Craig Carton hasn’t met New York Mets play-by-play voice Gary Cohen or Yankees announcer Suzyn Waldman, but he claims to know the broadcasters well enough to consider them out of touch.
During his Wednesday afternoon radio show on WFAN, Carton mocked Mets broadcasters for not acknowledging his co-host Evan Roberts when SNY’s cameras panned to him in the Citi Field crowd earlier this week. Cohen did, however, acknowledge SNY analyst Jerry Blevins in the crowd during Wednesday’s game, which spawns the question of whether the Mets TV crew immediately recognized Roberts.
While calling out SNY, which simulcasts two hours of WFAN’s afternoon show daily, Carton made the surprise admission that he never met Cohen.
“I don’t know that I’ve ever even been in the same room as either one of them,” Carton said of Cohen and Waldman.
“They’ve never bought a ticket to a game, Gary and Suzyn,” Carton complained. “So they have no idea what it might be like, and I don’t like doing it now either, guilty as charged, sitting in seats with regular people.
“I always say, when you become a play-by-play broadcaster…You’ve lost touch with the average fan,” Carton continued. “Because you get paid to go to games. You have no idea what it’s like to want to buy a ticket to Yoda bobblehead (night) because they just give you a Yoda bobblehead.”
If any broadcaster in the four major American sports leagues can relate to a fanbase, it’s the local baseball announcer. Especially Cohen, who grew up a die-hard Mets fan and frequented Shea Stadium for games.
Being around the team nearly every day for upwards of 162 games in a season, local baseball announcers become emotionally invested in the team just like fans are. They might take it for granted, that they get paid to walk into a stadium every day, but does that make them out of touch? Incapable of adlibbing and having a normal conversation because they’re so used to having their broadcaster switch flipped on? Maybe. But I’m not sure it’s the frequency with which they attend games that sets broadcasters apart from fans.
