East Northport, Melville Mets Fans Try To ‘Beat The Booth’
/By John Grimaldi
info@longislandergroup.com
Adam Yanover, left, of Melville, is pictured on the set of trivia game show “Beat the Booth” with teammate Anthony Furia, of Brooklyn.
A pair of local New York Mets fans recently got to test their knowledge against Mets baseball announcers Gary Cohen and Howie Rose in “Beat the Booth,” a television trivia game show.
James Hawkins, 26, from East Northport, and Adam Yanover, 49, of Melville, were two of the four contestants to challenge Cohen and Rose for their crown.
“We had some introductory conversations, wishing each other luck,” Yanover said of Cohen and Rose.
Added Hawkins, “They were pretty impressed on how we did and that we were one of the best they ever had.”
The show consists of four segments: “Terrific Trivia,” a rapid fire round of far-ranging questions; “Flushing Feud,” where teams must guess the top six answers to a specific Mets trivia question; “Around the Bases,” an SNY original game that gives teams a chance to “hit” for a single, double, triple or home run as each base corresponds to an increasingly difficult trivia question; and “Ya Gotta Believe,” a contest reminiscent of the “Pyramid” game show where one teammate provides clues to his partner who works to identify the correct answers. The episode featuring Hawkins and Yanover aired on SNY on June 28.
Hawkins said he and his teammate, Andrew Padaetz were winning after the first two rounds, but, after that, the questions got very specific and Cohen and Rose started to come back.
James Hawkins, right, of East Northport, and Andrew Padaetz, of Brooklyn, talk things over on trivia game show “Beat the Booth.”
As for Yanover, he said he and his teammate, Anthony Furia, “would have liked to have been more competitive. All the questions were pretty hard.”
He added, “It certainly was a challenge.”
As a fan of the Mets, Yanover said his current favorite player is hard-throwing right hander Noah Syndergaard, but cited Daryl Strawberry as his favorite Met ever.
For Hawkins, he said Long Island-native Steven Matz is his favorite right now, but Mets captain David Wright is his all-time favorite.
The franchise had endured several disappointing seasons dating back to 2007, but last October the Mets reached the World Series, and this season the team appears to be contenders once again.
“It’s great,” Hawkins said. “It’s easy to stick in good times – and when they’re good, they’re so good. It makes the bad times less awful knowing there is hope.”
Although Yanover was at one of the World Series games that the Mets lost, he said to be there “was a dream come true.”
