’s playing days, and according to Ralph he was very good at orchestrating all these photo opportunities for the gossip columnists and newsreels of the day. It was good for business, Bing Crosby used to say, for the Pirates players to be seen out and about with these beautiful women on their arms, and Ralph was only too happy to comply.
Still, it was hard for those of us who knew Ralph as this avuncular presence to reconcile the baseball lifer he’d become with the man about town he certainly was, but let the record also show that he was an impeccable dresser, in his day, and one of the game’s most eligible bachelors—and I’m sure the Cadillac all those home runs entitled him to drive didn’t hurt!
We’d try to press him for details on his love life during his bachelor days, but he was always such a gentleman … on the air. Between innings, or after-hours, we could sometimes get him to loosen up, but one of my favorite stories to come out of Ralph’s “dating” career found us in the 1986 season. We were in the clubhouse after a game in Philly. The actress Jamie Lee Curtis was in town with her husband, Christopher Guest, and the two stopped in for a visit. Ralph knew they were coming by and came down to say hello, and in his charming, chivalrous way he mentioned to Jamie Lee that he had once dated her mother.
With perfect comic timing, Jamie Lee waited a beat and then jumped into Ralph’s arms and shouted, “Daddy!”
During the Mets’ final season at Shea Stadium, in 2008, conversation in the booth would often turn to the ballpark’s rich history—it was a way to fill the time, and to reminisce. As it happened, Ralph was at his best as a broadcaster when he was encouraged to share an old story from his playing days, or an observation about a long-dead player, or a years-ago promotion at Shea. Gary Cohen remarked one night how the ballpark had hosted every type of event over the years, from a Beatles concert to the Ice Capades.
Ralph, well into his eighties by this point, seemed to pick up at this mention of the Ice Capades, and he allowed enthusiastically that he’d once hosted an Ice Capades event when he was the general manager of the San Diego Padres of the Pacific Coast League, at Westgate Park. At first, we all thought we were caught inside one of Ralph’s malapropisms or misrememberings, because his comment made no sense. The Ice Capades? At an outdoor stadium in Southern California? It just didn’t seem possible, so after the game Gary brought it up again.
He said, “The Ice Capades, in San Diego? How did that work, exactly?”
Ralph explained it in such a way that left Gary and me to think he might be conflating one memory with another, which often happened at that stage in Ralph’s career. However, we also knew Ralph well enough to know that he’d get around to making his point eventually. With Ralph, it often worked out that what came across as far-fetched was … well, merely fetched. His memory was far more sound than it might have appeared, so we waited for the essence of the story to become clear.
After a while, with clarity nowhere in sight, Gary started looking for a way to help Ralph dig himself out of the hole he seemed to have made for himself. He said, “Forget how you managed to pull it off. How did you even sell tickets? Who’s going to see the Ice Capades in San Diego?”
Ralph said, “Are you kidding me? Have you ever seen the asses on those skaters? We sold those tickets in no time.”
As it turned out, Ralph used to date Sonja Henie, the Norwegian figure skater, so at least we knew he wasn’t talking out of his own ass on this one.
* * *
I never really knew Lindsey Nelson, from the Mets’ original broadcasting trio—he of the famously loud and arguably stylish sports jackets that used to leave viewers at home scrambling to adjust the color on their sets. He’d moved on by the time I joined the team, and only visited the ballpark infrequently during my playing days, but Bob Murphy was the radio voice of the team throughout my time in New York—he probably called every single game I ever pitched in a Mets uniform.
Murph had a tremendous voice, and a poetic streak. He used to like to pepper his commentary with the kind of ten-dollar words that left listeners reaching for their dictionaries. He also used to like his cocktails, and here I think it helps to understand that drinking had always been a big part of the game’s culture. This is not me calling Bob Murphy out. This is me telling it like it was. Ballplayers drank. The managers and coaches drank. The broadcasters and sportswriters who covered the team all drank. In a lot of ways, a life in the game was one giant party, and on this one trip to Houston it appeared that Murph had tied on a few too many.
To be clear, it wasn’t just any trip to Houston. It was the trip to Houston—to open the 1986 playoff series against the Astros. In those days, at the Astrodome, you had to take a bus to get to the stadium. You couldn’t catch a cab from the hotel, because they wouldn’t let you into the complex—it was so damn huge. They’d have to let you off a few hundred yards from the entrance, so a large group of us arrived together on a bus that had been arranged for the team.
We walked into the clubhouse, en masse, and there on the trainer’s table was Bob Murphy, out cold.
Now, we’d all seen Murph drunk before, we’d all seen each other drunk, so the sight of Bob Murphy splayed out on the trainer’s table didn’t even rate a double take. What was strange, looking back, was the setting. You have to realize, in most big league clubhouses, the trainer’s table was too small for us players to do anything but sit on it. We’d use it to get our ankles taped, or maybe to sit down while one of the trainers worked on our shoulders. But you hardly ever saw someone lying down on the trainer’s table—that is, unless you were Bob Murphy, who happened to be short enough to fit, and who also happened to be completely shit-faced.
Still, we had a game to get ready for, a big game, so nobody paid attention to poor Murph. We just went about our business, like he wasn’t even there. We even gathered around the trainer’s table for a team meeting. We weren’t in the habit on that ’86 team of holding a lot of team meetings—that just wasn’t Davey Johnson’s way—but this was the first game of a big playoff series, and we wanted to get things off on the right note. Plus, there was a Major League Baseball re
presentative on hand to walk us through the plan for the opening ceremonies, so there were a few logistics to go over as well. Trouble was, there was no suitable place in the visitor’s clubhouse for the entire team to gather, so we just stood around the trainer’s table and went over whatever it was we had to go over … the whole time, standing over Murph, who was laid out like the guest of honor at a wake.
Sadly, weirdly, hilariously, the meeting went on as if Bob Murphy was the centerpiece at a fine buffet table, and as the meeting was breaking up, somebody finally acknowledged the proverbial elephant in the room and said something about Murph’s condition. Might have been another player, or one of our clubhouse guys, but at some point somebody said, “By the way, what the hell is wrong with Murph?”
Davey Johnson, who’d been running the meeting, took it on himself to answer. He said, “The doctors are on their way. We think Murph had a stroke.”
He said this without missing a beat, as if the fact that the team’s longtime radio announcer was passed out in the middle of the room had been discussed and carefully considered by the powers that be.
Of course, we’d been around long enough to know that a “stroke” was a euphemism for being blackout drunk, and that there were no doctors en route, so we let the comment sink in, and then after another while, someone asked what time we were supposed to take BP.
That’s the kind of team we were—this venerable broadcaster was passed out on the trainer’s table, dead to the world, and all we cared about was when we were going to hit.
* * *
It’s been one of the great blessings of my baseball life to work with Keith Hernandez and Gary Cohen. We’ve got a good thing going, and one of the reasons for that, I think, is that we all love the game and share a deep affection for the Mets organization and for each other.
If that sounds corny … well, pass the salt. If it doesn’t … well, I guess that means you’re a regular viewer.
Another reason for our long-running success is the way we’ve been encouraged to talk about our lives away from the ballpark, and to share our thoughts and observations with the fans in ways that make it feel like we’re calling these games over beers. We might spend a couple minutes talking about the long line at the Shake Shack concession out in center field, or the U.S. Open tennis championships being played next door to Citi Field, or the latest summer blockbuster movie. Everything is up for discussion in our broadcasts—there’s room for shtick and analysis, and that’s what the fans are responding to.
For example, Keith and Gary talk all the time about cartoons. It’s amazing to me how many times the subject comes up on our air—and what’s equally amazing is how much these two know about cartoons. I’ve taken to calling them “The Latchkey Kids,” because when they get going on this I start to wonder if they came home from school every day and planted themselves in front of the television until dinner. Think about it: we’re all about the same age, so we should share some of the same pop culture references, but I have no idea what these guys are talking about half the time. Tom & Jerry, Bugs Bunny, The Flintstones … sure, I know all of that. But these guys can do a deep dive down the rabbit hole from time to time, and I’ve got no idea where they’re headed.
When they throw to me, I’ll say something like, “Did either one of you ever read a book when you were a kid?”
We hear from our viewers all the time that watching the Mets with us is like tuning in to a talk show—and, curiously, that there are a bunch of well-established drinking games that have sprouted up around our broadcasts. Forget the Nielsen ratings or the other more traditional metrics we use to measure who’s watching. What it comes down to, in the end, is the number of drinking games in place in support of what you’re doing—it’s the Bottoms Up, Bottom Line indicator of how many people are watching and how they’re responding. Keith always loves to talk about “the Cardinal way,” or to slip in a reverent reference to the great Lou Brock, so each time he does you’re supposed to take a drink. With Gary, it’s every time he mentions Columbia University, his alma mater. With me, I never mention Yale in the broadcast—an affectation that comes from years of trying to play down my educational background with my teammates—but whenever Yale comes up, you take a shot.
And on and on.
Lately, I’ve started to think that one of the things we’ve got to get better at, if we mean to grow our “game” and keep our broadcasts relevant, is extending our pop culture reach. We need to start talking about things that might connect with our younger viewers, or we’ll start to sound like a bunch of curmudgeons. For example, during a recent lull in the game, we started talking about our plans for the weekend. I happened to mention that I had tickets to see the great EDM deejay Steve Aoki at this club in New York. I don’t think Keith or Gary had any idea who I was talking about, but the kids in the truck, working the broadcast, were whispering in my headphones—saying, “Oh, my God, RJ! That’s so awesome. You mentioned Aoki!”
We need to do more of that. We need to make our references younger, smarter, more contemporary.
We enjoy the hell out of each other during the games, but as soon as the final out is made we can’t wait to get out of there. Keith has this briefcase he always carries, and he’ll start to pack up his notes and his scorebook as we head into the ninth inning so he can snap the thing closed and make for the exits at first chance. The thing of it is, when we’re at home, it’s tough to leave the ballpark without running past a gauntlet of fans who want to stop and grab an autograph or a selfie, maybe talk about the game.
One of the things the fans don’t realize is that we’re not just eager to leave the ballpark—we’ve had enough of each other, too. When you’re on the air together for four hours, talking baseball and riffing on this and that, the last thing you want to do is go out for a drink or to dinner. Of course, there are exceptions to this general rule—like this one time when we were in Philadelphia and Keith and I decided to stop at the hotel bar for a glass of wine. We sat down and drank our wine, but after a couple minutes I turned to Keith and said, “Okay, I’m good. That’s enough for me.”
Keith said, “Yeah, me, too. I’m done.”
As we headed upstairs to our rooms, we stepped into an elevator with two middle-aged Mets fans. One was wearing a Jose Reyes jersey and the other was wearing a David Wright jersey, so it was a safe bet that they knew who we were and why we were in town. It made sense—Philly was just a couple hours’ drive from New York, so a lot of fans would make the trip, maybe even make a weekend out of it.
Keith looked these guys up and down, and I just knew he was about to say something. They looked to be about the same age as us—fifty to sixty, somewhere in there.
Sure enough, Keith couldn’t leave it alone. He said, “Excuse me, but how fucking old are you guys?”
They mentioned their ages and Keith said, “Aren’t you a little old to be wearing baseball jerseys?”
The two guys didn’t say anything.
Keith didn’t say anything.
I didn’t say anything.
Keith’s comment just kind of hung there, as the elevator did its thing. Finally, the doors opened onto Keith’s floor and he stepped out, leaving me in the cab with Jose Reyes and David Wright—thinking, This is going to be awkward.
And it was, until I could see Reyes turn to Wright in my peripheral vision and give him a high five. Then I heard him say, “That was fucking awesome,” and they started clapping each other on the back like they’d just made some game-winning play.
I turned and said good night to these guys when we got to my floor and I realized that Keith was probably the only guy I knew who could get away with something like that. I mean, if I’d called these guys out on their jerseys they would have thought I was an arrogant prick. I would have become “that asshole Ron Darling” in the punch line to their story. But with Keith, he can be sweet and sour all at once, and the fans just love that about him. They love that he doesn’t suffer fools gladly, and that he feels fre
e to call them out on their shit.
He’s one of them … and it’s a great, good thing.
Gary’s the glue of our broadcast, of course. He’s the best play-by-play guy working today—certainly the best I’ve ever worked with. I can’t imagine anyone was ever better. I admire the hell out of what he can do behind his mic. I admire the hell out of the career he’s made for himself, out of nothing at all. What a lot of folks don’t realize is how difficult it is to make it on the broadcasting side of the baseball business if you aren’t a former player. You’ve got to beat the bushes, calling games in out-of-the-way places, for little to no money, in venues where there are sometimes more players on the field than there are people in the stands. And yet he left Columbia and went off in pursuit of his dreams, working in Pawtucket and Durham and all these other small, minor league towns, logging the time. The progression is tough, straightforward: you go from Low A to High A, Double-A to Triple-A, and when you get your shot, you’ve got to find a way to stick. And for Gary to be a Queens kid, growing up wearing #3 on his Little League jersey to honor his favorite player, Bud Harrelson, to be calling Mets games, first on radio and now on television, it’s like he’s died and gone to heaven.
His first love is radio, and you can hear that love in his voice as he paints the scene of each game. He speaks in full, clear sentences. His anecdotes and asides are peppered with history, sincerity, integrity. He’s the caretaker of Mets legend and lore, and what’s great about the club’s broadcasting setup is that Gary’s got a full counterpart in this in Howie Rose on the radio side—two guys with a face for radio (forgive, please, the too-easy jab), and a heart for their beloved Metsies and the game itself that knows no bounds.
With Gary, I regard him as such royalty I have a hard time busting his chops, and what’s amazing to me are the stories he tells of when he was pounding the pavement, trying to get people in the business to listen to his tapes, applying for this or that job, clawing his way up the ladder, while all these so-called experts were telling him he didn’t have what it took to make it. What the hell were these people listening to? How is it possible that such abundant talent could have been so easily overlooked? The one knock on Gary, early on, was that he spoke with a Queens accent, and I don’t know this part of the story from Gary, but Keith once told me that Gary actually went to a vocal coach to get rid of some of the local patois—that’s how determined he was to succeed.