SNY didn’t want to let just anyone into its booth, but it didn’t hesitate when presented with two play-by-play legends.
During tonight’s Mets-Giants telecast, Gary Cohen and Ron Darling will exit the booth for the fourth and fifth innings to make room for Al Michaels and Bob Costas. The broadcasting icons will be calling the game on MLB Network, but will be doing two innings apiece on both the Mets and Giants local telecasts. The SNY team will slide over to the MLB Network booth for the fourth and fifth.
“There were discussions internally because how much our fans enjoy and respect Gary, Keith [Hernandez] and Ron,” SNY president Steve Raab said. “It was more: Is there a reason to do it? And that was the conversation we had internally. Doing things just to do things isn’t something we are tremendously interested in. At the end of the day we all decided that Bob Costas and Al Michaels are an interesting pair.”
SNY has done similar switches with the Red Sox’s and Phillies’ broadcast teams with mixed results.
Costas, who regularly calls game for MLB Network, contacted Michaels a few months ago with the idea. The original plan was to do a Reds-Giants game — the two teams Michaels called games for in the beginning of his career. But when NBC got the rights to the Belmont Stakes, Costas was needed on Long Island that weekend in June.
“I think I am going to be up to speed by the time of the game,” Michaels said. “It’s an exciting thought to me. I’ve probably spent more time with Gary Cohen and Ron Darling then I have with my family lately to prepare for this one night. Hopefully it will go well and I’m kind of excited.”
The MLB Network broadcast will be blacked out in New York and San Francisco, but the booth switch gives Costas and Michaels a chance to be heard by all.
Michaels’ broadcasting roots are in baseball, but the Brooklyn native has not called a game since 1995, when ABC lost its baseball rights. Since then, Michaels has been the voice of Monday Night Football with ABC and Sunday night football with NBC.
“For me this was the foundation of my career,” Michaels said. “I don’t have too many regrets, [but] if you had to pin me down, [it] was that ABC did lose baseball. That’s why I am really looking forward to it.”
Are Mets fans, too? For two innings of the 162-game season, they will be without the familiarity of Cohen — who does every game — and Darling (Hernandez is off this week).
One possible story fans can expect Michaels to recount is from the 1989 World Series in San Francisco that was famously disrupted by an earthquake. Curt Gowdy Jr., now SNY’s executive producer, was in the ABC truck and working with Michaels before Game 3 when the The Loma Prieta earthquake struck the Bay Area.
“It’s more fun than anything else,” Costas said. “We’ll certainly do the best job we possibly can and keeping up what’s happening in the game. But it should be a different kind of broadcast, while I’m on regularly, this is a chance for people to hear Al and be reminded of how great he is as a baseball announcer. We are going to have some clips from some of the games Al’s done. It should be a little different in content than the average game.”