NY Mets: Top SNY Moments from the 2021 season

New York Mets fans are spoiled with the best broadcast team in baseball. Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez, Ron Darling, and Steve Gelbs, along with the entire SNY crew, put together broadcasts that are entertaining and funny, yet also informative and educational. Even when the team is getting blown out or on a prolonged losing streak, fans watch the games to see Gary, Keith, Ron, and Steve.

Cohen is an amazing play-by-play caller. He has a sense of what moments matter most and calls them with childlike enthusiasm. He also expertly sets up Keith and Ron to talk about how they would handle certain situations based on their playing experience. Keith and Ron talk about hitting and pitching, respectively, with incredible detail and offer tremendous insight. Gelbs is an integral part of Mets broadcasts from the first base camera well, or wherever his stories take him, which can be anywhere.

Thanks to this mixture of wit, intuition, and storytelling, fans with differing levels of interest in baseball can enjoy Mets broadcasts. There’s something for everyone, whether it’s the baseball knowledge and history, the humor, or the wide range of stories that get told. You’d be hard-pressed to find a Mets fan who, after watching a Mets game, didn’t feel some sort of satisfaction.

Thank you to Shea Station for putting together a highlight video of some of the best booth moments this season, which was very helpful with this story! Let’s take a look at some of the top moments from Mets broadcasts in 2021.

Mets broadcast moment #6: Keith Hernandez’s Alarm Clock

“Goooooooooood morning! Rise and shine! I know what you’re thinking, who does this guy think he is? I’m Keith Hernandez, and I hope you have a great day, pretty boy.”

How would you like to wake up to that every morning?!

One of the SNY camera guys was at a flea market and found the alarm clock. It was a Brooklyn Cyclones giveaway in 2018.

“Have you listened to the alarm,” Keith asked. “You should set the alarm when we have a day game to wake up. It’ll blow you away.”

Keith then started imitating the recording, making Gary and Ron laugh.

“I have a case of those at home, if you guys want one,” Keith said.

There are a couple of these available on eBay, if you’d like to be woken up by Keith every day.

Watch the whole story below.

Mets broadcast moment #5: The Unhittable Pitch Desk Pound

If there’s one thing you never want to say in front of Keith, it’s that a pitch is unhittable.

After a strikeout, Ron was asking Keith if it irritated him after he struck out and then teammates would ask him what pitch was thrown. Ron followed by provocatively saying “unhittable curveball.”

Keith responded by pounding the desk and adamantly saying “Nothing is unhittable! If [a hitter] stays in the strike zone, nothing is unhittable.”

Gary responded “Ronny, you provoked [Keith] into the desk pound!” to which Ron replied “I’m pushing his buttons, and he knows it.” Ron followed that with an anecdote from a conversation with Keith and Ryne Sandberg, where Ron explained to them that a pitcher had an almost unhittable breaking pitch. Keith and Sandberg turned to him and incredulously said, “What? What are you talking about? There’s no such thing.”

Keith went on to explain that when you’re facing a pitcher and he drops a hammer on you, you keep it in the back of your mind. Ron then explained that the reason he asked the provocative question that started this conversation, other than just to annoy Keith, was because he figured that hitters must be angry after getting struck out and wouldn’t want to talk about it. Gary asked if talking about it is part of being a good teammate, to which Ron replied “I guess.”

Yes, giving your teammates a scouting report is part of being a good teammate. Something that Keith probably did many, many times.

Watch Keith’s desk pound here.

Mets broadcast moment #4: The M&M Conversation

How you doin’?!

The classic Joey Tribbiani line made it on a broadcast this season. The Mets were hosting the Cardinals at Citi Field, and with Lars Nootbaar at the plate, Gary, Keith, and Ron, started talking about candy. Specifically, a fictional “Nootbaar.” Keith decided that a “Nootbar” would contain nougat, nuts, and a little caramel. Sounds pretty good to me.

Keith and Gary decided that this fictional candy bar would be an M&M product with a red color “for gusto and attitude,” according to Gary and “for the Cardinals,” according to Keith. They then started talking about the M&M’s on the left field wall. Gary decided the red, blue, and green M&M’s were New Yorkers, while the yellow one was more midwestern and friendlier like St. Louis.

The camera then zoomed in on the blue M&M and Ron chimed in “The blue one’s like ‘How you doin’?!’” They all shared a laugh over that one.

Watch the Joey Tribbiani moment here.

Mets broadcast moment #3: The Fake-Background Exposé

The Mets were on the road in Miami, Gary and Ron were calling the game from Connecticut, Steve was in the SNY studios in Manhattan, and there was a concert at Citi Field. Just your usual broadcast.

I don’t know the context of this, but the clip starts with Gelbs saying “I can’t see anything” over James McCann batting. SNY then cuts to a quad box of the four locations mentioned above, with Steve poking at the background behind him saying, “I know it looks… this is not real.” Gary got a case of the giggles from this.

“None of it’s real,” Ron replied.

“The illusion is part of what makes this work, Steve, and now you’ve busted the entire illusion!” Gary said.

“I’m nothing if not honest, I’m nothing without my integrity,” Steve said. “This is fake,” he added declaratively.

Gary started talking about how beautiful the view is from the SNY studios, prompting Steve to pull up the curtain. Unfortunately, there were no windows back there, just a blank wall.

“You should be getting the email, just about now, Steve,” Ron said. “From corporate,” Keith chimed in.

Watch it here.