Ron Darling isn’t locking in his future with SNY just yet.
Asked by the New York Post whether he’ll be back in the Mets booth next season, the longtime color commentator stayed vague. “That’s a good question that I can’t answer,” Darling told Mike Puma.
“I have two more years [contractually] at TBS, and I think I have two more years at SNY. I’m at a point now where I’m kind of deciding from year to year.
Even though they present me with these long-term contracts, if I reevaluate, they’re fine with that, so we’ll see.”
Darling, who spent 13 seasons in the majors and nine of them with the Mets from 1983-1991, has been part of one of baseball’s most familiar broadcast teams for years. He and Keith Hernandez were teammates on the 1986 Mets, the franchise’s last championship club, and Hernandez played seven seasons with New York during a 17-year career. Along with play-by-play voice Gary Cohen, the trio just finished their 21st season together on SNY.
Darling also called the American League Championship Series for TBS, working alongside Brian Anderson and Jeff Francouer in the matchup between the Rays and Guardians. That series gave him a close look at ex-Met Freddy Peralta, who has thrived with the Rays since New York dealt him before the deadline earlier this summer. Peralta went on to win the ALCS Most Valuable Player Award with Tampa Bay.
“When you tinker with a Ferrari, you’d better know what you’re doing, and I think that’s what happened with Freddy [in New York],” Darling also told Puma. “He is one of the nicest people you will be around.
He’s also very amenable to being coached. And that’s all well and good, but you’d better know what you’re doing when you’re working with that fully formed athlete.
You have to be careful. You can’t just willy-nilly make changes.
I don’t think Tampa Bay did anything but return him to form, to what he was the year prior.”
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