Mets color commentator and pitching analyst, Ron Darling, will call seven of SNY’s sixteen televised spring training games starting next month (Newsday). Darling asked executive producer Curt Gowdy Jr. about the role, and he decided to give Darling a chance at it.
“I wanted the versatility,” said Darling, an SNY analyst since 2006 and also Turner’s lead MLB analyst. “I just asked him to give me a chance in spring training to do a few games to see if I had any kind of talent at it. And he said yes, so that’s really where it came from.”
“I’m looking forward to it. I’ve been working at listening, watching, trying to do games on my own at MLB Network, because they’ve got more space where you can kind of sit and do it. And I’m just hoping that I’m good enough at some point to do a creditable job.”
“The hardest part is you can’t follow [Cohen]. He’s just too good. So you have to do your own thing.”
“I just wanted Curt to give me a chance and see if I had any talent at it,” Darling said. “And listen, I wouldn’t even have thought of doing it unless I knew I was going to do it with Keith [Hernandez], because he and I have been friends a long time and that helps so much that he and I are close.
“It’ll be fun to do that broadcast where hopefully I’m professional enough to cover all the nuts and bolts but at the same time he and I can have a conversation like two guys watching a game. Hopefully it’s not like those two old guys from The Muppet Show sitting up in the balcony. I hope it’s not like those two guys. Hopefully it’s a nicer version of those two guys.”
Darling will call his first game on March 8th against the Boston Red Sox.
