John Sterling is expected to return to Yankee radio booth on June 6, 2023-Marchand

5/24/23, “John Sterling missing more Yankees games due to illness,“ NY Post, Andrew Marchand

“John Sterling will miss this weekend’s home series against the Padres and will skip the Yankees’ West Coast trip next week because he is under the weather.

Sterling, 84, is expected to return to the Yankee [radio] broadcast booth on June 6. [White Sox at Yankees]

While his illness is keeping him out, it was not described as serious.

Charles Wenzelberg/NY Post

“Don’t worry about me, you can tell your readers,” Sterling told The Post. “I’ll be back soon.”

After not going to Seattle or Los Angeles next week, Sterling will have missed 23 of the Yankees first 61 games.

[MLB Scoreboard]

Justin Shackil will replace Sterling as Suzyn Waldman’s partner [in the Yankee radio booth] on all the games.

WFAN hired Shackil this year so he could spell Sterling when needed.”

……………………………….

Comment: John, of course take all the time you need to restore your health. In the meantime, I can’t listen to Yankee radio at all without you in the booth. Jeff Nelson is the only one who’d be an acceptable substitute for you, but instead we’re given an unlistenable chirpy nightmare, Shackil. From what I’ve read, he thinks calling enough minor league games is the main prerequisite for calling major league games. Not so. The first requirement is to be a natural talker. You can call 10,000 minor league games, and if you’re not a natural talker, you won’t be any better in the big leagues. All the “play by play” guys today are exactly the same as Shackil: chirpy, robotic clones. None of them belong on radio. If anything, they’re only suited for nationally televised games during which you can mute the audio. Radio of course is a conversation with one other person. Shackil doesn’t know that, he thinks he’s talking on a PA system to a crowd at a noisy carnival. You’re the only one left on radio who talks in a normal conversational tone in the booth. None of these cookie cutter guys today are natural talkers as you are and are thus incapable of doing give and take conversation. As a listener, you know they’re terrified of making a mistake, so they mainly stay frozen within themselves. Of course John Sterling also has the perfect voice for radio. Shackil mentioned he was most impressed by the advice you gave him to “be himself.” That would be fine if Shackil actually had a “self.” He’s just a robot.

 

 

...............

Tweet Stumbleupon StumbleUpon