Mets broadcasters in trivia battle

Howie Rose said it "felt like going into The Spectrum in the 1970s" when WOR's Mets broadcasting crew visited SNY's studios to record "Battle of the Broadcasters," a Mets trivia contest pitting them against SNY's crew.

"My contenton from the very beginning was that we’ve got no shot because this thing is rigged, it’s a setup, it’s an SNY show that we’re taping at SNY studios," Rose said Wednesday, (mostly) jokingly.

To find out whether that was, in fact, the case, viewers will have to tune in for the show's premiere after the Mets postgame show Thursday night.

All Rose could say about the program before the fact is that it was more enjoyable than he expected when he was asked to participate on June 24, the morning of a two-game home stand against the A's sandwiched around two road trips.

"I had concerns about how much energy I would have for it just because of when it was wedged in, and giving up some of that precious little time at home with our families," he said.

"Once I got past that I thought this has a chance to be fun, and it was. They did it up really well. They wanted to make it a slick replica of a 1970s game show with all of those attendant bells and whistles."

Rose joined colleagues Josh Lewin and Seth Everett on the WOR team, which faced Gary Cohen, Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling of SNY.

Kevin Burhardt hosted and emerged as a star the show, according to Rose.

Rose and Cohen long have been known as Mets history savants, but Rose feared the Elias Sports Bureau might seek questions that were too obscure in an effort to trip up the panels.

Rather, he found them to have the "perfect degree of difficulty."

Rose still was kicking himself over one answer he got wrong, three weeks after the fact.

But the contest was more about the journey than the destination.

"For the most part our personalities come out," he said, "which at the end of the day this is supposed to be about."