SNY’s Ron Darling was certain he’d be working the Mets-Phillies tiebreaker yesterday to determine the NL East champ.
Instead, he’s on the phone from the airport – on his way to Arizona to cover the Diamondbacks-Cubs NLDS for TBS after the Mets’ stunning late-season collapse denied them (and SNY) a post-season berth.
It’s a strange turn of events for Darling, who expected to work late into October with SNY boothmate Gary Cohen – and not alongside Dick Stockton on TBS.
“It’s unbelievable. I’m just as shocked as you are,” he says. “[Sunday] was the first game I’ve ever done where I kept looking at Keith [Hernandez] and Gary and didn’t know what to say.”
Darling’s work on SNY caught the eye of TBS execs, who contacted him last month with an offer to work its post-season games – if the Mets failed to make the playoffs.
Darling, an SNY Emmy winner last season, was flattered – but figured that would never happen with the Mets holding a commanding lead in the NL East, which they proceeded to blow to smithereens.
“There clearly wasn’t a lot of consideration on my part for ever working for someone else in the post-season,” he says. “I assumed the Mets would at least play [yesterday] and get to the National League Championship Series.
“But as soon as I got off the air Sunday, [TBS] called . . . I had a message from my agent saying, ‘Do you want to work for Turner? They want you. You fly out tomorrow.’ ”
Darling, whose valuable right arm and pitching smarts helped the Mets win the 1986 World Series, is still a team player.
“I really feel I’ll be representing SNY and my two guys, Gary and Keith [at TBS],” he says.
“And I’m excited about having national exposure [on TBS] to show the rest of the world how we do it at SNY.”