1986 Mets game intro on WWOR Channel 9

[AutographCollector]

Ahhh yes.... the good ol' days. When McCarver was a GOOD announcer.
Even though it's a short video, enjoy.

P.S.
Does anyone know what happened to Steve Zabriskie?

[Steve Jeltz]

I did a google search of Zabriskie and came across this website: http://www.ultimatemets.com/profile.php?PlayerCode=6592

Supposedly, if it was the real Steve Zabriske, Zabriske responded to inquiries from posters on this site who asked what he was doing now and wrote the following:


Steve Zabriskie
November 6, 2005
A friend told me about this site and suggested that I respond to those of you who have been kind enough to wonder where I am and what I'm doing. In contacting the Webmaster, he felt it would be best to just post my response here for anyone to read. It may be lengthy as I will also address the blown call of the '86 clincher and the Phil Mushnick article since they seem to have drawn some comments.

My wife and I still live in the Orlando area where we have resided in the same home for the past 21 years. Our three daughters are grown with two of them married. I retired from broadcasting at the end of 1996 although I did do some baseball in '97 and ABC Sports asked me to come back and televise one college fb game in '97. I enjoyed more than 32 years as a sportscaster but was ready to devote my time to other things.

After leaving the Mets at the end of the '89 season, I broadcast MLB and college basketball for ESPN for 4 years. Then, in an effort to further reduce the number of events, I did games for The Baseball Network for the two seasons ('94 & '95) that the network existed. In '96 and '97 I was asked to do 25 to 30 games per year for Red Sox TV and that sort of wrapped things up. More than 30 years on TV for a guy who has the perfect face for radio!

With respect to the Mets clinching game of the '86 regular season, I apologized a couple of times on the air back then but let me take this opportunity now to do so to any Mets fans who visit this site. To this day, I still don't know why I didn't say what I wanted to say at that moment and I DID BLOW THE CALL! It's interesting to realize that one of the challenges I always loved about live TV is the fact that you have to rise to the occasion in the moment. That was one of the few times I really failed to do so and I can only hope that that failure won't wipe out more than 30 years of what were, hopefully, better performances.

Here's the real story behind the charges leveled against me by Phil Mushnick regarding my 'resume'. I received 'Honorable Mention' All America honors as a running back in high school and was recruited by many colleges. I was going to go to Oklahoma until Bud Wilkenson retired after my junior year. I finally decided to attend the U of Houston on a football scholarship. I had turned down a pro baseball offer from the Angels to play college football but still wanted to play baseball in college and then professionally. I suffered a couple of serious injuries during my first two years there which limited my career and sent me back to professional baseball early. When I joined the Mets, my former football and baseball activities rightly received only passing mention in the Media Guide since, as I used to say on the air, "My athletic career started off slow and then tapered off!" Before either my 2nd or 3rd year with the club, the public relations department (Jay and Dennis) took it upon them selves to write in my bio that I had been a 'star' running back in college. I was an excellent athlete (I competed in the Decathlon), a good player, and started when not injured, but I was not what I would call a star nor did I claim to have been. When the Media Guide came out in the Spring, I questioned them about it and they laughed it off as just 'good PR'. For some reason, Phil grabbed it and ran away with it. He never bothered to ask me about it before coming out with the article and admitted to me later that he never spoke to my college FB coach, Bill Yoeman, either. I was hurt and saddened by it because I never claimed to be anything other than what I was and, as is almost always the case, there was never a printed retraction or correction of the facts.

All in all, I had a wonderful career and did it on my terms. I started in radio during the off-season in 1966 and got my first TV job in 1968. I learned very early on that you can not please every viewer and certainly not every fan. Some people will appreciate your work while others will wonder, "who hired that jerk?" and you can't worry about it. I saw my job as helping to make the other people on the air with me better and to hopefully, add to the viewer's enjoyment of the game. It was never about me.

I started doing college fb play-by-play for ABC-TV in 1976 and did my last game for them in 1997. Along the way I traveled the world doing 'Wide World of Sports' events, did MLB for ABC, ESPN, NBC, The Baseball Network, the Angels, Mets and Red Sox. Did a couple of years of The NFL on CBS and many other sports from track and field to motorcycles on ice! I had a great time.

One of the main reasons that I reduced my work load over a number of years en route to 'retirement' from broadcasting was my desire, as a devout Christian, to serve the Lord. I am an ordained minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ and have been blessed to be able to volunteer my time in serving in many different callings and capacities over a number of years. That is the work I plan to continue without 'retirement'.

My thanks to each of you for your interest in and love of the game and for being Mets fans. May God grant you the righteous desires of your hearts. Steve Zabriskie