Frequent contributor Osh41 is on the road today but sends the post below. Mets Police add that it was classy of WFAN to allow Russo to say goodbye on the air….listening now and he is crying. 19 years on the radio is a hell of a good job out of them.
Here’s Osh…
Martin and Lewis, Sonny and Cher, Sean Penn and Madonna. Let’s add another pair to the pantheon of ‘famous break-ups’.
Mike and the Mad Dog
My reaction – I will miss them – they were a good listen. Sometimes you got sick of them but the beauty of it was you could turn it off and come back the next day and they would be there – 19 years is a staggering amount of time to be paired with another person who you aren’t married to.
Russo could be so over the top and Francesa would be so condescending you’d want to throw the radio through the wall. But you kept coming back, because they were good radio.
As a Met fan you felt like you got short shifted with Mike being a die hard obnoxious Yankee fan and Russo with his SF Giants fan but regardless they really were the place to go for baseball talk radio in this town. When they started 19 years ago baseball wasn’t what it was today. WFAN could conceivably spin off a channel and do 24/7 Mets/Yankees all year round.
Some highlights for me:
– them dissecting movies around Oscar time – its early March in the dead sports zone, no football, baseball spring training etc. I liked the Oscar talk – Russo breaking down movies was hysterical – his famous quote about ‘Saving Private Ryan’ – “Hey Mike, war is bad”. Francesa acted like he was Orson Wells breaking down film in front of a classroom. He thought he was an expert – just like he thinks he knows it all about everything else. I never thought them straying from sports hurt the show – it was something that filled air time, was entertaining and more interesting than the NBA/NHL regular season that was going on
– Red Sox coming back from 3-0 down in 2004. May have been some of the best stuff they ever did. The show the morning after the Yankees lost it was a classic. The played clips of Mike saying ‘all is well, they won’t blow it’ and then Russo came on screaming ‘WELCOME TO RED SOX NATION IN THE BRONX !!!!!’ I left work at 5 to 1 and sat outside my office building to listen. Honestly, how many radio shows would you do that for?
– Scott Boras as a guest – this was after the 1998 season – they had him on about Bernie Williams potentially leaving NY as a free agent. Great stuff, they were a voice for fans that day. Nailed Boras regarding greed, what’s best for players, who works for who etc.
I feel about them like I felt about Howard Stern when he left the air – they were better than everything else on at the same time so I will suffer from their loss. If you liked sports talk they were the place to go.
