Todd Frazier found legendary Mets voice Gary Cohen to be too negative for his liking.
The former Mets third baseman shared that he confronted the SNY play-by-player over what he perceived to be critical analysis and implored Cohen to “start rooting” for the team.
“People kept telling me back home, this guy is cutting you up, he’s cutting the Mets up. I’m like, ‘Ah, that’s what they do, you know?'” Frazier said on “Foul Territory” earlier this week. “I start looking into it. Players are like, ‘He’s always done this. Man, We can’t stand it.’
“I went up to him one time and said, ‘Gary, I gotta talk to you man.’ I said, ‘What the heck is going on here, dude? I thought you’re a Mets fan.’ He’s like, ‘I am,’ and he kind of got pissed off at me and I said, ‘Well, start rooting for us.’”
Cohen is a through-and-through Mets fan and there are few that would question his loyalty to the team.
However, unlike some announcers, Cohen is not a homer on-air and doesn’t just root blindly for the Mets. Cohen, along with Keith Hernandez and Ron Darling, stand out as a broadcasting crew for their ability to be critical when necessary, which has often been the case with the Mets.
Frazier played for the Mets during the 2018-20 seasons before being shipped to Texas, and only enjoyed team success in Flushing during the 2019 season.
He also played for the Reds, White Sox and Yankees prior to a brief 66-game stint with the Yankees during the 2017 season, and the New York market is known for being tougher on players than others.
It seemed Frazier decided to stand up for his teammates when he broached the topic with Cohen.
“We had our conversations back and forth. It was a good 10, five-minute conversation,” Frazier said. “It was actually in front of some players, too, so actually it was in front of people. We got a newfound respect for what he does and what I do. It was fine after that. We’re both men. If we have a problem, we go straight to the source, and that’s how I’ve been raised. I felt better about it, and I hope he did too.
“It just gets in the back of his mind, that, you know, we’re listening as well, there’s people we got, families at home listening too. You don’t always have to knock us down, and that was part of the conversation, and I hope he respected me for what I said and I respected him for his comments back.”