NewsRose joins McCarver in FOX booth
Mets' radio man credits broadcaster for helping him learnBy Marty Noble / MLB.com
09/12/09 5:35 PM ET
PHILADELPHIA -- Sinatra will swing Sunday on the Phillies' radio station before the Mets and Phils play the first game of their day-night doubleheader. Sid Mark's "Sunday with Sinatra," the program that began when Stan Lopata, Richie Ashburn and Del Ennis were swinging for the Phillies, is the show. And Tim McCarver, a man with an abiding appreciation for the Chairman of the Board (not Whitey Ford), is the guest.McCarver realized a longtime ambition two years ago when he recorded an album of standards, nothing comparable to Sinatra's work, but an endeavor that he and others have enjoyed.
"And now," he said Saturday, "I get to share a show with Sinatra."
McCarver was back in Philadelphia, where he spent eight of his 22 big league seasons, because he was working the Mets-Phillies telecast for FOX. He and Howie Rose, the Mets' radio play-by-play man, were in the booth, which means Rose got to share a show with McCarver, who Rose said is "a Sinatra in this business."
Rose was in the booth Saturday because he knows the Mets well and he provides a terrific call of a game. He is in the booth generally because of McCarver.
"There's no way I'd be broadcasting baseball in the Major Leagues if not for my exposure to Timmy," Rose said. "I may be wrong on this, but through my formative years in the '60s and '70s, the game wasn't broken down and analyzed on radio and TV the way Timmy has done it.
"He taught me to use my mind. He took 'thinking the game' to another level. He trained you to look for things before they happened. ... He explained the difference between a two-seam fastball and a fourseamer, how a [right-handed] changeup to a left-handed hitter worked. ... Having not played the game at a sophisticated level, I learned something every game I listened to. "And he delivered it in part with reverence for the game and with irreverence in that 'cat that ate the canary' way -- and with puns and irony."
Rose was working in New York radio, doing morning sports on WHN and WCBS in 1983 when McCarver began working on Mets telecasts. Rose later worked pre and postgame shows on WFAN and Mets cablecasts. He began doing Mets radio broadcasts in the late '90s and succeeded the late Bob Murphy in 2004.
"I've had a lot of exposure to Tim over the years," Rose said. "It always was a joy. And now I get to do a game with him -- it is pretty cool."
Marty Noble is a reporter for MLB.com. This story was not subject to the approval of Major League Baseball or its clubs.
