The radio voice of Yankee summers for 20 years

"And that, forever, is the magic of radio, even today, when just about every game is broadcast on television, when you can get pitch-by-pitch updates on your BlackBerry, when the notion of watching sports as a passive activity — as background noise — is startlingly quaint.

• Yet a trusted radio voice remains as much a pillar of our lives as three square meals and offers just as much nourishment, for the soul.

I know John Sterling polarizes people. I know people who don’t like the Yankees revel in lampooning him. But here is the larger truth to what Sterling is, and what he’s been in the years since he first sat behind the microphone as the Voice of the Yankees, first on WABC, now on WCBS. For those who’ve loved the Yankees in this latest period of renaissance — for those who have lived the Yankees — he has been as much a part of those households as real blood relations.

• I asked a Yankees fan not long ago why he liked Sterling so much.

“Because as much as I know this shouldn’t be true, some of the greatest days and nights of my life were spent watching the Yankees win baseball games,” he said. “And even if I wasn’t listening to those games on radio, I wished I was.

• Because I wanted to hear Sterling describe what I’d just seen with my eyes.
• It wasn’t official until he said it was.”"

5/9 "Baseball play-by-play men forever the voices of summer," NY Post, Mike Vaccaro ****

• John Sterling is probably the only person to have seen every pitch of every Yankee game--both regular and post season--for the past 20+ years (since 1989). His current booth mate Suzyn Waldman, would be a good booth mate for anyone but is particularly well paired with Sterling in my view. ed.

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