Original Mets Broadcaster : Lindsey Nelson (1962-1979)

Lindsey Nelson brought the Mets alive with his voice for fans like myself growing up in those late sixties/ early seventies good old days. He was known for his loud colorful sports jackets and his signature “Hello everybody this is Lindsey Nelson, from Shea Stadium in New York”. He boasted that he owned 335 colorful sports coats at one time. Nelson said; “I walked into a New York clothing store and told the clerk, 'Let me see all the jackets you can't sell.' He brought out seven, and I bought all of them.”

He was an original Met announcer along with Bob Murphy & Ralph Kiner from 1962. He said "It was my job to set the broadcast policy. I told our broadcast team, 'This is a very inept group of players, and we're not going to try to hide their ineptness. We're also not going to make fun of them.' We simply described what they did, and what they did was hilarious."Nelson would cover the Mets for 17 years doing both radio & television. He did the national broadcasts of Mets home games with Curt Gowdy on NBC for the 1969 & 1973 World Series. In 1979 he left the Mets and got a play by play gig with the San Francisco Giants through 1981. In 1985 he was brought back to WPIX in New York to announce the last inning of Tom Seaver’s 300th victory in New York.

Born May 25, 1919 Campbellsville, Tennessee, he graduated from the University of Tennessee in 1941 , taught English & served as an Army Captain. He began his career covering the University of Tennessee Football games on radio in 1947. He started doing recreations of baseball games, broadcast at a later time in various markets. Then he moved on to NBC in 1957 originally hired as an administrator who hired himself to do games. He was the voice for Notre Dame Football for 13 years, and covered the Cotton Bowl on CBS for 25 New Years Days. In addition to that he did the NFL on CBS for 19 years, and Monday Night Football radio broadcasts from 1974-1977. Nelson was the announcer for the 1st NFL Football game to ever use instant replay and kept reminding viewers ‘this is not live”.

Lindsey Nelson is a highly respected & honored broadcaster. He is in both the Baseball & Football Halls of Fame, the Mets Hall of Fame, the American Sportscasters Hall of Fame, received a Life time Emmy Award, & the University of Tennessee’s Volunteers baseball stadium is named after him. After his retirement he got an apartment across the Tennessee River where he could see the University of Tennessee’s campus & the Vol’s stadium. There he wrote a book about his career. He died in 1995 of complications from Parkinson's disease, which he had suffered from for years and pneumonia at age 76.