Mike Tirico used to stay true to the orange and blue.
Back when Shea Stadium still stood in the heart of Flushing, Tirico was a Queens kid in the cheap seats, living and dying with every pitch. But that loyalty didn’t make it out of the 80s. The Mets still matter, just not to him. Whatever fire he had for the Amazins faded sometime during the Reagan administration.
“It was so pathetic in the 70s and the early 80s that I promised myself if they won once in my lifetime, I’d move on,” he said on The Orange Zone.
That passion still runs deep for some in sports media, including Mike Breen. The voice of the NBA on ESPN has previously talked about how he would “love” to call a Mets game. Tirico? Not so much; not anymore. The soon-to-be voice of the NBA on NBC has long since moved on.
And he doesn’t seem to appreciate fans seeing into the personal side of broadcasters’ loyalties.
“I grew up going to Mets games, like a couple hundred games,” Tirico explained. “Shea Stadium — the building before Citi Field — was truly five miles from the house I grew up in. So, I would get on the bus or subway and go. My grandfather worked there as a security guard, so I would go to a ton of games. I grew up a Mets fan. I irrationally could not watch the last out of the Mets winning the World Series over the Red Sox. I was here on [Syracuse’s] campus… Could not watch that with everybody. I had to watch the last out by myself because I was completely irrational.”
That’s part of the deal when you’re a Mets fan — the irrationality. As someone who’s lived and died with every pitch since my father turned me into a die-hard Mets fan in 2006, I know exactly what Mike’s talking about. I remember being 12 years old, convincing myself that a team starting Jason Pridie in center field could make a run to the World Series. That team went 77-85.
Now, that’s irrational.
But there’s another level of irrationality Tirico isn’t a fan of.
“You start covering it nationally, and realize you can’t have fandom seep in,” Tirico said. “Now, people do now, and it bothers me. I don’t like watching SportsCenter or other shows on ESPN where the anchors are talking about who they’re fans of. Like, who cares? I don’t care. I would much rather know the 20 seconds about something related to that team that I don’t know, as opposed to your fandom.
“Now, generationally, people kind of like it because they can relate to the anchors a bit more, so I get it. I’m just saying my personal choice is — that’s the way I was brought up as a journalist. I don’t care if you’re a Republican or a Democrat. I don’t care if you’re a Phillies fan or a 49ers fan. Your job is to tell me the news. And in sports talk, that’s a different world. But when you’re doing the facts, and you’re in the middle of a game, I don’t want to hear.”
“Stephen A. Smith is great, and he’s a friend, and he’s done a wonderful job,” Tirico adds. “I don’t want time wasted during the NBA halftime [show] telling me your feelings as a Knicks fan. I want to hear about the game, and what I missed, and what I need to look forward to. But, again, that’s just a personal way of consuming sports, and I’m a little bit old school when it comes to that. I’m old, so I’m glad to be old school.”