Brad's Ultimate New York Yankees Website - www.HistoryOfTheYankees.com
Welcome to the page for: John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman
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Read the article
"Pioneer
of the Air" by Marty Appel
A great piece about legendary broadcaster
Suzyn Waldman.
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John Sterling has been behind the microphone for so long, he is the only radio voice that many people know.
Below are some of John's Famous HR Calls. - Credit: Newsday
John Sterling's HR call: "This is Gleyber Day! And he is the Gleyber of the month!" - Gleyber Torres
John Sterling's call: "Jose Pirela, he's a happy fella!"
Sterling's call: "A heat shot from Heathcott!" - Slade Heathcott
Sterling's call: "Jones leaves his Garrett!" - Garrett Jones
Sterling's call: "Stephen Drew! How do you do! He sends a 'Drewskie' to the fans."
Sterling's call: "Jacoby Ellsburies it! A jack by Jacoby!"
Sterling's call: "Oh McCann can, yes McCann can!" - Brian McCann
Sterling's call: "You can bank on Chase. Headley is deadly!"
Sterling's call: "'Los is loose. A belt by Beltran!"
Sterling’s call: “It’s an A-bomb! From A-Rod!”
Sterling’s call: “Gardy goes yardy!”
Sterlings call: Mark sends a Tex message! You're on the Mark, Teixeira!
Sterling’s call: “That was Ryan's Hope!”
Sterling's call: "Younger than springtime! Forever young!"
Sterling's call: "John Ryan sends one flyin'!"
Sterling's call: "Austin POWERS one!"
Sterling's call: "Martin is keen. He is the Prado of the Yankees!"
Sterling's call: "Wheels up for Zelous!"
Sterling's call: "Bye bye Brian!" - Brian Roberts
Sterling's call: "Never nervous Yangervis!", then he sings "So-lar-te" to the tune of Dean Martin's "Volare."
Sterling's call: "Anna -- is on the Dean's list!" - Dean Anna
Sterling’s call: “El Capitan!”
Sterling’s call: “Robbie Cano, don't ya know?”
Sterling's call: "Kelly killed it!" - Kelly Johnson
Sterling’s call: “You're on the Mark, Reynolds!”
Sterling's call: "Sori -- RIGHT number!" - Alfonso Soriano
Sterling's call: "You know what (opposing city)'s thinking: Curses, Zoiled again!" - Zoilo Almonte
Sterling's call: "David is Goliath!" - David Adams
Sterling’s call: “He’s something sort of Grandish! The Grandyman can! Oh, the Grandyman can!”
Sterling’s call: “Travis becomes a Pronx Bomber! A Hafner Homer!” - Travis Hafner
Sterling’s call: “The Bronx is Vernon! Wells rings the bells!”
Sterling’s call: “Lyle hits it a mile!” - Lyle Overbay
Sterling’s call: “BB hits a BB! That’s Boesch, by gosh!” - Brennan Boesch
Sterling's call: "Stewart Chris-tens the seats!" - Chris Stewart
Sterling’s call: “Ichiro, the Yankees’ rising son, says sayonara!”
Sterling’s call: “He opened his Golden Gates and hit it into the seats! Hey! It’s a Ben Francisco Treat!”
Sterling’s call: “It’s a nuke from Youk!
Sterling’s call: “Nuney to the mooney!” - Eduardo Nunez
Sterling’s call: “The Giambino!”
Sterling’s call: "The Bamtino!"
Sterling’s call: “Jolly Old St. Nick! Nick is positively Swishalicious!”
Sterling’s call: “Jorgie juiced one!”
Sterling's call: "Bern, baby, Bern!"
Sterling’s call: “He hit a Johnny rocket!"
Sterling’s call: “It’s a thrilla from Godzilla!” (If it’s a walkoff, add: “The sayonara kid does it again!”)
Sterling's call: "El comedulce!" - Bobby Abreu
Sterling's call: "The Melk Man delivers! That's the Melky Way!"
Sterling's call: "Sir Lancelot rides to the rescue! C'est lui! C'est lui!" - Lance Berkman
Sterling's call: "Andruw Jones makes his bones!"
Sterling's call: "Jesus has been turned loose!" - Jesus Montero
John Sterling's HR call: (singing) "Non dimenticar, that ball sure traveled far! Giancarlo! It is a Stantonian home run." (The first part of the phrase translates to "Do not forget.") Sterling had used a different call for Stanton's first three home runs: "Giancarlo, non si può stoparlo! It is a Stantonian home run." (The first part of the phrase roughly translates from Italian to, "Giancarlo, you can't be stopped!", though the proper Italian word for "stopped" is "fermare." Sterling appeared to use "stoparlo" for rhyming purposes, though he used "fermarlo" on Stanton's second and third home runs.)
John Sterling's HR call: " Andujar hit it far! And he's getting Miggy with it!" - Miguel Andujar
John Sterling's HR call: "Aaron's the Judge, but Brandon's the Drury!" - Brandon Drury
John Sterling's HR call: "Star light, star bright, Starlin just hit that with all his might! Starlin is darlin'!"
Sterling's call: "Dustin goes bustin'!"
Sterling's call: "Bye bye, Birdie! Here he is, the Birdman of New York."
John Sterling's HR call: "He is the Toddfather. In Todd we trust." - Todd Frazier
John Sterling's HR call: "Ji-Man is a He-Man! Oh boy, oh Choi!" - Ji-Man Choi
Sterling's call: "Rob Refsnyder has Seoul!"
John Sterling's call: "Downtown goes Frazier! That Fraizah will amaze ya!"
John Sterling's HR call: "Carter hits it harder!"
John Sterling's HR call: "Happy Holliday! Happy Holliday! Matt has bat!"
John Sterling's HR call: "Yes, the Butler did it!"
John Sterling's HR call: "Tyler a yellow ribbon on that one! Austin powers one to [location]! Yeah, baby!"
John Sterling's HR call: "Torreyes is terrific! Bonny Ronnie!"
John Sterling's HR call: "Gary is scary!"
John Sterling's HR call: "He's judge and jury. And this is judgment day."
Sterling's call: "Yes in-Didi! Gregorius has Yankees fans euphorious!"
John Sterling's HR call: "Hicks hits one into the sticks. Aaron hammers one!"
John Sterling's HR call: "Parm does harm!"
“It is high, it is far. It is gone!” John
Sterling, author of more than a few trademark expressions, says: “I never
hear any criticism to my face.”
Swiftly
down a private corridor, he marched into the office of
Yankees
Manager Joe Girardi, who rose from behind his desk. An animated children’s
program was playing on the big-screen TV above the desk, and
“Cartoons? Perfect theme for my highbrow questions,” he said.
Girardi,
dressed in a T-shirt, shorts and sneakers, laughed and took a seat
shoulder-to-shoulder on a couch beside
About
three hours later, with a drive off a Yankees bat arcing toward the
right-field seats, Sterling pursed his lips closer to the microphone inside
the Yankees’ radio broadcast booth to shout, “It is high, it is far. ...”
He
paused, then with his face trembling and the booth seeming to shake, he
finished: “It is gone!”
Fans in
the box seats 25 feet below could hear
By the
game’s end, an easy Yankees victory,
All in a
night’s work — the roughly 3,800th game
Within
90 minutes of the final out,
There is
no more polarizing figure in
At the
same time, he has spawned more than 100 Web sites dedicated to denigrating
his emblematic calls and his anomalous broadcasting style. He is the regular
whipping boy of two
In
truth, despite the fact that Sterling is a native and now noteworthy New
Yorker, few know much about him and even fewer have asked him what he thinks
about the phenomenon that has become John Sterling.
“I find
it remarkable that people recognize me at all or spend time talking about
me,” Sterling said, using his left hand to sign his name and “Theeee Yankees
Win” on more than 200 baseballs, a collectible that will retail for $70
online — and sell out. “I just wanted to be one of the disc jockeys I
listened to as a teen, like the guys on WNEW radio. A voice having fun.”
No game,
then, goes by without
In
Sterling-speak, all batters who reach base with no outs should be moved over
one base, and managers, or players, who do not follow this stratagem incur
the host’s contemptuous ire. Sterling likes to umpire, too, as pitches are
often “low but called a strike.” As he does at the end of games, he has a
peculiar fascination with the word “the.” Often before a pitcher delivers
the ball,
As for
“Say I’m
somewhere between 40 and death,” he says. “Well, you can say 50 and death.”
Public
records and interviews with associates past and present suggest
“I not
only need to work,”
Growing
Up With the Radio
His
memory for all other details about his life is remarkably sharp.
Raised
in
“He made
pretty good money, and we probably lived up to it,”
Early
recollections revolve around the radio.
“My
family was listening to the radio and I heard a guy with a great voice say,
‘Live from
He
played sports but spent many hours by the radio trying to learn from
broadcasters of all types. Because he was a Yankees fan, that included the
voice of the team then, Mel Allen.
“I
studied and mimicked everyone — disc jockeys, news readers, baseball and
football announcers,”
“But
then my mother died and I was rudderless, so I came back to
He
prepared an audition tape and within months left school for a job at a radio
station in
“I had
no idea what I was talking about in
He
started adding sports talk to the dialogue, which yielded work on some
Baltimore Colts and Bullets games. In 1971, he returned to
“A very
good night to be on the radio,” he said.
He
landed a full-time sports talk gig on WMCA a year later. Not long after, he
was broadcasting Nets and Islanders games. Nine years later, he had moved to
“Dominique is Magnifique.”
“Dominique is Terrifique.”
“I have
not missed a game I was supposed to work,” he said. “I am blessed with a
good immune system.”
Michael
Kay, the Yankees television announcer and
In his
time with the Yankees,
A
typical day for
He
attended his sons’ Little League game last weekend. As
“You
see, even the Mets fans are nice to me,”
Phil
Mushnick, in his time as a sports media columnist for The New York Post, has
written more than 270 articles about
Mushnick
rails at
“Yankees
fans who like him are people who just want someone to root for the team,”
Mushnick said. “He’s a waste of a great voice.”
Particularly grating to Mushnick are the times when
“I’ve
read where he said he likes to be ahead of the call and that it’s more
exciting and entertaining that way,” Mushnick said. “You know what would be
really exciting and entertaining? If he waited until it was actually a home
run before he launched into his home run call.”
The
Passion of a Fan
Hart
Seely is a co-founder of the blog It Is High, It Is Far, It Is ...Caught.
Seely calls himself a Sterling fan. He has for years taped each of
“Sometimes, John is like a caricature of a baseball announcer who would be
on a TV sitcom,” Seely said. “I’ve often thought he could play himself on a
TV sitcom and easily win an Emmy.
“But for
the serious Yankees fan, he has a lot of appeal. Some people, most of them
not Yankees fans, think that because the Yankees are a flagship franchise,
they should have a network-level announcer who is never a homer. But the
truth is, when the Yankees do something wrong, John rips them, like any
psychotic Yankees fan. At the same time, like a true Yankees fan, when they
win, John cannot control himself. The joy bursts from his breast.”
And he
has style all his own.
“Broadcasters usually skip over the little words,” Seely said. “It’s John
Sterling’s nonplanned, nonsensical genius that he focuses all his energy on
a forgotten word: the.”
When the
most biting criticisms of his work were read aloud to him as he sat in a
mezzanine-level lounge at Yankee Stadium last week, he looked offended, even
hurt, although he responded flatly: “That’s nice, isn’t it?”
“You
would like everybody to love you,” he said. “That’s not possible in life.”
As for
his on-the-air mistakes, he acknowledges that they happen. He does not fret
about them.
“Anyone
doing baseball for four hours talking extemporaneously is going to make
mistakes, and I make my share,” he said. “I’m not reading a script up there.
And, yes, it is my style to be ahead of the play. You can do play-by-play
after the fact, but I choose not to.”
Asked if
he is embarrassed when he begins, “It is high, it is far ...” and then has
to admit the ball is off the wall or caught, he shakes his head.
“It is a
long call, so I have to start early,” he said. “And in fact it was high and
far and caught at the wall. You know how many games I do and how many
pitches I see? I do my best and hope that it works out.”
However
they end up, his home run calls have achieved a certain pop status. At
Returning from a trip the same week,
“It was
3 a.m., and I just wanted to go to sleep,”
Joe
Torre, who managed the Yankees for 12 seasons and considered
“His
calendar has marks for things that no one else has marks for,” Torre said.
“Like not wearing white shoes after Labor Day. He does a lot of things
nobody does, like dressing for TV every day even though he works on radio.
“Are the
home run calls silly? Sure, but they made me smile,” Torre said.
Randy
Levine, the president of the Yankees, who is currently negotiating a new
team radio contract with several outlets, would not comment on
“Some
people like what John does, some people don’t, but everybody talks about it,
and that’s good,” Levine said. “With John, you have to take the whole
package.”
Then he
added: “But I cry at hockey scores.”
It was
classic John Sterling — evocative, engaging, demonstrative and slightly
bizarre.
“Well, I do cry all the time,” he said later. “Maybe that’s not for everybody, but that’s me. So I thought I would admit to it. It’s how I’m going to call a game. I like living that way. I like caring.”