" They may call him Baba Booey - I just call him Mets fan !"
Earlier this past week I had the honor of interviewing Gary Dell’Abate, best known as being the producer of the Howard Stern Show for almost the past 30 years. He is a top selling New York Times Best Selling Author, loving husband and father to two sons. But He is also a die hard Mets fan. Gary was kind enough to spare a few minutes while driving to a appointment, so I made the most of our brief interview.
RustyJr: Thank you for taking time out for this interview, I guess my first and foremost question to you is when did you really first become a Mets fan ?
Gary Dell’Abate: Ah before I can remember. I remember the game being on in the house, my father watching the game, and I just remember it being part of my life forever.
R.J: So do you remember the first game you ever went to?
G.D: My father used to take me and my brothers to Old Timers Day, it had to be ’67 or ’68 and the thing that I remember about it was I found it sort of weird because the Mets didn’t have that many old timers and a there were alot of other New York old timers there. I could be crazy, but I have a vague recollection of Duke Snider and Mickey Mantle being there. And Mantle was a New York Yankee, so I guess they brought back old New York players.
R.J: Okay so who was you favorite player growing up ?
G.D:Without question it was Tom Seaver.
R.J.And what about from the crop of Mets from the past 30 years ?
G.D: Piazza was a big guy.
R.J: Well let me ask you this, when you had Piazza on the Stern Show, were you guys nervous? I am sure Jay Horowitz ( Mets Director of Public Relations) was pacing back and forth during the interview.
G.D:I have known Jay for years and I really had to work him. I’m sure Jay was very nervous about the show, but he has come to like the show. I remember when I was at WNBC I tried to get Mookie Wilson to give a Christmas i.d but Jay was too nervous. I have met Jay many times over the years, and he’s a really good guy.
R.J: What are your impressions on Jose Reyes? Do you think he will be back, do you think he won’t be back ?
G.D: I would like him to come back, I think he is a good player, and to replace a player of that caliber you will have to pay the same amount of money anyway, although they may decide to go with the less expensive option at shortstop and put the money into an outfielder – but I feel that Reyes is a good player and the team is a lot less without him. Nobody knows what it really going on with the Mets financially, and what their deal is. The Wilpon’s have done a great job of sort of closing ranks and saying that everything is great.
R.J:Do you feel that since you have been working for the Stern Show that you have been able to get a lot of access in terms of being able to go behind the scenes with the Mets ? Are you granted special privileges there ?
G.D:I have a couple of good friends that work for the Mets who have always been nice to me over the years. My sons and I have been able to go to the games, attend batting practice, meet the players, it is very exciting. Now that my kids are getting older they are doing other things, but we tried to get out to Citi this year, but we weren’t able to find the time.
R.J: Would you say that your sons Lucas and Jackson are Mets fans – or are they Yankee fans ?
G.D: (laughs) OH MY GOD THEY ARE METS FANS !!!
R.J : It comes across on the show that you are the lone Mets fan on the show, I know Robin is and Howard used to be, but I guess what I am trying to ask is how do you manage to survive during the season when you WERE surrounded by Yankee fans such as Artie and Stuttering John ?
G.D:You learn to survive anything. I mean you are loyal to your team, you take the crap that comes with it. The World Series loss to the Yankees was much easier to deal with than the Mets collapse. I remember when the Mets collapsed in ’07, I was on the air with Artie and we were arguing. I said ” Screw You ! The Mets are getting into the playoffs !!!” , and I went inside, sat down and Jon Hein ( Wrap up Show co-host and inventor of the phrase ” Jump the Shark”) looked at me and said ” Too soon buddy, too soon”.
R.J: Those were some pretty funny times with Arte, did he do that just to bust your chops or was he really that rabid of a Yankee fan to where he was so rabid to go on tangents like that ?
G.D:It was a little of both. He was a Yankee fan so when the Yankees win you bust your Mets fans balls like that. He’s a comedian doing it on the air so it is a little bit of a caricature so Artie was doing it just for fun, and to get under my skin.
R.J: Do you still have some type of relationship with him – or have you really haven’t spoken to him ?
G.D: I just spoke with him last week.
R.J: I hope he is doing well.
G.D: If the Yankees lose tonight I’ll probably call him ( they did lose that night 5-4)
R.J: Have you been watching the playoffs ?
G.D: I have been following the playoffs, but I haven’t had a chance to watch alot of the games. You know that when you are a Mets fan, it’s not who you are rooting for – but who you are rooting against. So I am looking at the scoreboard and rooting against the Yankees and Phillies. I was also very happy to see Atlanta lose.
R.J: So was I. Do you feel now that Boston and Atlanta have both suffered collapses this past season that it takes the focus off the Met ’07 collapse ?
G.D:The thing is when you talk about colossal collapses of all time you don’t really think about the Mets. There is some that are bigger, the ’61 Phillies, the Mets aren’t even in that discussion which is good.
R.J: We have discussed this in email, and I really didn’t want to ask you this, but I was there when you threw out the infamous first pitch back in ’09. I admit that I did cringe, but yet I have seen other people do worse. But what really went through your mind that day when it happened ?
G.D:That it was really F.cking bad, and that it would be talked about on the show. I think the reason that it had blown up is because I was the victim of two things. First of all I work on a show where we have nothing but time to talk about it . If I was the bandleader on the Tonight Show, they would have shown the clip once or twice and moved on to other stuff. Here we have hours to talk about it. The other thing is if I had done that five years before it wouldn’t have gotten nearly as much traction. I told everyone that that pitch – that video is the definition of something going viral. If you look at it now, there are two of them on YouTube. One of them has 700,000 hits while the other has 500,000.I have said this before that I could kill somebody and not get 1.2 million people to watch it.
R.J: In your book ” The Call Me Baba Booey” you relayed a funny story about when you interviewed Rick Cerrone (Yankee catcher from the early ’80′s).
G.D: So I was interning at WLIR radio on Long Island, I was in college, and they guy that I worked with didn’t know the first thing about sports. So I came in one day and he asked me if I would like to interview Rick Cerrone, and I was like great ! I figured I would be there at one O’clock, he would be waiting for me and there would be a special room setup, and it turned out he said ” Okay he will be doing a signing at the mall , go there and try to get him to talk to you”. I was like ” Really ? That’s how it works ?” I though for sure that it would be a better setup. So I went down there, spoke to the P.R lady and she was like ” Sure you can interview him after everyone else is gone”.So I went off to the side to test my tape recorder to make sure it was working, and when I looked up – he was gone ! So I asked them where did he go and they were like ” Oh he left already” . I was like ” Well he promised me an interview.” So I tracked him down and he was up in the mall office , and he let me interview him. The first thing that I asked him was “You won 103 games this year and you lost to the Royals in the playoffs – Is that a disappointment ?.” He just glared at me and he said to me – ” But we won 103 games this season – How was that a failure !!” I was like Whoa – okay fine. I wasn’t even doing it to bust his balls – I asked a legitimate reporter question.
R.J: You are about 9 years older than me so let me ask you this, when the Mets were pretty bad in the late ’70′s did you ever expect them to win ever again ?
G.D: (laughing) No – you never thought they were ever going to be any good. You thought they were going to suck forever. It was a dark period of time because not only did the team suck, and they traded Seaver – As a sidebar – we have a caller who apparently owns a vineyard and i guess Tom Seaver lives in California and they live right next door to each other ad they are friendly. So Seaver doesn’t know me from a hole in the wall, So he got Seaver to autograph a ball that said ” Nice first pitch” – and just to prove that it wasn’t b.s the guy even gave me a picture of Tom Seaver actually holding the ball – I have put it in my man cave.
R.J:What do you think the Mets will do and what would you like to see see them do this coming off season ?
G.D: I would like to see them spend some money – Listen, they have lost a lot of salaries am I correct ? So Beltran’s salary is gone now that the season is over ?
R.J:Yes, his is gone, K-ROD’s is gone as well as Ollie and Castillo’s are all gone.
G.D: Alright, so there has been a bunch of salary that has been dumped,so you would think that if they haven’t gone through this financial disaster that this would be a great year to rebuild. The rumor is that they are pairing down the payroll to about 100 million. Then there was a rumor that payroll could be anywhere between 80 and a hundred million – and if that is the case – I don’t see them being successful. The Mets don’t appear to have the baseball savvy to field a winning team- but having said that , you have a really good general manager ( Sandy Alderson) as well as a really good manager ( Terry Collins) – So will they be allowed to make moves that they want to make ? I would like to see them keep Reyes, and I would like to see them go out and get a really solid number 2 pitcher, but we all know that good number 2 pitchers don’t fall off the vine, and when they do they are overpriced, and the Mets don’t seem to want to overpay.
R.J: Thank you very much for your time Gary – I really appreciate it.
And with that said…. HERE COMES THE INFAMY !!!!!!!
Mets alumni celebrating a birthday includes:
Back up infielder from the ’62 season, Sammy Drake would have been 87 today (1934).
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Reserve outfielder/first baseman from ’79-’80, José Cardenal is 68 (1943). In his two seasons witht he Mets, Cardenal appeared in a total of 37 games with the Mets ( mostly as a pinch hitter), and batted .228 with 2 home runs and 8 RBIs.
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Mo Vaughn will be rooting hard for the Cardinals tonight solely based on the fact that he prefers ribs over SCRAPLE !!!!
30 comments
Anonymous
10/7/2011-11:26am at 11:26 am (UTC -4)
good stuff rusty.l
I never listened tot he Stern show. Couldn’t stand it then, and can’t believe he is still around doing the same schtick.
some stuff that is crudely funny when the comic is young just seems kind of skeevey old manish when he becomes, well, a skeevey old man leering at girls that could be his granddaughter almost!
I did like the movie though for some reason (private parts)
SaltyGary
10/7/2011-1:15pm at 1:15 pm (UTC -4)
“I never listened tot he Stern show” is obvious because your next statement is very far off from the truth.
Anonymous
10/7/2011-5:16pm at 5:16 pm (UTC -4)
Never listened to Howard? Come on, stickyone! The man is flat out funny… And Gary, as we know from getting smoked by him in Met Trivia, knows his stuff… But it’s all good. Today, we can all sit back and smile, as A-Rod has exorcised the Ghost Of Adam Wainright for us by ending the Yankee playoff run AND Jorge Posada’s career.
Anonymous
10/7/2011-9:48pm at 9:48 pm (UTC -4)
I would catch some of the TV version.
No, I guess you are right. A 50+ YO guy having stoned strippers on the show, oogling them and trying to get them to take their clothes off, while his female sidekick chuckled like a car whose battery was dying, isn’t at all skeevey.
Practically the next Mr. Rodgers!
SaltyGary
10/7/2011-10:55pm at 10:55 pm (UTC -4)
But that is barely 2% of the show. He does amazing interviews and just rants about stuff for the most part.
MetsFan4Decades
10/7/2011-12:13pm at 12:13 pm (UTC -4)
Nice interview. Good to see there are still Met fans out there like myself that have stuck with the team through thick and thin. I think I might have been at that old Timer’s Day in ’68 as well. It was one of my first games at Shea, just can’t remember the exact year.
I’ve never listened to the Howard Stern show – just wasn’t my thing. I did see the movie on him and like that.
Anonymous
10/7/2011-1:07pm at 1:07 pm (UTC -4)
Scapple… everything but the oink.
Nice interview holmes. Like Stick, not a fan of Stern or the show, but it is nice to see that there are others out there suffering like the rest of us.
And the only few options I see for a #2 pitcher are Shields, CJ Wilson or Yu, and the only one of those 3 I can see the Mets getting is Shields. But it’s going to take a bunch to get him. I’d figure you’re looking at some combination of Murphy, Duda, maybe Gee, Parnell and a higher prospect type in the lower minors maybe (maybe they ask for Familia?)? Anyway, no way for me to estimate what they want, but the cost is not going to be cheap and it’s not like they’ll want all the semi-decent guys on the team. That said, he’s probably worth it being controllable for 2 years at a nice price.
(still waiting for this disqus format to go away…
)
SaltyGary
10/7/2011-1:35pm at 1:35 pm (UTC -4)
Yea even though your post saws it was written 23 minutes ago, it didn’t appear on my screen until 10 minutes after I made my posts.
MetsFan4Decades
10/7/2011-1:44pm at 1:44 pm (UTC -4)
I’m not a fan of this particular disqus format either. Seems different sites that use disqus must have different options.
Anonymous
10/7/2011-1:45pm at 1:45 pm (UTC -4)
I honestly think it is keeping traffic down on this site. While the trend of this site is more of a minor league focus (and why shouldn’t it,as there is where the cavalry is coming from), the writers are all solid, the posters are intelligent (even me from time to time!) and all are courteous.
The combo of the disqus and the slow loading times on the site drive me batty. I’ll still be here, but just throwing my 2 cents out there.
SaltyGary
10/7/2011-1:16pm at 1:16 pm (UTC -4)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfLIyT8HExY
SaltyGary
10/7/2011-1:18pm at 1:18 pm (UTC -4)
The above link is the pitch. This one below is him re-attempting it on Jimmie Kimmle and failing and Robin showing him up.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qdH1sEN1FuQ
Adam "Prismo"
10/7/2011-3:20pm at 3:20 pm (UTC -4)
Great interview Rusty!
Anonymous
10/7/2011-5:09pm at 5:09 pm (UTC -4)
Isn’t today a GREAT day?!
MetsFan4Decades
10/7/2011-6:08pm at 6:08 pm (UTC -4)
The day started off great and has the opportunity to end great – as long as the Cards can get by the Phillies.
Francesa calling it ‘Black Friday’.
Hey Mike, not for Met fans.
Anonymous
10/7/2011-9:49pm at 9:49 pm (UTC -4)
+1,346,478.6
Rich
10/7/2011-6:44pm at 6:44 pm (UTC -4)
Good piece, Ed. I don’t listen to Stern, but nonetheless, it was a good read.
Anonymous
10/8/2011-1:04am at 1:04 am (UTC -4)
I know a lot of folks have tuned out of baseball with our metsies out of it but some great stuff going on this post season imo. From play in Wednesday bringing us the Cards and departed Rays, to the fall of the Yanks yesterday, to just watching the end of the Brewer / D-backs tilt with the presence of ex-Mets all over this thing: K-Rod surviving the bases loaded eigth, to Putz pitching to Blaco with a Carlos Gomez getting to second and being driven in for the deciding run. Here’s to hoping the Cards can make the Phils miserable tonight.
Oh, nice interview. Not a Stern fan myself, I find him something akin to listening to flatulence resonating of the tile in the Mens Bathroom at work….
Anonymous
10/8/2011-1:06am at 1:06 am (UTC -4)
**Blanco
+ other typo’s – oops.
Anonymous
10/8/2011-3:27am at 3:27 am (UTC -4)
what a couple of days of baseball!
what were the odds of phils and yanks both going out in the first round?
But, I love it!
weird at the end of the phils game. Howard was crumpled on the ground, but no one seemed to be paying any attention.
Anonymous
10/8/2011-3:45am at 3:45 am (UTC -4)
very interesting to see how the Phils have been going downhill, even as the payroll has skyrocketed. At least based on playoffs.
2008- win WS
2009- lose WS
2010 – lose LCS
2011 – lose WC round
so we know what this means – no playoffs in 2012!
Oh, and too lazy to look up the real #s, but payroll every year has jumped, and they finish earlier.
actually, could cause problems for them ongoing. The team spent the max, and that included a certain amount expected from the post season.
MetsFan4Decades
10/8/2011-4:00am at 4:00 am (UTC -4)
I am happy. That is all.
Now I can enjoy the rest of post season games.
I think they started out in ’07 right around 100 MIL and up to what? 160 MIL for 2011?
We all know the Yankees payroll is bloated. Just goes to show, you can’t buy championships. Lately, it doesn’t always guarantee you a trip to post season anymore.
Darknova306
10/8/2011-4:48am at 4:48 am (UTC -4)
I may be more cynical than most Mets fans, but watching the Cards make another NLCS makes me cringe. I won’t be satisfied until St Louis is eliminated.
MetsFan4Decades
10/8/2011-5:17am at 5:17 am (UTC -4)
This too. I was just using the Cards to eliminate the Phils.
Now Brewers eliminate the Cards and I’ll enjoy the WS.
Anonymous
10/8/2011-6:52am at 6:52 am (UTC -4)
Still the Yankees, Phillies and RedSox have had success and that has resulted in incoming resources greater than the GDP of some small nations. Winning a championship better not be the only gauge of a successful franchise or the fabled Brooklyn Dodgers of the late 1940′s and 1950′s were crap.
Darknova306
10/8/2011-4:47am at 4:47 am (UTC -4)
I’d love for the Mets to have those results the past four years. Last ring was ’86. Let’s not go overboard about this stuff. 4th place is nothing compared to losing the LCS. As sad as that might be sound.
Anonymous
10/8/2011-6:38am at 6:38 am (UTC -4)
They won 102 games during the season. That hardly speaks of a team going downhill. We all know that the playoffs are a crapshoot and any team can get hot in the playoffs and win. Were the Cardinals a better team than the Mets in 2006 because they beat the Mets in the playoffs? Were the Dodgers a better team than the Mets in 1988? Just like we in New York have to accept the dominance of the Yankees you will have to accept the dominance of the Phillies just a little bit longer.
In a short series game strategy is extremely important and Tony LaRussa is a far superior strategist than Charlie Manuel or for that matter Willie Randolph is.
Darknova306
10/8/2011-8:43am at 8:43 am (UTC -4)
Let’s face it, until the Phillies fail to win the NL East, plenty of Mets fans will be posting comments about how “the Phillies are old and falling apart”. Hell, we’ve seen comments like that plenty on this site for years. Oops. I guess “getting old” means “winning tons of games and division titles instead of finishing in 4th place every year”. People can dream, I guess…
Anonymous
10/8/2011-6:57am at 6:57 am (UTC -4)
I’m extremely happy the Yankees and Phillies were eliminated
in the first round but unfortunately until the Mets are back in contention it
is a hollow victory.
Paul J. Festa
10/8/2011-6:35pm at 6:35 pm (UTC -4)
Great interview Ed!