Courtesy New York Newsday

(October 12, 2009) What with the bustle of the baseball playoffs and packing still to be done, there won't be time Fridayfor a proper farewell bash to send off the most infamous subbasement in sports media history.

But no one at WFAN would be surprised if the place went out on its own, familiar terms - perhaps with a gusher from a leaky restroom above, an air conditioner that won't condition or a fallen ceiling tile.

Longtime staffers have seen all that and much more in the 22 years since the station invented 24-hour sports talk radio deep beneath the historic Kaufman Astoria Studios in Astoria, Queens.

Yet as they prepare to broadcast starting at 10 a.m. Saturday from gleaming, modern studios in lower Manhattan, all say they will miss their familiar cave.

And many fret that a piece of the station's soul will be lost in the transition.

"Moving to a cookie-cutter building with five stations together, the whole corporate mentality, I do fear that immensely,'' said Mike Francesa, who arrived a month after the FAN went on the air.

"That's a fight we have to fight every day. I hope we remain unique.''

Added Eddie Scozzare, a 20-year veteran who has filled a variety of roles:

"I think a lot of our character comes from not only this building but being our own rogue nation apart from the rest of CBS Radio group. God forbid the suits take the R train and come to Queens and check in on us. That has afforded us a bit of independence from all the corporate B.S.''

That sort of counterculture take is common at the FAN, whose low-rent home gives it the casual vibe of a college station despite its power and revenues.

And it helps explain the sense of nostalgia and sadness as the oft-delayed move drew nearer.

Francesa's last shift was Thursday because he will be at Yankee Stadium Friday.

Sitting in the tattered office that once belonged to Don Imus, he said that as he drove to work under the elevated subway tracks on 31st Street, he recalled his first drive to the station for an interview in March 1987.

Steve Somers, who worked the first overnight in the station's history, will be on Friday night from Queens and Saturday from Manhattan.

"What I found in that old, dilapidated building, with all the history in the world, was a home,'' he said, referring to studios that have hosted everyone from the Marx Brothers to Bill Cosby.

"And I'm responsible for most of the coffee stains, and a lot of the mustard stains.''

Somers was out of work for 2 1/2 years before WFAN hired him. "There are a lot of very friendly ghosts in that building,'' he said. "I like to think they were my guardian angels.''

Several staffers compared the studios to Shea Stadium, another iconic Queens sports site whose time finally had come and gone.

"This place is a dump, but it's our dump,'' said Joe Benigno, a listener turned host. "This is like going from a down-home, relaxed atmosphere to the Land of the Suits.''

The move is designed to consolidate five of CBS' New York stations - not including WCBS-AM - in one location, offering efficiency as well as, at last, windows.

And carpets not comically tattered and held together with duct tape.

Many staffers face a far more complicated, expensive commute, especially from Long Island. But that seemed secondary as the final goodbyes were said and boxes filled.

Scozzare said he always will remember the expressions of celebrities after they made their way through the maze of hallways two floors below street level for the first time.

"There was that look on their faces like, 'You've got to be kidding; this is the FAN?' '' he said.

Said John Minko, a staffer from Day One: "I never asked them what they thought, but let's put it this way: I'm sure they weren't impressed.''

Mark Chernoff and Eric Spitz, the station's operations manager and program director, are as nostalgic as the rest of the staff, but both emphasized the real heart of the station is its people, not its location.

Probably so, but many of those people will leave pieces of their hearts behind.

Said Minko: "The history of sports radio is in this dump.''

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