Put this bobblehead in the books.
The longtime radio voice of the Mets, Howie Rose, is being honored with his own talking doll this season.
“It seemed everybody else was getting a bobblehead anyway,” Rose, 69, told The Post ahead of the Mets opener Thursday. “I was starting to feel a little left out.”
The Brooklyn native, who grew up in Bayside, Queens, is already getting “ribbed” by friends.
“Most people feel it looks better than I do in real life,” said the famously self-deprecating Rose. “That wasn’t a hard thing to achieve.”
The 7-inch polyresin imitation utters Rose’s famous catchphrase, “Put it in the books,” which he uses at the end of every Mets win.
He said the expression was inspired by legendary Cincinnati Reds broadcaster Marty Brennaman, who would punctuate wins by saying, “And this one belongs to the Reds,” which Rose felt was “simple, to the point and not self aggrandizing.”
“Put it in the books” is also an outgrowth of Rose’s childhood, playing ball and going to Mets games with friends.
“If my team won … one of us might say something along the lines of ‘This one’s in the books.'”
It took him a few strikes to get it right.
“The hard part was finding the proper inflection to use … I didn’t like the way it was coming out the first few times,” he explained.
Rose, who will be inducted into the Mets Hall of Fame on June 3, also used his voice to score points with his future wife, Barbara.
In 1986, he got a circular in the mail with an ad for Jewish Singles Date Phone, where “you would dial a number and hear tapes from these women and if you liked what you heard, you would write to them.
“So I started writing one. And then I’m thinking, ‘Wait a minute, you idiot, you speak for a living. Why don’t you make a tape and let them come to you,'” he said.
He got 30 responses in a week, including one from his soon-to-be bride.
On their second date, he knew she was The One when she was able to recite the uniform numbers of all the ’69 Mets.
“When she got to Rod Gaspar, I said, ‘If she knows Rod Gaspar was number 17, this is my kind of woman.'”
Rose, who recently revealed his battle with bladder cancer, doesn’t take anything for granted.
“You never lose sight in this business of the fact that there’s somebody on the other end of that microphone who is absorbing what you say very often in a very personal way,” he said.
“And then you combine that with some of the honors and platitudes and bobbleheads … they really have a very, very humbling effect.”
And he has the perfect place for you to put his bobblehead, which will be distributed at CitiField on May 31.
“Probably out in front of the house,” he said, “to scare the crows away.”
