“And a pleasant good afternoon/evening everybody.”

Watch a Mets broadcast on SportsNet New York (SNY), and you are guaranteed to hear those words from Mets veteran play-by-play man Gary Cohen, who is flanked by co-analysts (and former Mets players), Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez. While SNY has only existed since 2006, Cohen, Darling, and Hernandez have spent a good portion of their lives contributing to the Mets. Cohen has been a Mets broadcaster since 1989, while Hernandez played for the Mets from 1983 to 1989, earning a World Championship with the team in 1986, and serving as Mets co-captain (with Gary Carter) from 1987 to 1989. Ron Darling, meanwhile, pitched for the Mets from 1983 to 1991, and worked as a broadcaster with the Athletics and Nationals before joining SNY in 2006.

“We have so much fun and it works so well in terms of the way the broadcast is structured, every day is fun and it really doesn’t matter,” Cohen said in 2013. “We don’t win or lose. The team wins or loses.”

Mets broadcasts last just over three hours, but during each game you can be supplied with enough knowledge to last a lifetime. Whether it’s Darling using his pitching experience to talk about how the Mets young pitchers should be developed, or Hernandez telling a story about spring training with the Mets during a 10-run blowout, you turn off a Mets broadcast knowing more about the Mets than you did when you turned it on.

Another popular segment on SNY is the Kid-caster, which is a contest once a year where children can enter to spend an inning in the booth with the broadcasters, and help call a game. That isn’t to say that SNY broadcasts are completely family-friendly: they aren’t. Hernandez has occasionally landed himself in hot water for making comments about women’s roles (or lack of) in a dugout, and for occasionally muttering curse words under his breath, as well as making cringe-worthy comments about fans. But while there are some rough edges about SNY, rest assured that they will be made up for in quality and entertaining analysis by the broadcasters. Any viewer who loves the Mets, or just loves hearing solid analysis about baseball, should tune into a Mets game on SNY. You won’t regret it.