The best sports radio shows create a community of listeners, which means those listeners often want to share their life updates on-air with the hosts.
Thursday afternoon, a caller named Mickey joined WFAN’s midday show hosted by Brandon Tierney and Sal Licata to make three points. One point about parking, one about the Yankees, and one about his grandmother recently dying.
WFAN’s Sal Licata probably prefers Mike Francesa’s eulogies pic.twitter.com/qvz0n4IP6d
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“My grandma died yesterday,” Mickey said as point number two. “She was a huge Jets fan because of us. And you know, I wanted to give her a sendoff.”
Mickey then proceeded to use WFAN’s 50,000 watts to eulogize his grandmother across the Northeast. A thoughtful gesture, and one that isn’t too uncommon on local sports radio shows where listeners feel a connection to the hosts. But understandably, there’s a limit to how much time a caller gets to spend talking about their dead family members.
Licata was kind enough to give Mickey 15 seconds of airtime for his nana. But 16 seconds into Mickey’s tribute to nana, where he promised to remember her forever and hoped she was with poppy and her sisters, Licata had enough.
“Alright Mick, I hate to,” Licata began to talk over the caller. “Mickey, hold on, hold on. I just want to say something. Rest in peace to your grandmother, it’s horrible to hear that. Now please, get to your point.”
It’s important to remember that as Mike Francesa’s former producer, Licata grew up under the Sports Pope’s school of eulogies, which is keep it short and curt. Just last week, Francesa attempted to honor the late Tim Wakefield by noting he was a “not a great pitcher, but a solid pitcher.” Francesa infamously asked, “who cares?” after comic book writer Stan Lee died, and he similarly curbed the legacies of Horace Clarke and Hank Aaron.
It’s no wonder Licata couldn’t last more than 15 seconds for a eulogy like the one Mickey attempted to grace his nana with. But in Licata’s defense, there may have been some high jinks at play here. After beginning the call sounding very much like a native New Yorker despite noting he was a first generation American, Mickey began to eulogize his grandmother with an Irish accent. Maybe that’s how he spoke to nana, or maybe this was a bit that Licata began to sniff out.
[WFAN]