Josh Lewin To The Mets

This may not be something that the majority of the readership cares about, but here goes anyway (via Bob Klapisch, on Twitter):

Hearing #Mets are ready to announce Josh Lewin in the radio booth for 2012, replacing Wayne Hagin. One-year deal.

Lewin served as the television play-by-play voice of the Rangers from 2002-10, but wasn't renewed after the 2010 season, with some of the talk being that he wasn't brought back because Nolan Ryan wanted a more serious broadcaster in there occupying the main chair, and some other talk suggesting that this was a fan-driven move due to a purportedly large number of complaints being directed to FSNSW about Lewin. I'm not sure we ever got a definitive answer on the circumstances that led to Lewin's ouster, but most of it seemed tied to one of those explanations or the other (though perhaps more the former than the latter).

In any event, Lewin ended up jumping to 105.3 FM and began hosting a four-hour weekday show with former Ticket weekend host Mark Elfenbein -- and the Rangers hired John Rhadigan to fill Lewin's shoes, which turned into something of a disaster when the Rangers ended up firing Rhadigan and demoting him back to his previous role with the network less than two months into the 2011 season.

That prompted a series of in-season broadcasting changes that led Dave Barnett to become the Rangers' third play-by-play TV man in less than 12 months, and despite some very obvious tension between the pair at points during the latter half of the 2011 season, it's been reported that Barnett/Grieve will remain the Rangers' television duo onward into 2012.

Best of luck to Lewin, in any event ... and as for The Fan, I'm not sure what the plan is going to be, as I very much doubt Lewin will be broadcasting weekday/night Mets games and still holding down his lunchtime radio gig back in Texas.