YES Network.com

The thing about Kitty that I'll miss most is his sense of humor. Some of the best parts of the game are before it, after it and between innings, and Kitty keeps it loose.

Kitty and I had fun. Doing games for the Yankees helped us. When you have a good product on the field, you often have good news.

I had worked Expos games for 12 years, and while that was fun, Montreal was a lot further away from where I live, in Baltimore. I'd stay in Montreal during the summers. So I started looking for something else, and Mike McCarthy and Joe Cohen of the MSG Network had me come in and audition. Kitty and I were supposed to voice over a tape of three innings of the World Series. We did the first half-inning, and they told us to stop. At that point I'm thinking, "This is not good." Well, they loved it. They thought we'd be a good pair. I don't know how many people they had matched up with Kitty, but I wasn't the only one, that's for sure.

Just to think about how it started brings back good memories, because I felt when I was working with him that it was really clicking. Although we didn't get to do the full three innings because they stopped us, I felt like we could have gone on all day if they wanted us to.

That was 1997. Kitty and I worked together for 10 years.

* * *

While I was doing Expos games, we had a game in Cincinnati and Kitty was the pitching coach for the Reds at the time, and he came over to our dugout and we talked a little bit. The conversation wasn't about how we had played against each other, because for most of our time in the major leagues we were in opposite leagues, except for the three years he was with the Chicago White Sox. I had a grand total of 15 at-bats against him, but I'm quick to remind him that I had six hits off him, including a home run. I remember the home run, but not any of the other at-bats. I do know this, though: Kitty worked very fast. If you notice when he's doing games, he doesn't like it when the game slows down or the pitchers take too much time. You'll hear him say things like, "Study long, study wrong." It's the exact same way he worked — very quickly. Hitters had to slow him down. You'd have to step out of the box or get the umpire to stop him. And he was very competitive.

It was interesting to face him. You couldn't bunt, because he was such a good fielder. Basically, you had to get your hits, because didn't walk many people, and you had to respect his stuff. I don't know how the Twins let him go.

Kitty's back from the workhorse days. You get that impression working with him now. He feels that pitchers nowadays are somewhat babied — they get to that 100-pitch mark and that's it, they're coming out of the game. Or that 200 innings now is considered a lot. Back then, 300 innings was a lot.

I kid him right now that someone's looking for a left-hander. And he says, "If they'd let me use a screen, I could go out there."

It's evident to me that he had fun when he was playing and that he loves the game.

* * *

Working with Kitty has been a wonderful experience. I've learned a lot about pitching, what pitchers do, how pitchers try to get hitters to swing at certain pitches to get themselves out. These are things I thought about when I was hitting but didn't know pitchers were actually trying to do it, because I didn't want to give them too much credit.

I thought when we worked together we had this little edge — the pitcher/hitter relationship. From time to time we would kid each other, and I wouldn't say it was like an act, but there was definitely an edge there. It's fun. That's what baseball is all about. It starts with that confrontation, the pitcher against the hitter. More times than not, walking down the streets of New York City, cab drivers would yell to me: "Don't let Kitty get on you about the hitters."

It was a natural thing, because that's what we did when we were playing. But we also realized that people liked it, so we nurtured it. Every broadcast, it would work its way in there somehow. Kitty would say, "That's got to be a strike," and I'd say, "You want everything to be a strike." We would go back and forth like that even if the Yankees weren't at bat. People like that sort of commentary. There are people who like hitting and there are people who like pitching. Or one day, somebody wants to see some hitting and another day they might want to see pitching. It just naturally worked its way in there during the broadcast. It didn't always have an edge to it, but people definitely responded to us.

I've never felt like we were working. I felt like we were at a ballgame discussing the game, going back and forth, and the viewers just happened to be there. It was like two guys sitting at the game who just happened to have microphones and had some experience in the game, and the fans were let in on it. I think it was very natural and that's why it clicked.

If you go back to the MSG days, certainly the signature game was the David Wells perfect game. For YES, exactly four years to the day later, against the same team — the Twins — Kitty and I called the Giambi home run game. As soon as we signed off, it just started pouring rain, like the game couldn't have gone any further. Giambi hit the home run at exactly the right time. Those are two games that really stand out in my mind.

* * *

At the time we got paired together, we had had about the same amount of broadcasting experience. I have found whether you're playing or broadcasting, no one knows everything about the game. Once you're willing to admit that to yourself, you can learn from other people. I learned a lot from Kitty, especially about pitching. And he is a classy person.

One thing that makes you a good broadcaster is listening to what your partner is saying, and being willing to expound upon a certain point or disagree with it and go from there. That's the one thing I've noticed about him, and one thing I've tried to do when working with him and everyone else is to listen to everyone. That's how you make the telecast flow.

We did three of the four games in Baltimore — they'll be the last three we'll do together — and I thought we did a good job of making them flow. A lot depends on the game you get on a particular night. None of the games are the same, which to me makes baseball very interesting. You don't know what you're going to get. The game starts and you may think you'll have a pitchers' duel, and then all of a sudden it turns into an offensive slugfest. And as broadcasters, we have to make that work for people.

Kitty knew — and was very aware — that there are many kinds of fans. I've always tried to remember that. There are fans who know a lot about the game and there are those who don't know very much. There are kids watching. In certain instances, you're not just a reporter; you're a teacher and an instructor. Kitty was very good at that — particularly with the pitching — explaining how things actually worked or what a player should have done. We're not up there to be critical — we can be — but when it comes to criticism, there's instruction that has to go with it. And I think we've both tried to do that.

I hope I was able to teach him a little bit as well. On the last broadcast, he said that 10 years flew by. That's exactly how I feel. When he said it was like two guys sitting there watching the game, who had some experience in the game, with no agendas, just talking about it, going back and forth letting the people know what was happening on the field on a given day or night, that's the greatest compliment anyone can give me.