After they had both seen what they thought they would never see, Gary Cohen and Howie Rose couldn’t help but laugh late Friday night, sitting in the WFAN radio booth during a commercial break. This was well after Johan Santana had thrown that full-count changeup to David Freese, after both men had contributed to the city’s safe-deposit box of captured sporting glories.
They had just spent 15 minutes on the radio doing what they can do as well as any two people alive, recounting from memory, from their souls, a bottomless supply of Mets history, Mets anecdotes, Mets memories, Mets minutiae, without notes, without reference books, all of it tumbling effortlessly from their brains and their hearts.
“And I just kept thinking to myself,” Rose said yesterday, chuckling softly at the memory, “that this was just, in essence, two kids sitting in the upper deck at Shea Stadium, talking baseball with each other.”
We are fortunate in New York to have a lot of former upper-deck kids, former blue-seat kids, providing the soundtracks for our teams, and because they are as good at what they do as just about anyone else in their business, they manage to provide enthusiasm without ever crossing into the treacherous realm of homerism.
We have Rose on WFAN and Cohen with SNY, and both of them go back to the beginning as fans of the Mets. We have Bob Papa with the Giants, who has now contributed two Super Bowl calls to the city’s canon of triumph; and Michael Kay, who spent his Bronx childhood living and dying with the Horace Clarke Yankees and grew up to be the voice of the Derek Jeter Yankees; and Mike Breen, a terrific basketball player in his day, a terrific referee, a longtime Knicks fan who has become as much a Garden fixture as the pinwheel roof; and Kenny Albert, whose famous surname belies his deep rooting roots with the Rangers.
All of them surely would understand what Rose described, perfectly, what was colliding in his heart Friday night, just past 9:30, as Santana worked the bottom of the ninth inning.
“You find yourself at the corner of Professionalism and Emotionalism,” Rose said, “and that’s a very dangerous neighborhood to be in. Suddenly you’re not a pro with years of broadcasting behind you. Suddenly you have to worry about being that 8-year-old kid who wants it to happen so badly.”
Except for the pros, for the best of the best, the professionalism wins out. It did for Papa in Arizona in February 2008 and again four months ago in Indianapolis. On Friday, Rose provided a proper bookend to his forever call of Stephane Matteau. And Cohen did likewise, adding to a bookshelf of calls highlighted by the Endy Chavez catch.
“The difference is, that was radio,” Cohen said yesterday. “What I’ve had to learn — what I’m still learning — is on TV, you have to filter about 90 percent of what you want to say. You have to keep some kind of even keel.”
And yet, as Freese swung and missed, you certainly could sense, in Cohen’s voice, the enormity of the moment. Same with Rose. Essentially, they were toweling off a seat next to them in that virtual upper deck, inviting you to sit in with them, share the moment, share the memory. At the intersection of Professionalism and Emotionalism, there always is room for company.
“I never believed it would happen,” Cohen said. “Never.”
“Even those first two outs of he ninth,” Rose said. “A looper by [Matt] Holliday. A looper by [Allen] Craig. I think my voice, you could tell I thought there was trouble.”
“I kept waiting,” Cohen said. “Right until Freese’s final swing.”
“The ball’s in [Josh] Thole’s glove,” Rose said, “and finally I believe.”
They were our voices Friday night and also our friends. We have a lot of them around here, from hoops to pucks to football to baseball. Our voices. Our friends. Our soundtrack. Our great good fortune.
Whack Back at Vac
James Hastings: Nice article on Jack Twyman, it brought tears to my eyes. Good guys are good guys forever.
Vac: And Mr. Twyman was one of the best I’ve ever talked to.
John R. Romanelli: With the Yankees starting pitching, harkening back to the ’48 Braves, is it now: “Sabathia and Pettitte, and the rest can forget it?”
Vac: And across town we can have “Johan and Dickey, the rest call in sickey.”
@RobWein: None of us who watched Bird and McHale get every call back in the day will ever shed a tear for the Celtics not getting a good playoff whistle.
@MikeVacc: Agreed. I would love to be able to feel terrible for the Celtics getting jobbed by referees. Can’t.
Bob Buscavage: Now that the Yankees have signed former Met John Maine to a minor-league deal, how long will it be before he throws a no-hitter wearing a Yankees uniform?
Vac: Frankly, this weekend, I think you could tell Mets fans that Maine will throw seven no-hitters as a Yankee and all they’d do is shrug.
Vac’s Whacks
I’m with the great Linda Stasi on this one: It has to be a better-than-very-good miniseries to keep me going across six hours. But I have to tell you: after six-hours-and-change of “Hatfields & McCoys,” I found myself wanting even more. And found myself wanting to warn our neighbors to keep that damned ball off my lawn … or else.
* It sure does seem Joe Girardi is going to make up for lost time with Andy Pettitte, making sure all those pitches he missed in 2011 will be present and accounted for in 2012.
* Whom do you suppose feels sicker every time they watch Kevin Durant do something Durant-ish: fans of the present-and-accounted-for Portland Trail Blazers, or fans of the late, lamented Seattle SuperSonics?
* Here’s the last I’ll say about John Tortorella for a while, and it’s the same observation I once made about Willie Randolph: As long as you win, you can act however sideways you want with the media, with fans, with anyone who dis-agrees with you. But when things go south — and ask Willie, eventually they go south for everyone — that’s when you realize how nice it would have been to have an advocate stand up and deliver a dissenting opinion to the avalanche of negativity. But you act this way when you’re on the rise, that opinion tends to stay silent on the fall.