On January 26th, Kaitlyn Raad was getting ready to go into a 10:30 AM work meeting when her phone rang at 10:29 AM. The call was from her husband, Keith, who had some very important news to share with her. Just before Keith Raad called his wife, he had received the call of a lifetime from Audacy New York Market President Chris Oliviero.
Raad then shared the news with his wife that he was going to be the new radio voice of the Mets on WCBS 880 working with the legendary Howie Rose.
After five seasons with the Mets’ Class A Brooklyn Cyclones, Raad is now a major league broadcaster.
“She started crying her eyes out,” said Raad when he told his wife the news.
“She’s been there since day one with me…girlfriend, fiancé, and now wife. This has been a very intensive moment for me but when I’m home and I walk in that door, we celebrate this because we did this. She’s been there every step of the way. She was first. Mom and Dad were second.”
For Raad, a lifelong Mets fan who grew up in Valley Stream on Long Island, it was the call that every minor league baseball play-by-play announcer hopes to get, but the reality is that many don’t.
And for a moment, Oliviero was wondering where Raad had gone because there was dead silence on the other end of the phone call.
“This is a reality…you’re going to the big leagues,” thought Raad. “You go speechless for a second. My smile was as wide as it gets. Just thank you…that was the only thing I could say because you do the interview process, you give them your sound and the only thing you can hope for is that it hits and it connects and you get a chance. There’s a lot of good guys out there and they just don’t get that call.”
Raad experienced a similar feeling to what many minor league players feel when they are told they’re getting promoted to a higher level or if they find out they are going to “The Show”. During his minor league broadcasting career, Raad saw first-hand that look on a player’s face and now he was going through the same thing.
“The first thing when you approach them is their smile hits you first and then the hug because you know how hard it was to get to just this point,” said Raad. “I never dreamed of what the feeling would be when I would get the call but I can certainly understand how they feel when they get told that they are good enough to go up.”
After the excitement of getting the job and sharing the news with his wife, Raad then had to tell the Cyclones that he would be leaving, but not for another minor league gig. This was the call that every broadcaster and player hopes to get so while there were some tears (yes, in this case, crying is allowed in baseball), they were happy tears because Raad became the latest Cyclone to make his way from Maimonides Park in Brooklyn to Citi Field in Flushing.
“Brooklyn was amazing,” said Raad. “Brooklyn gave me a unique experience to really learn how to be myself. When these people, who are my family over there, found out there a lot of tears and jubilation.”
Once it was announced that Wayne Randazzo was leaving the Mets radio booth for a television job for the Los Angeles Angels, Raad became one of several candidates for the job and then went through the interview process.
Raad wowed executives from Audacy and the Mets to the point where he became the front-runner and eventually landed the job.
Three intangibles set him aside from the other candidates…
“The fact that I was a New Yorker because you’re trying to match a voice with an audience,” said Raad. “The fact that I knew the organization having worked with Brooklyn for five years. They kind of wanted the voice of the modern Mets fan. I think they were interested in a younger demographic complimenting Howie’s history there.”
Raad now gets to work with a legendary voice in New York sports history as he will sit in the chair next to long-time Mets announcer Howie Rose. This is certainly going to be a surreal moment for Raad who grew up watching and listening to Rose.
And now he gets to work with him.
“Howie is all we aspire to be which is really freaking good at this but also endearing to Mets fans and beloved by Mets fans,” said Raad. “His style is not cookie cutter. He’s extremely unique. There’s only one Howie Rose. You can’t say that about a lot of broadcasters.”
Raad, a graduate of the University of Dayton, began his road to the big leagues in 2015 calling games for the Dayton Dragons, a Single-A affiliate of the Cincinnati Reds. Then, in 2016, Raad moved back home to join the broadcast team of the Long Island Ducks of the independent (now MLB Partner) Atlantic League. From there, Raad moved on to the Texas Rangers organization joining the Double-A Frisco Roughriders broadcast booth in 2017.
The following year, Raad decided to come back home to New York and take the Brooklyn Cyclones job. The general rule of thumb in baseball, both for broadcasters and players, is that you moved up the ladder and not take a step down a rung.
Raad was moving closer to the top of the minor leagues, but there was a method to his madness in going back down to Single-A.
“That was the secret sauce for me,” said Raad. “I always wanted to get back to New York. Going back to Brooklyn was certainly a step back. There were people in the industry that kind of said ‘what are you doing? Why would you do this to yourself?’ I believed in being in the area and getting to have people trust you. That was a big reason why I went to Brooklyn. It worked.”
It sure did work out for Raad who is the proud owner of a New York Penn League championship ring as the voice of the 2019 Cyclones. He now joins the Mets broadcast booth as the parent team looks to build on a playoff appearance last season and become a contender to win the World Series thanks to deep-pocketed owner Steve Cohen, not the same Steve Cohen who is the Cyclones General Manager and was Raad’s boss in Brooklyn.
The stars just may have aligned for the Mets’ new radio voice.
“I’m like a fair-weather fan here,” joked Raad. “You join the Mets at the best time in the world with the richest owner. This brand has changed in the last few years and there’s literally no better time to be a Mets fan. This team can 100% win the World Series this year.”
Keith Raad certainly paid his dues in the minor leagues and took a calculated risk in moving down a level to come home and get closer to his ultimate goal. For a kid who grew up on Long Island cheering on the Mets, Raad got the call that every aspiring baseball announcer works so hard to get.
A call to the Major Leagues.
Peter Schwartz writes weekly sports radio features for Barrett Media. He has been involved in New York sports media for over three decades, and has worked for notable brands such as WFAN, CBS Sports Radio, WCBS 880, ESPN New York, and FOX News Radio. Peter has also served as play by play announcer for the New Yok Riptide, New York Dragons, New York Hitmen, Varsity Media and the Long Island Sports Network. You can find him on Twitter @SchwartzSports or email him at DragonsRadio@aol.com.
