Sports

25 years of being on-air gathering place

This was a few years ago, autumn of 2008, standing around a batting cage with a few baseball scribes in the final hours of Shea Stadium, when one of us — I think it was our guy Joel Sherman — gave voice to precisely what makes WFAN what it is on every platform, in every context, you choose.

The Mets were at the end of a second-straight collapse, and it didn’t matter who you were listening to — the newly-on-his-own Mike Francesa, the angst-riddled Mets duo of Benigno and Roberts, Richard Neer, the overnight crew, Boomer and Carton — whenever they opened up the phone lines, you literally could hear the oldest cliché about telephone lines — you could hear them lighting up like Christmas trees.

“It’s like group therapy for sports fans,” Joel said.

That’s exactly what it was. That’s exactly what it is. Forget whatever else WFAN ushered in when it was born 25 years ago; that’s what it’s greatest public service is, as a great electronic gathering place, a radio Town Hall, for sports fans.

It isn’t just in bad times, either, but amazing times (it was never a happier place than in June 1994, or in the aftermath of three Giants Super Bowl winners) and in contentious times (the run-up to Jets/Giants last December is what I always have envisioned every saloon, water cooler, restaurant and Automat had to be like in the days of Dodgers/Giants/Yankees).

For sports fans the notion of an all-talk, all-sports station always was something that seemed preposterous, even for those of us who grew up on the nascent sports shows hosted by folks such as Art Rust Jr. on WABC, or John Sterling on WMCA, or a wealth of I-listened-to-them-when kids on WFUV, the Fordham station, or even Oscar Madison during his short-lived time moonlighting on radio while still pounding out columns for the New York Herald.

You mean you can call someone up at 4 in the morning to moan about the Mets, to kill the Rangers’ power-play unit, to vent your anger about Steinbrenner?

Really?

Look, the FAN isn’t, and hasn’t, been only about callers. And in fact, if you ask me what its greatest achievement across 25 years is, I would have to say this: In an era when, if you travel a bit, you discover that most sports-talk stations sound like they emanate exclusively

from frat houses, FAN’s sports hosts are universally focused on RBIs and ERA, not T&A (we’ll except the morning shows, because they clearly never have been devoted strictly to sports fanatics. But for all the crass bits Boomer and Carton do, for instance, when they decide to talk sports they do it awfully well — and clean).

But it’s been built on callers, on Bruce from Bayside and Mike from Montclair, on the late Vinny from Queens and Doris from Rego Park, on Joe from Saddle River who now does the midday show.

We always will debate who does what best, which station has the best guests, and there surely are a lot of FAN aficionados who listen just as often to ESPN radio or to any of the options on Sirius/XM … or who simply grow weary of the chatter and opt for music every now and again, or NPR.

But one thing FAN always will have: It was first. It gave fans a voice, and an outlet, and an opportunity to cheer together and cry together and argue with each other and enjoy sport and sports in ways that never seemed remotely possible before the summer of 1987. It isn’t often you can salute a pioneer while it’s still in its relative youth.

Salute, FAN.

WHACK BACK AT VAC

Jerry Jacobs: On the very same night Ike Davis clearly tags the runner, the ump blows the call and the Mets lose. DeWayne Wise never catches the ball, the ump blows the call and the Yankees win. The baseball gods have a wicked sense of humor.

Vac: All that was needed was for the picked-off runner to do a touchdown dance like the guy who got the ball Wise didn’t catch. That would’ve been a nice touch.

@JonRothstein: Proud moment for St. Bonaventure alums such as @WojYahooNBA and

@MikeVacc with Andrew Nicholson going to Orlando. The man changed a program.

@MikeVacc: Wore my brown-and-white ensemble all day Thursday. Never have my ugly school colors seemed so perfect. Thanks, 44.

Bob Buscavage: Aroldis Chapman celebrates a save with a pair of somersaults in front of the mound. Who does he think he is, Joba Chamberlain?

Vac: Luckily for Chapman, the degree of difficulty is smaller in front of the mound than in one of those nutty trampoline rooms.

Damian Begley: Frank Francisco should have watched “Glengarry Glen Ross” and listened hard when Ricky Roma said, “You never open your mouth, till you know what the shot is.”

Vac: That would have followed nicely the order from Terry Collins earlier in the season when he couldn’t get anyone out: “Put. That. Coffee. Down. Coffee is for closers only.”

VAC’S WHACKS

* I keep trying to figure out how Chris Young gets people out with 83-mph fastballs — and can an 83-mph pitch really be called “fast?” — while scores of kids with 98-mph gas get a stiff neck watching balls fly into gaps and over walls, and all I can think of are three words: “That’s baseball, Suzyn.”

* If you read this space regularly, you know I possess more than a passing affinity for all things “Godfather” (well, except for the third movie, which everyone long ago disowned, by law). If you do, too, a must summer read is “The Family Corleone” by Edward Falco, based on a screenplay by Mario Puzo, a prequel that necessarily relies heavily on characters such as Sonny and Luca Brasi. Trust me. You’ll enjoy.

* There are nights, when he is swinging the bat as he is right now and catching the ball as he is right now, when it seems Robinson Cano can win games for the Yankees the Eddie Feigner, King-And-His-Court way, playing four-on-nine.

* I think five years from now a lot of basketball teams are going to shake their heads that they could have had Jared Sullinger (below) and passed on him, so it only figures he winds up a Celtic, right?