He’s authored a book and a perfect game. Now, David Cone is continuing to write the story of his broadcasting career.
He was blessed with a long baseball career. He pitched for five teams after making his Major League debut for Kansas City in 1986. Cone has extended his association with baseball in his role as an analyst for the New York Yankees on the YES Network and for ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball.
Cone was a World Series Champion 5 times in his career, won the 1994 AL Cy Young Award, struck out 19 hitters in a game, was an All-Star 5 different times and won 20 games twice. Quite a resume for one of the game’s most clutch postseason pitchers (8-3 in 21 playoff games).
David Cone was born in Kansas City, Missouri, and was drafted in the third round of the 1981 MLB Draft by the hometown Royals. He wound up pitching for Kansas City twice in his career. But after debuting for the team, he was traded to the Mets before the 1987 season. In 1988 he went 20-3 with a 2.22 ERA and yet wound-up finishing third in the Cy Young balloting.
He finished his career with a 194-126 record and with 2,688 strikeouts.
ROAD TO YES/ESPN
Cone has flourished as a broadcaster with the Yankees, but it was almost a short-lived stint in the Bronx.
When Cone retired from baseball in 2001, he became a color commentator on YES during the network’s inaugural season (2002). All was good until he attempted a comeback with the crosstown Mets in 2003. The move infuriated Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and Cone was told he would not be welcomed back. After his second retirement from baseball, Cone was offered a broadcasting position with the Mets, but declined.
In 2008, Cone rejoined the YES Network as an analyst and host of Yankees on Deck. He left the network during the 2009–10 offseason in order to spend more time with his family. But a year later, Cone returned to the Yankees broadcast booth in Toronto, working as analyst for a Yankees-Blue Jays series along with Ken Singleton. He has been with the network ever since.
David Cone is currently the Yankees’ lead color commentator, alongside former teammate Paul O’Neill. The two are paired with Michael Kay as the Yankees’ regular broadcast team. His work with YES has earned him four New York Emmy Awards.
In 2022 he added to his busy schedule when it was announced he would be part of the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast team. David Cone works alongside Eduardo Perez, Karl Ravech and Buster Olney.
In addition to all the broadcasting, Cone hosts a pitching podcast for Jomboy Media called Toeing the Slab with David Cone.
AS AN ANALYST
The first thing I notice about David Cone is just how smooth he is. Even experienced analysts are at a loss for words from time to time, but Cone’s thoughts are usually quite complete. It’s not like he’s a rookie, after all.
You can tell immediately how well-suited he is for a role in the booth. Not that it should come as a surprise. He was always thought of as one of the more cerebral players during his career. When you listen to his analysis you are immediately struck by his vast knowledge of the game. Not only does he know the game, he can explain things in a way that makes them understandable to the average fan.
For example. After the recent ejection of Mets’ pitcher Max Scherzer for using a foreign substance on his hand that made it ‘too sticky’. Cone, going along with the pitchers’ explanation that it was only rosin, washed off with alcohol, conducted an on-air experiment.
During the Sunday Night Baseball broadcast, Cone put rosin from an MLB rosin bag on his fingers and said they got sticky just from that. After his fingers became discolored from the rosin, Cone, like Scherzer claimed he did, used alcohol to wash it off. Cone then showed how his thumb, index finger, and middle finger on his right hand were sticking together.
“The alcohol sort of activates what’s left of the rosin,” Cone said. Finally, he went back to the rosin bag once more and grabbed a baseball, showing the ball hanging from his index and middle fingers due to the stickiness. ESPN Tweeted out the video and it’s amazing to see.
It may not have been his idea to perform the experiment, but Cone, nonetheless, made it work effectively. Based on his experience as a quality big league pitcher, it was more than credible. No tricks, no smoke, no mirrors, just facts for the viewer to plainly see.
For a guy that pitched in the era before analytics took over the game, he’s pretty knowledgeable about the “inside” numbers. He seems at ease sharing the numbers, mainly as they relate to pitching. Spin rate, release point, and vertical and horizontal movement are a few that he regularly talks about. It almost seems as though he is jealous that he didn’t have access to these stats while he pitched. But he turns that jealousy into a feeling like he’s a little kid in a candy store, with eyes wide open. That’s a good thing.
David Cone is a rare breed in the analyst world. His ability to combine the numbers with the vast experience he has as a former MLB pitcher keeps a good balance to his commentary. In other words, he’s not solely reliant on that information. Cone has the ability to reach back into his career and apply things he experienced to complement the analysis. Viewers love it when former players can tell a story from their time in baseball and make sense of it in the context of today’s game.
He’s had to adjust on the fly, because of his national work with ESPN. In the YES booth, he can be more of a “hometown” analyst. He doesn’t go over the top, but he is known as a Yankees broadcaster. Because of that, Cone has had to change his commentary when working on Sunday nights, especially when he had to cover the Yankees/Red Sox game last April.
“I was really conscious of it there because I knew on the Red Sox side I had to be careful and make sure that I presented it in a fair way, a balanced way, or at least tried to,” Cone told The Athletic last year.
He’s done an admirable job.
DID YOU KNOW?
Cone pitched the sixteenth perfect game in baseball history in 1999. It happened to take place at Yankee Stadium on Yogi Berra Day at the ballpark. Throwing out the ceremonial first pitch that afternoon? None other than Don Larsen, the author of one of the most famous perfect games, in Game 5 of the 1956 World Series. The catcher, of course was Berra. Cone remembered a conversation he and Larsen had before that game. It centered on the famous picture of Larsen and Berra in an embrace after the perfecto.
“Don came out, he threw out the first pitch and I said, ‘Are you going to go run and jump in his arms again?’ And he said, ‘Kid, you got it wrong. He jumped in my arms.’ I messed that one up,” Cone recalled to MLB.com in 2019. “I thought I was pretty good at history. Apparently not.”
Cone remembered leaving the field after the perfect game.
“I got out to the tunnel and there’s Don Larsen. I went up to him and hugged him like he was my father. Nothing needed to be said.”
Andy Masur is a columnist for BSM and works for WGN Radio as an anchor and play-by-play announcer. He also teaches broadcasting at the Illinois Media School. During his career he has called games for the Chicago Cubs, San Diego Padres and Chicago White Sox. He can be found on Twitter @Andy_Masur1 or you can reach him by email at Andy@Andy-Masur.com.
