Sam Rosen happy to be back in the Rangers' radio booth after health scare
Sam Rosen, the TV voice of the Rangers. Credit: Getty Images/Bruce Bennett
GREENBURGH — Even after four decades of calling Rangers games, Sam Rosen still gets a thrill from the job, particularly this time of year.
“You want to be part of what’s going on, especially when you get a team that is making a good run and is a legitimate contender,” he told Newsday on Thursday after the team’s morning skate before Game 5 of the Eastern Conference final.
“You want to be there.”
That was what made it so frustrating that he was forced to miss Games 1 through 4 after a health scare sidelined him from the radio call on ESPN New York.
“I was [ticked off] at myself,” he said.
Rosen, 76, normally works for MSG Networks, but after the first round local TV does not carry Stanley Cup playoff games. But Rosen was set to fill in on radio for Kenny Albert, who is calling the Western Conference final for Turner Sports and unavailable.
That plan got derailed on May 20, two days before the conference final began, when Rosen fell ill after watching a grandson’s baseball game in Rockland County.
“I just started to have some dizzy spells, a little disoriented,” he said. “Didn’t faint or fall down or anything. Just dizzy.”
The mother of one of the players is an EMT and suggested he call 911. Soon he was being taken by ambulance to Nyack Hospital and later White Plains Hospital for tests.
By the time he got to White Plains, Rosen said, he was feeling “80 to 85% better. I was clearheaded, knew what was going on, talking to everybody.”
Every test “came back clean,” but he was kept overnight Monday and Tuesday, then sent home early Wednesday after some tweaks to his regular medication.
By then, he already had called the office and Don La Greca had been deployed. (Albert had hoped to call Game 1 of the Rangers-Panthers series but left for Dallas early to call Game 1 there the next day because of weather concerns.)
Rosen, Albert, La Greca and analyst Dave Maloney all are longtime members of the Rangers’ broadcast team and generally popular with fans. On Wednesday, La Greca posted a picture of him and Maloney at Amerant Bank Arena in Florida on his “X” account and wrote, “It’s an honor to call games for this amazing fan base!”
Rosen felt well enough to call Game 1, but his doctor already had ruled him out of it, not to mention Games 3 and 4 in Florida.
“The doctor said, ‘You know what? Don’t fly the first weekend for Games 3 and 4 and then you’re good to go if everything is checking out,’ ” Rosen said.
The Rangers split the first four games, three of which went to overtime, which only made missing them worse for an announcer.
“Those games were just wild,” Rosen said. “But the good thing is everything checked out. You’ve got to live with it. [Stuff] happens and you deal with it.”
If the Western Conference final ends in six games and the Rangers and Panthers go seven, Albert could be back for that. But Rosen has Games 5 and 6.
When he walked into the morning skate Thursday, he jokingly said to reporters, “What did I miss?”
Some fans on social media expressed confidence that Rosen would fix some of the problems the Rangers have had against the powerful Panthers.
“I’ll do my best,” he said, then joked, “I could make up a couple of goals on the radio.”
Rosen is aware of the well wishes he has gotten from Rangers fans concerned about his health.
“The amount of support and love is overwhelming,” he said. “I can’t give enough back to the fans for what they give to me.”
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.
