Charley Steiner has been on the job with the Los Angeles Dodgers for 18 seasons as a play-by-play announcer, longer than his time with ESPN or the New York Yankees.
During an appearance on The Press Box podcast, Steiner re-lived how he got an offer from the New York Yankees in 2001 while announcing Barry Bonds’ chase for home run record in quite the interesting manner.
“I was sitting in Brian Cashman’s office. It was a Sunday night game, it was three or four in the afternoon, and just chatting,” Steiner recalled. “And George (Steinbrenner) walk in to the office. I’d known George since from the time I worked in Cleveland back in the mid-to-late 70s. And George was saying ‘Oh, I heard you on television the other day’, just chatting aimlessly.
“He says to Cashman and says ‘I need to talk to you’, so I said ok it was time to leave. So George leaves the office, and I say to Brian — because 2002 would be the first year for the YES Network — ‘You know, if something is available with this new network’ — because they didn’t even have a name yet — ‘I could be interested’. “
Steiner then said Brian Cashman walked into the broadcast booth with a “I have good news and bad news” approach, which caught the former SportsCenter anchor off guard because he expected no news.
Cashman said “‘The bad news is I told George you might be interested in coming to work for the Yankees. And he told me to stay the f*** out of his business, build me a winner, you have nothing to do with broadcasts. The good news he wants to hire you.’ And so that was how it came to pass,” Steiner recalled. “All the while, I’m doing those games up to and post 9/11 and the Bonds home runs. The Giants call and say ‘Would you be interested in coming out and working with John Miller?’.
“My father was in ill-health at the time, and having grown up in New York — and the offers were identical, but truth be told I’d always been a Dodgers fan — so I decided to work for the Yankees so my dad could hear me in his final years, and he did, and that was how the Yankees part of the story came about.”
Steiner spent the 2002, 2003, and 2004 seasons with the Yankees before joining the Dodgers broadcast booth. Yankees announcer John Sterling reportedly told colleagues how much he disliked working with Steiner, due to his “inaccurate calls” and use of cliches during the broadcast.
