Ron Darling is not easily categorized. He's a former ballplayer who transitioned smoothly and successfully into the broadcast booth, both here and nationally. He is also an Ivy League guy with a blue-collar background who has long lived in the public eye in New York while retaining more than a bit of the small New England town of his youth. NY1's Budd Mishkin filed the following One on 1 profile.
So much of Ron Darling’s life has revolved around baseball.
"I've lived an incredible life, a dream life for a lot of people. Pro athlete in NYC, lucky enough to a win world championship. But boy, I feel like my life is just beginning," Darling says.
He was first a pitcher, an integral part of the Mets’ 1986 World Series championship team, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. He is now as an acclaimed baseball analyst, along with Keith Hernandez and Gary Cohen, a member of the Mets longtime broadcasting team. One of the boys of summer, now a voice of summer.
"Doing it with two friends, and two guys I really admire," Darling says. "You’re supposed to do something you love at some point in your life, and I think I’ve found it."
Ron Darling is far from your typical baseball lifer. He went to Yale.
He's an avid reader and writer. His passions and inspirations extend well beyond baseball.
"Someone will write something in a financial column and I'll read it and I'll think, 'That really applies to baseball, too,' about people getting prepared for their jobs," Darling says.
Darling and his broadcast partners are praised not just for their knowledge of the game but for their ability to improvise on some rather eclectic non-baseball topics, like the old toy slinky.
Cohen: I loved slinky.
Hernandez: I did too.
Cohen: They'd always get kinked up when you used them.
Hernandez: Yeah, they were great going up and down. Well, not up. Going downstairs.
Cohen: Up is tough.
"When I was playing, [I was] just trying to stay in front of that fear of failure thing. But as an announcer, it's like, so freeing," Darling says. "When we are going well, Gary, Keith and I, it's like freeform jazz. Whoever is playing the best gets to play the most. It's a great way to be."
The 30th anniversary of the 1986 World Series team is one reason, but not the only reason, that Darling is thinking a lot about the past.
"It’s something that’s eating at my craw, and I can't, it’s an itch I can’t scratch. I can’t. And it's been there for 30 years, and if it's there for 30 years, it's going be there for twenty more years."
That itch is what went wrong in Game 7 of the 1986 World Series. The Mets beat the Red Sox to win it all, but Darling started and pitched poorly. So he's written a book about the game. And unlike most sports books, he analyzes failure – his own.
"I remember just being at my house and going, 'What happened?'" Darling says. "Pitched great in Game 1, pitched great in Game 4. Game 7 comes and it doesn’t happen. And I just remember sitting there and saying to myself, 'Why didn’t it happen?' No answers."
Darling says he didn't have the confidence that he could pitch well against the Red Sox for three games in just over a week. So in Game 7 he changed his approach.
Throughout his baseball career, he often heard the stereotype of the cerebral player, "He's thinking too much."
"When I heard that, I became obstinate. That really hurt my feelings. And anyone who would do that, including my manager and others at times, they really got on my bad list. I really carried it probably not in a proper way. This book has helped me to figure out that I was like that," Darling says.
Darling believes one reason for his Game 7 failure dates back to growing up with what he calls "blue-collar dreams."
"I think my feet were always on the ground, but they needed to jump, and I couldn’t make them jump for the special moment," he says. "And I always wonder if I couldn’t make it jump because of my ability, and I would say no, my ability was certainly enough to have it happen. I think just my own feeling of one’s self."
Darling was raised in a small New England town, inspired by parents who overcame difficult childhoods.
His father worked several jobs, including picking up the garbage. When Ron took advanced algebra in ninth grade, his father took an algebra class as well.
"It was first, not to get an advancement in his job, but first to be able to at night sit and to understand what I was trying to understand. It was one of the coolest, I have 100 stories about my dad like that, but that’s one of the coolest," Darling says.
"My mom, when I was a kid, used to whisper in my ear, because I had a hard time sleeping when I was a kid. She said, 'You're going to be something great someday. You're going to be something great someday.' That’s how I'd fall asleep. Sorry, I'm getting emotional. But that’s the kind of person she was. So I mean, she believed in me, so it made me believe in me."
Darling was a star athlete in school. But his interests were much broader.
"I loved writing poetry. Poetry classes were some of my favorite," he says. "I also loved, I had some great classes, a great teacher who taught us how to write plays."
Darling says Yale prepared him for the big leagues, but not in ways that you might think.
"You’re the best student ever went to your school, but so is he and so is she and so is she. So at some point, you got to get through the scrum to get to the top," he says. "Major League Baseball is similar. You know, you’re the best player that ever came from your little league all-star team. So is he, and so is that guy."
Darling was a first-round draft pick and enjoyed a solid major league career: 13 seasons, 136 wins and one all-star appearance, plus that World Series ring.
But initially, he bought into the notion that an Ivy Leaguer couldn't last in the major leagues.
"When I signed, I was thinking, 'Well, this is going to pay for Yale, this’ll pay for graduate school when they figure out I can’t play.' And then 16 years later, you’re still doing it," Darling says.
And then, in 1995, it was over.
His first day of retirement, living in California with his first wife and young kids, was jarring.
"First, it was the cabinet guy, and then the pool guy, and then the landscaping guy. And I’m thinking, 'This is awful. I mean, do I live here or do they live here?' And you just realize that that’s kind of how life just passes you by as you’re busy doing what you think is the most important thing," Darling says
After five years away from the game, Darling started broadcasting.
He and his second wife have a baby boy, and he has grown children from his first marriage.
He's now been in the broadcast booth for as many years as he was on the mound.
Darling is as thoughtful as ever. But those Game 7-type fears of failure are no more.
"You’re watching it, and you don’t know if you’re going to find the words, and then you just – which I couldn’t do as a player, couldn’t leap — I could always leap when I’m broadcasting. And I have the confidence to leap. And I’m never afraid to leap," he says.