They aren’t gonna play, are they? Have you seen the forecast? Have you clicked on your weather app of choice a thousand times? I have. Look at those percentages for precipitation for each hour within ZIP Code 11368. At no point on Sunday afternoon do they drop below 60%. Does that mean there’s more than a 60% chance it will rain between 2 PM and 3 PM, or that 60% of those 60 minutes will include rain? I can never remember how it works, except that those standing or sitting outside stand a better than even chance of getting wet, something that doesn’t promote the playing of baseball, nor watching of baseball.
It did rain where I clicked. And they did play. And I did go and watch and get wet. Of course I did. It was Closing Day at Citi Field for the 2026 season, the last scheduled home game of the year. When there are no playoffs on the horizon — and there aren’t — this is akin to my High Holy Day, my day of solemn observance. I get solemn when there’s no more baseball ahead in Flushing. I observe everything I can.
And, if I must, I get wet. So does my wife. Stephanie wanted in on Closing Day this year. She does most years if it falls on a Sunday. She skipped it last year, but was back for this one because it was going to feature a goodbye to Howie Rose. She knows Howie like every Mets fan knows Howie. When she goes to the ladies room’ at Citi Field, she hears Howie, like every Mets fan availing themselves of the facilities there hears Howie. Piping in live play-by-play so you don’t miss a pitch is one of the great innovations of our time. I don’t know that Stephanie is stressed about keeping up on balls and strikes. I do know that when she returns from her little trip, she can tell me what Howie was just talking about. How can you not listen to what he has to say?
On Saturday, I heard Howie in the press box men’s room. It was between batters in the bottom of the eighth, as the Mets were reaching base Baseball Bugs-style against the Phillies’ Orion Kerkering, one after another in a veritable conga line. I heard Howie tell Keith Raad and the rest of us that Kerkering was looking farmisht out on the mound. That’s the sort of word I heard growing up with parents who spoke perfect English unless another language made the point better. So did Howie, apparently. I had just heard the lead radio voice of a Major League Baseball club call a reliever with control issues farmisht [1]. He could have used perfect English. This was better.
“Last Yiddishism for 900 miles,” I thought.
Howie was working his second-to-last game as that lead radio voice, the final Mets win of his tenure, it would turn out. The Mets bats had farmisht the Phillies bullpen good on Saturday. The rain loomed to do the same to the Mets-Phillies game for Sunday, which would be a slight irritant under usual circumstances, but these are the Mets. Is anything ever usual? Sunday was to be Howie Rose Day, featuring a pregame retirement ceremony honoring our voice. He is most definitely our voice. He has spoken for us and to us in one capacity or another since 1987. That’s 40 years when we haven’t had to wander the desert in search of somebody who gets us, because he is us. It rained Mets empathy. It rained Mets lexicon. It rained Mets lore. Yet on Sunday, it was supposed to rain on Howie Rose Day.
It somehow seemed appropriate that this would be an issue, not because “oh, the Mets, everything that can go wrong will go wrong,” but because of a few minutes I spent listening to Howie open a particular broadcast this summer. He told us we were going to start the game in a rain delay, and the vague disgust in his delivery said it all. He was reporting a fact. He wasn’t adding editorial comment. He didn’t have to. We have to wait for the baseball game to start and it disgusts me like it disgusts you came through via the slightest inflection. Nobody does vague disgust like Howie Rose. Vague disgust, like the instinctive insertion of Yiddish, is perfect English to the Mets fan ear.
Of course Howie Rose didn’t deserve rain on his retirement day. We don’t deserve to not have Howie Rose 81 or more games a year anymore, but that’s another issue. Maybe nature thought bringing out the clouds could sabotage his plans. Only for the ceremony. That was postponed to next year, lockout resolution willing. Stephanie and I would have relished every bit of Howie getting center stage on the field, being the guest of honor at the kind of pregame celebration he has emceed regularly for others (when more often than not, I have noticed, rain is in the forecast). And I look forward to him receiving it eventually. On Sunday, however, we didn’t really need it. We came out, in the rain, because they were going to play, and he was going to describe it. There’s no wrong place to commune with Howie Rose’s voice; on Saturday evening, I listened to him deliver a contingency valedictory after the final out while I was on the 7 to Woodside, just in case there was literally no tomorrow for him, and it made for a beautiful ride. But there’s no better place to do it than in close proximity from whence it emanates, where even if you have to excuse yourself for a few pitches, he’ll be there for you. Porcelain only adds to the acoustics.
[2]The Mets handed out journals inscribed with the timeless advice to Put It In The Books. For Howie. They played recordings of Shea Stadium’s Queen of Melody Jane Jarvis on the organ. For Howie. They played a few Beatles tunes, most poignantly “Hello, Goodbye”. For Howie. They printed his picture and his catchphrase on the Home Run Apple. They raised it once organically, for Bo Bichette. Stephanie and I got just wet enough to remember we were sitting in a stubborn mist most of the day. For a couple of innings, we took shelter in the Promenade concourse. Then it was back to our seats, back to peering over to the broadcast booth, back to joining in any excuse to acknowledge and applaud Howie as the day went on.
Wonder of wonder, miracle of miracles, the game had no delay at its start. The Mets assumed Charlie Brown’s philosophy, as shouted to his teammates who abandoned him rather than grow drenched: “A little rain never hurt anybody!” Any vague disgust evident emanated from Jonah Tong giving up two runs to the Phillies in the second and two more in the fourth. Cristopher Sanchez wasn’t much bothered by Met bats until Bichette’s in the sixth, his ERA staying drier than we did upstairs. The Mets actually outhit the Phillies, 10-7, but failed to outscore them, losing, 7-2 [3]. When it comes to baseball teams that inspire Charlie Brown metaphors, the Mets are the Charlie Browniest.
But they played, and we went, and we got Howie. I had my radio on for the ninth inning. He talked about the last Phillie reliever, Jose Alvarado, being combustible. Jose Alvarado was pitching, therefore that’s who Howie focused on. Not his professional Mets affiliation, dating back to 1987 and Mets Extra. Not his tenure as a full-time TV and radio voice since 1996. Not having been a template for the rest of us since Opening Day in 1962 when he decided the Mets were the team for him, as in somebody invented a team, therefore, as an eight-year-old in Bayside, he assumed it was created just for him. That’s an example of assumption being a very good thing. Howie Rose became a Mets fan like millions did. He became a Mets broadcaster like few did. He endured as almost nobody has. His big moments are the ones that get repeated, but it is the steady drizzle of Howie being Howie — whether it’s exultation to match euphoria or vague disgust that a tarp is compelled to sit on the field — that made him our companion for all seasons. He is one of one.
That’s why we didn’t mind a little rain. That’s why we came out to cheer the personification of the Mets, never mind that he never took one swing that wasn’t with a golf club or threw more than a ceremonial first pitch here and there. That’s why the last-place 2026 Mets, in a fit of menschiness, made the last on-field act of their home season an en masse pilgrimage to the area behind home plate, so they could gather and tip their caps to the man who’d been sharing their exploits and lack thereof with the Mets fan world at large. In Jonah Tong’s postgame scrum, he wouldn’t answer any questions about his pitching until he offered “huge congratulations to Howie and all he’s done. I know his impact won’t be lost on every single one of us, me especially. He’s one of the first people I met when I came up here.” Spoken like a true born-and-bred New York Mets fan who also goes back to the franchise’s beginnings.
Jonah is 23 and from Canada. Doesn’t matter. Howie made everybody who cares about the Mets, including those who constitute the Mets, feel like they were a part of something special. I’m not surprised Howie was one of the first people Jonah met. He’s stayed the reporter he was when he first got into the business. His famous call for Pete Alonso’s playoff-saving home run in Milwaukee, about it being the “most memorable” of his career, really pops when you realized “most memorable” was a callback to the way he began reporting Pete’s plate appearance: “This may be his last Mets at-bat, he COULD make it his most memorable.” He processed the details, he distilled them, he bottled and poured them like the champagne that would soon rain down in the Mets’ clubhouse.
He’s never not curious about the who, what, where, when, why, and how of baseball. I’ve listened to him ask Andy Green questions with the same desire to learn that he displayed when he was asking Davey Johnson questions. I don’t doubt he appreciated all the greetings and salutations directed toward him since declaring this would be his last season at the microphone, but he’s never let taking a bow stop him from doing the basics of his job. That includes the emceeing he’s done so dependably for the past couple of decades. Watching him master the ceremonies for Carlos Beltran on Saturday, I wouldn’t have known he was supposed to be in Carlos’s seat on Sunday.
[4]Instead, he was in his own seat, where he belonged, taking in the kudos that arose for Rose on their own steam. The A/V squad gave us a few nudges, but we knew what to do. We knew to come out in the rain for Howie. Our day was brighter for it. Our Mets fans lives, too. His impact won’t be lost on every single one of us.