The firestorm is still blustering from remarks by New York Mets broadcasters Gary Cohen and Ron Darling about the lack of pedestrians in downtown St. Louis.
The St. Louis Cardinals were hosting the Mets at Busch Stadium Wednesday and were scheduled to play an 11:30 day game, but rain delayed it for an hour. In the bottom of the second inning, Mets’ TV coverage flipped to a shot of “The Runner” statue and fountain in Kiener Plaza that lines up nicely with the Old Courthouse and the Gateway Arch in downtown St. Louis.
That’s when Cohen and Darling made their comments.
“There’s never anybody walking around in downtown St. Louis. Remember the old neutron bomb that wouldn’t knock down buildings but just would eliminate all the people? It’s like one of those hit St. Louis” – Gary Cohen pic.twitter.com/ULkU6aSEKJ
— Awful Announcing (@awfulannouncing) April 2, 2026
“The only thing missing from that picture, as is often missing from every picture we see of downtown St. Louis, no people,” Darling said.
In response, Cohen said, “There’s never anybody walking around in downtown St. Louis. Remember the old neutron bomb that wouldn’t knock down buildings but just would eliminate all the people? It’s like one of those hit St. Louis.”
St. Louis radio host Annie Frey agreed with their assessment of a lack of foot traffic but also said she’d rather not hear those comments during a baseball game from out-of-town broadcasters.
“There’s no part of their commentary that is necessary to tell the story of the game,” said Frey on 97.1 FM Talk “If [Cardinals] broadcasters were talking about New York City … are they going to go there and talk about the crime? Are they going to go there and talk about the communism? Are they going to go there and talk about the homelessness or the drugs or the disrespect for the police? No! And I, as a Cardinals fan, would never, ever want to hear our broadcasters make me think about things that might make me stray from the baseball game.”
Mets broadcasters trash St. Louis on air: “No people anywhere.”
Annie says it’s completely classless. You don’t visit another team’s town and rip the city like that. Would Cardinals announcers trash NYC’s crime, homelessness & chaos?#STLCards #LGM pic.twitter.com/YTtu1Kz0nK— Annie Frey (@anniefreyshow) April 2, 2026
Many St. Louis loyalists fired back at the broadcast booth on X, calling the announcers “clowns” and saying a quiet downtown on a midweek workday is standard for the Midwest where people are actually working, unlike a “tourist-filled” New York City — which several commenters dismissed as a “trashy hell-scape” that “smells like a urinal.”
Defenders also highlighted the massive crowds from recent overlapping St. Louis Blues, Cardinals and Battlehawks games.
One downtown worker agreed with the lack of foot traffic, saying it’s proof the city is struggling, while a frequent business traveler described feeling completely unsafe and unprotected just blocks from Busch Stadium.
Some critics point the finger at decades of Democratic mayors as the reason for the city’s decline in residents.
As the health of downtown St. Louis continues to be a topic of debate, Cardinals fans were happy to to remind New York that the Mets still lost the game.
