WSJ: A Radio Broadcast Rose Won't Forget

From Jason Gay, wsj.com:

It began as a low rumble on a cool spring night—a "murmur" is the word Howie Rose chose. It pulsed along the third-base line at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia, swelling in other sections until it became a clear, familiar chant.

U! S! A! U! S! A!

In the Mets' radio booth, they knew why it was happening. A short while before, WFAN producer Chris Majkowski had told Rose that President Barack Obama was going to address the country late Sunday evening. It was an unusual, unsettling event. Then came the stunning flashes: Osama bin Laden was dead, killed by U.S. forces.

Rose, working with partner Wayne Hagin, didn't want to say anything on-air until they knew for sure. Everyone agreed: No need to rush and make a mistake. This was a baseball game, and a close one, between National League East rivals.

But now the "U! S! A!" chanting was rolling around the stadium. "Like a verbal wave," Rose said Monday morning. "You had one section of the park begin to chant, and given the age we're in, where everyone's got smartphones and instant access to information, all it took was someone sitting next to someone else to ask, 'What's that about?' "

By then, news organizations were reporting bin Laden's demise. Rose felt comfortable enough to go on the air with the news during the top of the ninth inning, when New York second baseman Daniel Murphy was at the plate.

"I'll tell you what's going on," Rose said calmly to his audience. "The crowd is chanting, 'U! S! A!' And the reason for that is that there are reports circulating—I am not sure if they have yet been confirmed by the White House—that Osama bin Laden is dead. How that's happened, we don't know. But this crowd now knows it."

Rose turned back to the action. "Fastball on the outside, for a called strike two," he said. The juxtaposition was bizarre. "This is becoming an almost surreal evening."

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