When Justin Shackil was getting ready to call a New York Yankees game on the radio last June 17th, he wasn’t nervous for his Bronx Bombers play-by-play debut.
After all, doing baseball play-by-play on the radio is something that just comes naturally for the New Jersey native.
“I don’t think it hit me until about five minutes before the first pitch of the first game I did in Toronto,” said Shakil. “I said ‘There’s no turning back…lets go’. It was such a fun experience doing that for about ten games last year.”
Longtime Yankees radio play-by-play voice John Sterling had decided to start taking some games off and not travel as much so flagship station WFAN and the Yankees used several people, including Shackil, to fill in for the legendary broadcaster. And now Shackil, who has been working for the Yankees as part of their digital team, is in his first season as a full-time member of the radio broadcast team hosting the post-game show and also filling in for Sterling on play-by-play for about 30 games.
Having this opportunity was something he had in the back of his mind during his fill-in run last season.
“I thought it was a possibility but I didn’t think too much about it because I really didn’t know what anyone was planning until they talked to me about it further in the off-season,” said Shackil. “Once that became a possibility, obviously, I really wanted to be able to do it and I’m just fortunate that they decided to choose me.”
Shackil, who will continue his role on the Yankees digital team as well as being a fill-in clubhouse reporter and studio host for YES Network, took a unique path to the Yankees radio opportunity. A graduate of Fordham University, not far from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx, Shackil embarked on a minor league baseball play-by-play career that took him to the Trenton Thunder (Yankees AA), the Tennessee Smokies (Cubs AA) and the Mobile Bay Bears (Diamondbacks AA).
In 2012, Shackil decided to come home to the New York area and take a job as a sports anchor for WCBS Newsradio 880.
“I felt like that was a little bit more stable at the time,” said Shackil.
Between 2012 and 2022, Shackil called a few spring training games for the Cubs and also picked up some other random play-by-play assignments. In 2016, he joined the Yankees digital team and with that came another opportunity to fulfill his objective.
“The big goal has always been to cover baseball full-time, whether it was in play-by-play, studio hosting, reporting, on the radio, on TV, national, local, whatever it was,” said Shackil. “I just wanted to be involved covering the game on an everyday basis and I was willing to go anywhere for that.”
Aside from that handful of Cubs spring training games, Shackil wasn’t getting any regular reps in terms of baseball play-by-play. Still hoping for another baseball play-by-play opportunity, he remembered something that longtime radio executive Eric Spitz told him.
“He said no one is going to fill a play-by-play position with someone who isn’t doing it regularly,” said Shackil. “I thought ‘Hey, I’ve always had this minor league experience in my back pocket and nobody is going to be able to take that away from me’. But you still need to be doing it and stay fresh in that regard.”
So to stay fresh, Shackil took his laptop and a mixer into a broadcast booth at Yankee Stadium and recorded mock radio broadcasts about 20 times a year. The broadcast booth he was using just happened to be the office of his boss Greg Colello, the Yankees’ Executive Director of the Scoreboard and Video Production.
Shackil was prepared last year when the Yankees were looking for candidates to fill in for Sterling.
“I gave them something that is essentially the product that they were going to get…a Yankee game,” said Shackil.
For Shackil, calling baseball games on the radio is like riding a bike…you don’t forget how to do it.
“You can call it confidence,” said Shackil. “I don’t think it’s cockiness on my end. I just know that out of everything that I’ve done in terms of assignments, I just know that I can call baseball on the radio. It’s something that I’m extremely confident in.”
Those mock broadcasts in his boss’s office earned Shackil that fill-in opportunity last season and that led to him landing the radio post-game gig this year along with being the regular fill-in on play-by-play.
And when he does play-by-play, he’s going to be himself and that was something that Sterling stressed to him during a couple of conversations before opening day.
“The biggest piece of advice he lent me was do it my way,” said Shackil. “That’s something that I do always carry with me from being a college student because it was ingrained in us then. The biggest thing that you can bring into the booth is yourself because no one else can do that.”
Shackil also has a great relationship with longtime Yankees radio analyst Suzyn Waldman and not just from the games they worked together last season.
“I’ve worked alongside Suzyn in the clubhouse just being around the team working home games in the Yankees digital space,” said Shackil.
For a young broadcaster who wants to become a major league announcer, the general rule of thumb is to start in the low minor leagues and move around the country and work your way up the ladder from level to level. That’s not the only way to get to “The Show” and certainly getting a big-league job in your backyard is an even harder accomplishment.
Shackil took a different road than most, but his path to pinstripes has worked out very nicely.
“I grew up here,” said Shackil. “I grew up watching the Yankees with my grandmother. I learned the game through her and things just happened to fall into place where I’m working for the team that I grew up rooting for as a child and not having to leave New York. I consider myself extremely lucky.”
Now a Yankees broadcaster, Justin Shackil has earned the opportunity to channel his inner Lou Gehrig.
Peter Schwartz writes weekly sports radio features for Barrett Media. He has been involved in New York sports media for over three decades, and has worked for notable brands such as WFAN, CBS Sports Radio, WCBS 880, ESPN New York, and FOX News Radio. Peter has also served as play by play announcer for the New Yok Riptide, New York Dragons, New York Hitmen, Varsity Media and the Long Island Sports Network. You can find him on Twitter @SchwartzSports or email him at DragonsRadio@aol.com.
