Ron Darling feels 'fantastic' since returning to broadcast booth
Mets broadcaster and former pitcher Ron Darling changed his travel schedule after missing time to remove a mass from his chest. Credit: Jim McIsaac
Ron Darling still does not yet feel at full strength, nor does he believe that his voice is fully back to normal. But seven weeks after his return to work, he said he does feel “great, lucky, knock on wood. I feel fantastic.”
This was before Tuesday night’s Padres-Mets game at Citi Field, which for the SNY/Turner Sports analyst marked a return to a fully normal schedule for the first time since June 4, when he came back from nearly two months away.
For the next 12 weeks, Darling plans to take a day off only once every couple of weeks as he navigates the rest of the Mets season as well as Turner’s slate, which runs through the National League Championship Series.
After that, he will be re-evaluated by doctors regarding treatment for the thyroid cancer that was diagnosed in early May, three weeks after he took a leave upon saying he needed surgery to remove a “large mass” in his chest.
“I feel much better than I did in the beginning,” said Darling, who pitched for the 1986 World Series champion Mets. “I’m certainly not 100 percent, but I ask Keith [Hernandez] and Gary [Cohen] and [Gregg] Picker, who’s our producer, ‘Just let me know how I sound.’
“I think I sound a lot different, but most people have said not noticeably different. The people I work with, who’ve heard me, what, 1,500 times, say that I don’t sound noticeably different. So I think that’s good.”
Darling estimated his voice at 75 percent of normal and ranked his stamina at the same level.
“Usually I do a lot during the summer, running around doing all kinds of stuff,” he said. “On days I have off, I will be off. I changed my travel schedule.
“Usually when I go in for the Turner games I’ll go in late afternoon, get there in time for dinner and go to bed. Now I’m flying in early in the morning so I can get my work done, eat around 4 or 5 o’clock and go to bed very early.”
Darling, 58, has worked with Cohen and Hernandez in SNY’s Mets booth since 2006.
“To be able to work again — that was a long time I was out — you forget how much this is a part of your life,” he said. “When you’re not doing it, you miss it.”
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
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