Laura Albanese: Thank you, Howie Rose, for being the soundtrack of Mets fans' lives
Mets radio broadcaster Howie Rose waves goodbye at his retirement press conference at Citi Field on Sunday. Credit: Kathleen Malone-Van Dyke
The Bob Murphy radio booth is a cozy box in the 300s section at Citi Field, stuffed with bobbleheads and media guides, and printouts of various inside jokes thumbtacked to the wall.
“Easily distracted and not terribly bright,” reads one. “Shut up and stand by,” reads another. “You’re living in the past, man,” reads a third. And on the door, greeting you as you enter, is a laser jet printout of the booth’s steward — a young, mop-topped Howie Rose, wearing a jacket with lapels so wide, a strong gust could conceivably cause him to take flight.
The place is a little cramped and very lived in, like the teenage bedroom you decorated with posters of your favorite bands and polaroids of your friends — warm, familiar and a touch chaotic.
Its occupants number three: Rose, fellow broadcaster Keith Raad, and engineer/producer Chris Majkowski, and it speaks to the trios popularity that even Majkowski has a cult following.
(Sorry, Maj — I just don’t know that many ‘men behind the curtain’ who come with an epithet quite like ‘The Immortal Chris Majkowski’).
Well, those were its occupants.
It’s strange to talk about it in the past tense, because Rose has felt as immutable to this franchise as the orange and blue itself. But Sunday marked the end: A part of the Mets broadcast team since 1987, Rose retired after the Mets’ 7-2 loss to the Phillies, punctuating a storied career that has had a greater impact than he can know.
I understand that to be true, because when I ask him how the last week has been, he says he’s shocked by the magnitude of the response.
No one else is shocked.
We all know the only constant in life is change. One day, you leave that teenage bedroom for the last time. You watch your parents age. Maybe you see your own kids have kids.
And despite that — or likely, because of it — we search for north stars, for reliable comforts. And sometimes, that north star looks like the team you grew up rooting for ... or the voice that comes with it.
This isn’t an overstatement. Rose’s voice played over family picnics and long drives to the beach. It was the soundtrack of people’s lives. The Mets could be terrible — and often, they were — but you could count on him to talk you through it with humanity, humor and whimsy. He took incredible care in being a fanbase’s eyes, and its heartbeat.
“Put it in the books,” he’d say when the Mets won, while making you feel like you were a line in the chapter.
Rose was always magnificent, but there were also times he was transcendent. When Pete Alonso hit the go-ahead home run in Game 3 of the Wild Card Series against Milwaukee in 2024, his voice told a second, wordless story: We’re witnessing something incredibly special and we’re doing it together.
The “we” part is important.
When asked how he wanted fans to remember him, Rose responded, “As one of them…
“I was just the lucky one that got out of the upper deck and into the broadcast booth,” he said.
That philosophy always came through, making Rose particularly adept at creating the sense of community that sits at the core of why sports can be so, so cool. Two people can have different viewpoints, opinions and sensibilities, but they can be united by a baseball game. Mets fans, for all their trials, were stupendously fortunate to have Rose as a conduit.
“Radio is the most intimate medium,” Rose said before the game, and often, he’s likened it to a one-on-one conversation — meaning he’s been speaking to all of us for decades now. That’s tens of thousands of hours to get acquainted with the cadence and personality of the man behind the mic, often in a way that makes you feel like lifelong friends.
That’s why fans sat in the rain with signs bidding Rose a fond farewell, or why they dropped off notes and gifts in the weeks leading up to Sunday. It’s why they camped in front of the booth after the game was over chanting his name.
They weren’t just saying, "Job well done." They were telling their friend that they’ll miss him.
There was joy in being able to fete him so thoroughly, but also a sense of anticipatory nostalgia — that wistful melancholy that comes with understanding something is about to end. All of that is a testament to the bonds Rose spent a lifetime creating.
Rose is retiring to Florida with more time to spend with his beloved wife Barbara, and the couple’s two daughters. He plans to golf. He’ll be back to Citi to emcee special events, and for his retirement ceremony, which was postponed to next season due to the rain.
As the PA system played "Hello, Goodbye" at the outset of his final inning Sunday — a tribute to the devoted Beatles fan — he explained that latter part.
“So it’s not goodbye as far as I’m concerned,” he told his thousands of friends, that unmistakable voice cracking.
It was, though, a sort of goodbye. But knowing it’s time to bow out and actually doing it are two different feelings.
“I’m not exactly ready to walk away yet,” he joked in the bottom of the inning as the Phillies trotted out Jose Alvarado, whose wildness had the potential to extend the game. Alvarado, though, allowed a single and nothing else. And then it was over, with Andy Green leading his team to the field so they could turn to the booth and raise their hats in tribute.
“I don’t think I can find the right words to express just how much all you mean to me,” Rose said to you then. “We’ve known each other a long, long time and whether we’ve met each other or not, it feels as though we’re on a first-name basis, right? ...
“We shared some time bonding,” he continued, voice cracking, “over the exploits of the team we loved — the New York Mets.”
And with that, Howie finally closed the book.
Thanks for reading it to us for all those years, friend.
Laura Albanese is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. She's been covering MLB since 2014 after starting at Newsday as an intern seven years earlier.
