Marty Noble- The Epitome of a New York Baseball Writer

One of the great New York sportswriters has passed away at the age of 70. You don’t know the Mets if you don’t know Noble.

I’m often critical of the media. Around here, I believe many writers view it in large part as an extension of the public relations department.

In some other markets, the media are viewed as assassins.

One such market in which the latter is said to prevail is, of course, New York City.

Neither reputation is a sign of good journalistic coverage. So it saddened me to hear Marty Noble, who epitomized everything a good journalist should be covering the New York Mets from their 1969 Amazing World Championship year to the present for outlets as traditionally revered as Newsday to as modern as mlb.com.

Noble was in Florida, taking part of spring training in semi-retirement until his death on Sunday. He was 70.

I got to know Noble from covering the New York Mets in spring training in 2009 for Metro. I think I was drawn to him initially because people started coming up to him on my first day on the job and asked him about baseball history, in this case who Eddie Gaedel was.

Noble mentioned Gaedel, the dwarf who played in one major league game for the 1951 St. Louis Browns, wore uniform number “1/4.” Actually it was “1/8,” but I dared not correct Noble. In just a matter of minutes I knew Noble was the most respected member of the Mets beat.