Howie Rose retirement ceremony postponed to April 2027 after weather disrupts home finale

Howie Rose called his last game from the Mets radio booth, but the retirement ceremony meant to mark the occasion will have to wait — MLB.com reported that weather forced the celebration's postponement to April 2027, turning what was supposed to be a tidy farewell at the home finale into something more like a rain check on a rain check.

What happened

The New York Mets had planned a retirement ceremony for longtime radio voice Howie Rose at their home finale, but weather intervened before the event could take place. Per MLB.com, the ceremony has been rescheduled to April 2027. Rose's final game in the Mets' radio booth did proceed, with MLB.com describing it as an emotional sendoff even without the formal on-field celebration the club had intended.

The postponement means the punctuation mark on Rose's career gets delayed by roughly six months, landing instead at the start of a new season rather than the end of the one he finished. There is something almost poetically Mets about that: the ceremony will now arrive before the first pitch of a year Rose won't be calling, rather than after the last one he did.

Why it matters

For a franchise that has spent the better part of a century accumulating lore, Rose is one of the voices that carries it. A retirement ceremony is not merely logistical — it is the club's formal acknowledgment that an era has closed. Pushing that moment to April 2027 means fans who came to the home finale expecting to witness the sendoff in person left with the broadcast memory instead — which, given the decades Rose spent building it, is not nothing.

The postponement also means the home finale itself passed without the full ceremonial weight the club had planned. The broadcast went ahead; the celebration did not. Those are two different things, and the gap between them is exactly the size of a weather delay that stretched all the way to next spring.

Where the club stands

The Mets close out 2026 at 71-85 (.455), sitting fifth in the NL East, 21 games back in the division, and eliminated from both the division race and the Wild Card race. Their Wild Card standing ranks 10th, 15.0 relative to the cut line. They carry a one-game losing streak into the final road series of the year.

That series takes them to Globe Life Field in Texas, where Sean Manaea is the probable starter Tuesday, September 22, against the Rangers. Nolan McLean follows Wednesday, September 23 — a notable assignment given the events of the past week — and Zac Thornton closes the series Thursday, September 24, with Texas's probable starters listed as TBD across all three games.

A 71-85 record and a fifth-place finish in the NL East are the arithmetic summary of a year that ended, in competitive terms, well before the calendar did. A .455 winning percentage does not tell the whole story of the season, but it tells enough of it.

What we don't know yet

The postponement was attributed to weather, per MLB.com, but the specific circumstances at the home finale — what was played, what was not, and how much of the planned ceremony was affected — are not detailed in MLB.com's report. April 2027 is the rescheduled target, but the format of the ceremony and what it will include have not been reported.

It is also worth noting that the emotional weight of Rose's final broadcast, as described by MLB.com, stands independent of the ceremony. Whether the postponement changes the character of that eventual celebration — whether it becomes something larger, or simply the same event on a different date — remains to be seen.

What to watch

The obvious item to watch is April 2027, when the Mets are expected to hold the rescheduled ceremony. For now, the club turns its attention to the final road series in Texas, where a 71-85 team has the opportunity to finish the season on its own terms even if the standings offer nothing to play for.

The Texas series carries its own subplot. Nolan McLean is scheduled to start Wednesday, September 23 — less than a week after the on-field collision with Jared Young that sent Young to the hospital with concussion symptoms, per manager Andy Green. Young was subsequently reported to be out for the season, though he avoided a more serious injury per subsequent reporting. McLean taking the mound in the penultimate game of the year will be one of the quieter, more human storylines of a closing week that has already had more than its share.

Elsewhere on the roster, Edwin Díaz was expected to be activated from the IL, though his postseason role was described as something he would need to earn — a distinction that matters less now that the Mets have been eliminated from postseason contention, but which still shapes how the final days of the season are managed. Robert Stock and Daniel Duarte were both placed on the IL and reported to be done for the year.

And then there is Carson Benge, who set the Mets rookie hit record with his 156th hit of the season, surpassing Pete Alonso's 2019 mark of 155. In a year without a pennant race to anchor the final weeks, Benge's record and Rose's farewell are the two threads most worth following to the finish line — one a beginning, one an end, both worth remembering.

The ceremony will come in April. The season ends in Texas. Howie Rose put it in the books.