As I wrote on the blog a couple of days ago, we all love Gary, Keith and Ron. In these trying times, when you’re not hearing as much love as you’d like on the radio or in the forums, it is good to remember that there is something that every Mets fan always loves: our absolutely stellar broadcasting team.
The problem with a broadcasting team is that there aren’t many ways for us to show them our affection. We can cheer or boo players and they’ll hear you, apparently. I’ve cheered great calls and analysis by Gary, Keith, and Ron in my own living room, but they haven’t heard me.
Well, now there is a way for us to show them how much we love them. Gary, Keith, and Ron have established a charitable website on which they sell clever t-shirts, with all proceeds going to their favorite charities: The Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation (Ron’s son has JD); The Cobble Hill Health Center, which specializes in care for people suffering from dementia (Keith’s mom died of Alzheimer’s); and The Women’s Shelter of Greater Danbury (as Gary points out on the site, domestic violence touches everyone). If you buy a t-shirt, you help a worthy cause, and you also get an invitation to a fundraiser Gary, Keith, and Ron will be hosting at the end of the year. This is a great idea and these are great causes. Gary, Keith, and Ron aren’t just wonderful broadcasters, they’re decent and caring human beings.
The garykeithandron.com site is great. In addition to getting a t-shirt, you can post your favorite memories of Gary, Keith, and Ron, you can ask them questions, and you can learn about their likes and dislikes. As a literature professor, I was very, very impressed by their literary tastes. I was also interested to learn such tidbits as that Gary Cohen’s heroes growing up were Marv Albert and George McGovern, Keith likes to build plastic models and his favorite food is country French, and if Ron Darling couldn’t be a baseball player or an announcer what he’d have liked to have been is an American expatriate living in Italy or the South of France. This is one of the things I love about these guys. How many other baseball broadcasters can you imagine sharing a meal under an umbrella at a café terrace in Provence? I’m sure they also like a beer and a hot dog at a ballgame, which, in my experience, is a little more expensive than most meals in Provence.
Anyway, please check out their site and their t-shirts. Here’s what one of them looks like. I got an advance copy because I gave advice about Internet contacts to Lynn Cohen, Gary’s wife and a reader of my book and blog, who was centrally involved in getting this whole project together.
I know I’m not exactly model material, but neither, perhaps, are you.
