Gary Cohen is either a human thesaurus or just another Major League Baseball announcer accepting word challenges from friends.
Cohen appeared to be enjoying a New York Mets’ win Sunday afternoon against the Los Angeles Angels when he dusted “pulchritudinous” off his vocabulary to describe an impressive catch made by outfielder Carson Benge. The SAT word was dropped in the ninth inning, as Benge helped secure a rare win for the Mets, and an even rarer series win by laying out to rob Angels infielder Vaughn Grissom of an extra-base hit.
SNY analyst Todd Zeile appeared impressed by Benge’s spectacular catch, but he may have been even more impressed by Cohen’s ability to describe it as pulchritudinous.
“I’m not going to say it was pulchritudinous, but I’m going to take your word for it,” said Zeile, who deserves credit for being able to say the word without asking Cohen to repeat it first. “That was an amazing play.”
Maybe Cohen was just showing off his Ivy League education as a Columbia University graduate with a degree in political science. Or maybe, the renowned play-by-play voice is already in search of ways to make this season more palatable with the Mets owning the league’s worst record.
Jason Benetti has admitted to accepting word challenges from players, and incorporating those requests into his broadcasts. And even Joe Buck famously said “jub-jub” during a World Series broadcast at the request of Conan O’Brien. Is it possible Ron Darling, another Ivy League graduate, was texting Cohen and asking him to incorporate “pulchritudinous” into the broadcast?
The problem with Cohen accepting the challenge from someone is the fact that the Mets haven’t done much of anything worthy of being described as pulchritudinous this season. So, if Cohen took that request from someone, there’s no guarantee he would have been able to satisfy it. Which means, pulchritudinous is probably just part of Cohen’s vocabulary. But if Cohen says “jub-jub” at some point this week, it means he was talking to Joe Buck or Conan O’Brien.
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