Howie Rose Puts it in the Books: Longtime Radio Man Will Call it After 2026 Season

Howie Rose, long-time Mets broadcaster and staple of the radio booth of the last 20 seasons, has announced that this season will be his last. While he noted in his video that he still plans to spend some time with the team, those used to his boy-like charm and encyclopedic knowledge will have to tune in to the next generation.

Rose began with the Mets in 1987 while also doing a show for WFAN, finally joining the radio booth as the play-by-play man in 1995. Rose briefly moved to television alongside Gary Cohen in 1996 before the creation of SNY. At that point, Rose returned to radio where he has served since, and better served with his ability to find a voice of summer perfect for nights on the porch.

In 2023, Rose revealed a bladder cancer that had sidelined him for parts of the 2021 season. As he contemplated retirement in recent years, Rose had skipped away games while manning the Bigelow Tea Radio Broadcast booth back in Citi Field. In 2023, the Mets inducted Rose alongside Gary Cohen into their Hall of Fame.

Rose, like Vin Scully before him, has remained an expert storyteller, but especially as a fan. While Scully understood neutrality, Rose has never let his boyhood team’s excitement escape him—he grew up in Bayside and went to Queens College. He used to eat at the old Hamburger Coach before games.

The acclaim for Rose will always go back to his encyclopedic knowledge of Mets history. If something unique was happening in a game, Rose remembers an equivalent game from the 1978 season as if it happened yesterday. At the same time, Rose has never dismissed analytics or felt the team was playing the wrong way—unless they were losing, of course. More so, Rose never felt the need to keep his distaste of the Wilpons out of the public air (in one old interview, he told fans, “Stop going to the games. Just stop. Don’t buy the merchandise. Don’t feed the Wilpon beast.”).

He also spent two decades calling games for both the New York Islanders and Ranger, including the iconic 1994 Double Overtime win by the Rangers in Game 7 against the Devils that sent them to the Stanley Cup Finals:

Rose captures what is best about baseball, and particularly Mets fandom. I feel few will forget his monologue after the magical 2024 season, when it seemed certain that the Dodgers would take the NLCS and make it to the World Series:

Quote

If you are emotionally invested in this Mets team, and you're sad right now, it's certainly understandable. But I promise you that won't take long to wear off if it ends here, because once the immediate disappointment if they don't pull off some kind of magical comeback here wears off, you'll realize what an incredible ride this team took you for this year… When you're lying around during the offseason, anticipating the next one, and you think about what the 2024 Mets were all about, you won't be able to keep yourself from smiling…I was 15 years old when they won the 1969 World Series. That's 55 years ago, so you can do the math yourself. But I'll just say this about the 2024 New York Mets. They have made this 70-year-old feel 15 all over again."

And of course, there was that magical Alonso call:

Rose’s retirement joins a number of famed radio broadcasters making generational handoffs. Rick Rizzs announced this will be his final season with the Mariners, while Rose’s Bronx colleague John Sterling stepped away following the end of the 2023 season (with a brief stint in the World Series booth in 2024). 

Most old schoolers find their way out of the booth one way or another. Rose found a way to remain not just relevant, but welcomed all these years. But after this season, it will be time to put Rose in the books.