One night during spring training in 2021, right before going to bed, 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.
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.
Rose’s procedure was done under the supervision of Mount Sinai’s Dr. Reza Mehrazin with the use of robotics. 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.
There is a darkness whenever a cancer diagnosis is given, particularly one that can have recurrences, such as with the bladder.
And there were some complications after the surgery: Rose developed a hernia last winter that required another operation.
“It was almost unfathomable to me, but they say it is not uncommon,” Rose said.
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 Mehrazin and 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!”
“The bottom line, after the pathology came back after the surgery, the doctor basically said, ‘You’re good to go,’” said Rose, 68. “The surgeon, he says, ‘You have no restrictions, do whatever you want.’
“And it’s managing the situation where my life is more complicated than it used to be. It’s not insurmountable. Obviously. It certainly hasn’t helped my golf game, that’s for sure.
“But the beauty of it is I can go out and play golf. I can ride my bike. I can play pickleball if I want or tennis and do whatever I want. I’m thankful for that.”
And he can broadcast. As it was last season, the plan for this year is for Rose to cut down from 162 to 125 games.
He will have two new partners who are young enough to be his grandchildren in Keith Raad and Patrick McCarthy. Rose is infused with excitement over what is possible with the Steve Cohen Mets.
A voice silenced
One of Brooklyn-born Barbara Rose’s greatest joys in the world is singing when a favorite song pops on the radio. When Howie was diagnosed with bladder cancer in the spring of 2021, Barbara went silent.
“I just couldn’t sing,” Barbara said. “I had no joy in my life. It was just a very sad time. I just said, ‘Will I ever sing again?’”
The Roses were shocked when there was blood in Howie’s urine. Rose may not be built like Starling Marte, but he took care of himself and was a healthy eater.
Because Rose didn’t smoke, his physician initially did not think it was bladder cancer. The Roses would soon learn that bladder cancer doesn’t just affect smokers.
During the 2021 season, Rose tried other treatments, though not chemotherapy, to deal with the cancer, many of which were painful and all of which ultimately failed. By late August, Rose had a decision to make.
“They said, ‘Look, here’s the deal: We can give you more medication and a higher dosage or a different type of medication that will probably involve chemo, but this is a cancer that has a high recurrence rate,’” Howie said. “So I said, ‘Look, are we prolonging the inevitable?’ Because the surgery was not going to be a pretty one. And my urologist said, ‘We probably are,’ so then I was left really with no choice but to have a procedure.”
‘Wonder Woman’
Rose chose to keep his struggles private until this past weekend at the Baseball Writers’ Association of America dinner when he was the co-recipient with The Post’s Mike Vaccaro for the Arthur & Milton Richman “You Gotta Have Heart” Award. Vaccaro was honored because, like Rose, he has kept performing at a high level after a serious health issue, a below-the-knee amputation of his left leg.
Because the dinner was public, Rose felt the need to acknowledge why he was receiving the recognition.
After his boyhood idol, Marv Albert, introduced Rose with some classic one-liners, Rose got up to the mic and mentioned how his daughters, Chelsea and Alyssa, have meant so much to him through the process of his diagnosis, treatment and recovery.
Then he turned special attention toward Barbara. After his bladder was removed, Barbara, an interior designer by trade, had to become a nurse, cleaning tubes and taking care of her husband.
“She is Wonder Woman,” Howie said.
Barbara says her life is Howie. She has tried to keep his spirits up through it all.
“I feel that Howie has to really embrace life and really appreciate every day because a lot of things don’t always go well,” Barbara said. “There’s a lot of little annoying things that happen in life, but I hope he has learned from this experience because he’s not a person that doesn’t sweat the small stuff.
“I always say my job in life is to make Howie happy, which is a very tough job, because he is a very pensive person who doesn’t always look on the bright side.”
He is a Mets broadcasting legend who will retire one day with a rightful place in history next to fellow play-by-players Lindsey Nelson, Bob Murphy and Gary Cohen. He was just named to the Mets Hall of Fame.
He is appreciative of the support from the Mets and from Audacy, the parent company of Mets radio partner WCBS. And he is not going anywhere, though he will keep evaluating his schedule with management.
“I know what I have to deal with now,” Rose said. “It’s not ideal, but it’s manageable and makes travel a little more difficult, which is one of the reasons that I’ve cut back a little bit and the fact that I’m about to turn 69. And, you know, I’m not ready to fade into the sunset yet.”
WCBS wants him to keep putting them in the books.
“The longer Howie is doing Mets radio, the better Mets radio will be,” said Chris Oliviero, president of Audacy New York.
While Howie’s job is to try to make Mets fans enjoy the game, Barbara said hers is dedicated to her husband.
With Howie “good to go,” Barbara can now flip the channel on the radio to hear one of her favorite songs and sing.
“I can be joyful again,” Barbara said.
