NYC Radio: Mets' Rose Talks About His Cancer Struggle

Howie Rose - 2022

One night during spring training in 2021, right before going to bed, NY Mets radio broadcaster Howie Rose noticed blood in his urine when he went to the bathroom.

“I knew that wasn’t good,” Rose said.

His doctor initially thought it was a kidney stone or maybe a urinary tract infection. It was bladder cancer.  Rose, the longtime radio voice of the Mets, dealt with it privately during the 2021 season. He received an array of cancer treatments, and it was a struggle, according to The NY Post. 

By the final month of the regular season in September, Rose was no longer able to work, and it was described at the time as an illness that needed surgery.

Rose underwent a radical cystoprostatectomy, a major surgery in which the cancerous bladder is removed along with the prostate, and then a new bladder, called a neobladder, is created from the intestines. If all goes well, a person can go on living a basically normal life. The surgery barely leaves a scar. 

“It really is miraculous when you get a handle on what they actually do,” Rose said during a phone interview as he publicly recounted for the first time the full scope of what he and his family have dealt with for nearly two years.

And there were some complications after the surgery: Rose developed a hernia last winter that required another operation. 

Today, Rose has some limitations that he has to be mindful of, but he doesn’t require a catheter. Rose can’t rave enough about the job all the health care professionals did.

The reason Rose and Barbara, his wife of nearly 36 years, were willing to talk now is because they feel sharing Howie’s story might help others — to borrow an oldie but goodie from Mets lore — to remember: ‘Ya gotta believe!”