Yankees vs. Cleveland is business and personal for WFAN's Mark Chernoff

Mark Chernoff mostly declined to comment about the Yankees-Cleveland matchup in Major League Baseball’s wild-card round, for understandable reasons.

As the senior vice president for Entercom who oversees WFAN, he knows it would be good for business if the Yankees had a long postseason run, especially given how much of the season was lost to the COVID-19 pandemic.

As the father of Cleveland general manager Mike Chernoff, he has rooting interests closer to home.

All Chernoff would admit to Newsday was this: "I wish they were playing against each other in the ALCS. It would mean three rounds for each, with one getting to the World Series."

This is not the first time Mark has been through this since Mike joined the Cleveland organization in 2003. (He was named GM in 2015.)

In 2007, Cleveland beat the Yankees in the ALDS, but the Yankees were not yet on WFAN but rather its sister station, WCBS-AM.

In 2017, the Yankees beat Cleveland in the ALDS, giving a boost to WFAN but disappointing the Chernoff family, which the previous October had watched the Cubs come back from a 3-1 World Series deficit to beat Cleveland.

Mark attended the four games in Cleveland but skipped the three in Chicago to babysit with his wife, Sally, in Cleveland and allow Mike’s wife, Sarah, to attend the games at Wrigley Field.

The highlight of that run for Mark came Oct. 19 in Toronto, when Cleveland won the pennant.

"The exhilaration that I felt, I just reached out to my son and gave him a big hug and he gave me a big hug," Mark said in 2016. "That was just, like, a moment in time. It was so exciting to be there."

Mike appeared on WFAN on Tuesday with Maggie Gray and Marc Malusis and did not bite on a question about whether incoming Mets owner Steve Cohen has reached out to him about a potential front office job.

In 2015, Newsday asked Mark whether it might be complicated if Mike ever got a job with one of the New York teams while Mark was running a sports talk station.

"It sure would be," he said. "I stand up for my son no matter what." So it would be awkward having him as a GM in New York? "Yes. I would say yes, that is true."

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

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.