Most observers were surprised when pitcher Noah Syndergaard spurned the Mets’ qualifying offer of $18.4 million and signed a $21 million, one-year contract with the Los Angeles Angels. As the 2021 season was nearing its end, Syndergaard was p…

New York radio became a poorer place when Steve Somers finished his last air shift on WFAN last Friday night. Somers had been part of “the FAN” since the station debuted on July 1, 1987, and he quickly became one of its most popular air perso…

Although there was no official press release from the Mets, word filtered out last week the team’s acting general manager, Zack Scott, had been terminated.Scott had been on administrative leave since Sept. 1 after he was arrested in White Pla…

The New York Mets announced last week that pitching coach Jeremy Hefner will be returning in 2022.The move raised eyebrows because the Mets hadn’t named a new manager, let alone gotten their executive suite in order, which quickly became a po…

The task of finding a new president of baseball operations has quickly become a holy grail for Mets owner Steve Cohen and team President Sandy Alderson. Given the job’s importance, lofty title and the fact the Mets play in the nation’s larges…

The Brooklyn Nets finally acted decisively with their star guard Kyrie Irving when they told him if he does not get vaccinated against Covid-19 he is not going to be on the team.Earlier, Nets head coach Steve Nash had foolishly indicated Irvi…

The term “sports legend” gets frequently tossed around and many times it is hyperbolic. Longtime Bayside resident Herb Turetzky is unquestionably a sports legend, and he was never a professional athlete.He has been the official scorer for the…

You didn’t have to be the Oracle of Delphi to predict the New York Mets were going to dismiss their manager, Luis Rojas, at the end of the season. Managing teams in big markets with decent-sized payrolls that finish with more losses than wins…

All Elite Wrestling, the two-year-old startup, made its New York debut on Sept. 22 in front of a packed Arthur Ashe Stadium for a two-hour card that was televised nationally on cable’s TNT as part of the AEW’s weekly “Dynamite!” show.It was c…

Offensive linemen, such as guards, tackles and centers, rarely generate any buzz. Fans rarely clamor for their favorite NFL teams to draft them; callers to sports talk shows rarely mention them; and they are an afterthought at best for those …

When Major League Baseball released the 2021 schedule, showing the second round of the Subway Series would take place at Citi Field during the weekend of the 20th anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks, the Mets knew they had to deliver a ceremo…

Jimmy Kimmel, the host of ABC’s “Jimmy Kimmel Live,” grew up a Mets fan in Brooklyn, and his family’s move to Las Vegas when he was in elementary school did not alter his fandom. He was 18 when the Mets won the 1986 World Series, and it remai…

The death of Rod Gilbert, one of the most popular players in New York Rangers history, at age 80 last week unleashed a torrent of tributes. He played most of the 1960s and ’70s for the Blueshirts, and he was inducted into the Hockey Hall of F…

All Elite Wrestling, which began operations two years ago, has quickly developed into a very serious challenger to the behemoth of the grappling game, World Wrestling Entertainment. A sign AEW means business is it is holding its first-ever Ne…

When I was growing up, Major League Baseball’s All-Star Game was a far bigger deal than it is today. There are myriad of reasons for its decline.It’s safe to say the ASG was a major beneficiary of baseball’s reserve clause which bound a playe…

NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell took a hard line with players who refuse to get vaccinated against Covid-19 when he unilaterally declared that if an NFL game is canceled because an unvaccinated player caused a team outbreak, then the team that…

At their Friday post-trade deadline press conference, Mets President Sandy Alderson and acting general manager Zack Scott put the best spin they could on the only move they made, trading minor league outfield prospect Pete Crow-Armstrong to t…

Former Mets starting pitcher Steven Matz, who was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays over the winter, returned to Citi Field Friday night to start against his old team. His old buddy, Mets first baseman Pete Alonso, rudely greeted him in the fir…

Until Mets outfielder Michael Conforto, who has had a miserable season trying to get his batting average over .200, hit a 9th-inning, two-run homer Sunday to give the Mets the decisive runs in a 7-6 win over the Pittsburgh Pirates, this past …

In 2020, Major League Baseball initiated a rule that made all doubleheaders seven-inning games. The thinking was it would reduce injury and fatigue for players at a time when hospitals were overrun with Covid-19 patients. Shorter doubleheader…

The Mets hobbled into Yankee Stadium having won just six of their last 17 games. Their hitting was anemic and there was an overall malaise about them. Granted, the Yankees have their own issues, but on paper, this was still the same lineup th…

While it is now commonplace for professional sports organizations to have a night devoted to honoring the LGBTQ community, it is a recent phenomenon. The Chicago Cubs became the first MLB team to salute the community 20 years ago when they he…

The conventional morning-after wisdom was that the Brooklyn Nets let everyone down in losing their second-round NBA playoff series to the Milwaukee Bucks in seven games, with the decisive Game 7 resulting in an overtime loss. Given the injuri…

Last Friday night was a reminder of what life was like in prepandemic times as the Mets drew around 26,000 spectators for their largest crowd since September 2019. The pitching matchup was stellar, with two recent Cy Young Award winners: the …

2020 US Open and 2021 Australian Open champion Naomi Osaka made news last week when she withdrew from the French Open after winning her first-round match. Osaka cited depression as the reason. She said she could have continued in the tourname…

Mets fans have become all too accustomed to seeing their beloved franchise get decimated by injuries, but 2021 has been a doozy even by pessimistic Flushing standards. Pitchers who undergo surgery especially seem to have trouble returning in …

The third week of May is traditionally when the television industry introduces its fall programming to advertisers in the hopes of locking up ad sales with presentations known as “Upfronts.” Sportscaster Jim Nantz spoofed himself at this year…

Legendary sportscaster Marv Albert announced last weekend he will be hanging up his microphone at the conclusion of next month’s NBA Conference Finals. Except for the late Howard Cosell, I cannot think of a sportscaster who has been more imit…

“It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up” is a time-honored political adage. Mets infielders Francisco Lindor and Jeff McNeil would have been better off following that advice last Friday night after they got into an off-field dustup during the …

These are heady times for National Hockey League Commissioner Gary Bettman, who spent a chunk of his formative years in Forest Hills and graduated from Russell Sage Junior High School.It wasn’t long ago that the NHL was not a very desirable c…

Mike Puma has been the Mets beat writer for the New York Post since 2010, and he’s the gold standard for anyone who follows the team. He has just penned a history of the Mets, which encapsulates the last 25 years titled, “If These Walls Could…

The death of rogue financier and Far Rockaway native Bernard Madoff last Wednesday unleashed painful reminders about the suffering of those who lost their life savings. While Mets fans’ emotional pain cannot compare with what the real victims…

It may not have been a coincidence Gov. Cuomo opened the eligibility for Covid vaccinations for all individuals 16 and older the week both the Mets and Yankees were hosting their season openers. Both teams took advantage to schedule vaccines …

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred shook up the sports and political worlds last Friday by announcing he was relocating the All-Star Game from Truist Field in Atlanta to Denver’s Coors Field because of the new Georgia voting law.Based on prima faci…

Last Thursday, Fox Sports issued a press release announcing the retirement of veteran play-by-play announcer Dick Stockton who spent 27 years there. Stockton grew up in Kew Gardens Hills and graduated from Forest Hills High School in 1960. He…

While it was expected the NFL would get its existing TV partners to fork over more than $80 billion to continue their relationships through 2033, a far bigger surprise to me was ESPN spending $2.4 billion to wrest NHL broadcasting rights away…

Knicks legend Patrick Ewing has never been known for having an easygoing personality. He would frequently glower at reporters in the hopes they would avoid conversing with him in the locker room during his playing days. His less than warm per…

Mets President Sandy Alderson addressed the media last Monday morning and basically laid out his philosophy on running a team.He acknowledged he has always favored offense over defense to the point where it may have cost his teams wins. He sa…

The Rangers are hoping the return of fans to Madison Square Garden will help turn around a rough season. While they treated fans to a win against the Bruins last Friday, they did so without star forward Artemi Panarin. Earlier in the week he …

The first big news to come out of the Mets’ spring training home, Port St. Lucie, Fla., was Tim Tebow announcing he was giving up on his dreams of making it to the majors. At age 33 Tebow conceded he’d never be suiting up for a game at Citi F…

The playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” before sporting events has been a tradition going back to the 19th century. While there have always been political issues dividing this country, playing the national anthem before athletic contests wa…

Trevor Bauer, who won the 2020 National League Cy Young Award pitching in a shortened season for the Reds, was the most hyped free agent this off-season. Mets fans wouldn’t have given a remote thought of Bauer coming to Queens back when the W…

There was so much promise when Steven Matz was called up by the Mets from the minors in 2015. He grew up in Suffolk County and quickly became a hero with both his superb pitching and his ability to hit, which made it seem as if he was a posit…

Mets owner Steve Cohen faced his first public relations crisis since buying the team when a story broke last Monday about a former female baseball journalist who accused new general manager Jared Porter of sexual harassment incidents occurrin…

The long-rumored trade between the Nets and the Rockets that brought sharpshooting guard James Harden to our area was finally completed last Thursday. As is the case with many NBA deals, two other teams, the Pacers and the Cavaliers, were nee…

Last Thursday the Mets and Indians woke up the somnambulant baseball world with a six-player deal that sent All-Star shortstop Francisco Lindor and starting pitcher Carlos Carrasco to Queens and dispatching shortstops Amed Rosario and Andres …

Mets owner Steven Cohen has scored points with fans for being active on Twitter. Anticipating the blowback he’d get from the Flushing faithful for not trading prospects to acquire American League Cy Young Award-winning pitcher Blake Snell fro…

Much to the chagrin of most of their fans, the New York Jets picked the worst possible time to become the National Football League’s hottest team. Last Sunday’s 23-16 win over the Cleveland Browns (who were missing most of their receivers bec…

Mets President Sandy Alderson finally got around to hiring a general manager last week when he chose Arizona Diamondbacks assistant general manager Jared Porter to fill the vacancy created by the dismissal of Brodie Van Wagenen. The 41-year-o…

The Mets signed their first marquee free agent under the aegis of new owner Steve Cohen when catcher James McCann agreed to a four-year deal in the $40 million range. McCann, who is one of the premier backstops in baseball, would have gotten …