It hasn’t exactly been a fun season for New York Mets fans, but the team’s broadcasters continually do their best to entertain them, even if it’s by accident.
Saturday’s broadcast of the game between the Mets and St. Louis Cardinals opened in all of the usual ways. As he so often does, play-by-play announcer Gary Cohen introduced the game to viewers while sitting alongside former Mets first baseman Keith Hernandez. Everything seemed pretty normal, except for the strange tape job logo on Hernandez’s shirt.
While they usually call Mets games on SNY, this game was being shown on New York station PIX 11. When they appear on that network, the broadcasters will wear polo shirts with that station’s logo on them. However, Hernandez left his shirt at the hotel, leading to a hasty patchwork fix that needed to be called out.
“Before we talk about the game tonight, we have to talk about the elephant in the room… Keith’s shirt." – Gary Cohen
"I'm just a dunderhead." – Keith Hernandez 🤷 pic.twitter.com/EFWrDVfGdt
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) August 20, 2023
“Before we talk about the game tonight, we have to talk about the elephant in the room … Keith’s shirt,” Cohen said. “We haven’t been in PIX11 for a couple of weeks so I know your PIX11 shirt is not in the laundry. What happened?”
“I was telling everyone, remember, we’ve got two games in St. Louis, we gotta bring your PIX shirts and what do I do? I leave it in my hotel room. I’m just a dunderhead,” said Hernandez. “This is the second time I have done this in 18 years.”
Thankfully for Keith, they’ve got a solid crew there to help him out in desperate times.
“Our stage manager, Nancy Smith did some great handy work trying to replicate the PIX11 logo [with tape],” added Cohen.
Lucky for Hernandez, he doesn’t work for the Baltimore Orioles. They reportedly have such a strict dress code for announcers that anyone not wearing the required shirt is pulled off of broadcasts.
