John Sterling, the legendary radio voice of the New York Yankees announced his retirement yesterday. Sterling spent nearly 65 years behind a microphone and called Yankees games for 36 years. Former WFAN hosts Mike Francesa and Chris ‘Mad Dog’ Russo got together on Russo’s High Heat show on MLB Network to talk about Sterling.
“I thought of you after I heard the news about John,” Francesa said. “First, let me wish John well publicly for his wonderful career and I hope he enjoys his golden years and has a nice time. I’m telling you, Dog, you should take a bow for this…the guy who really got those home run calls started was you. You were the one who started wearing out the Sterling calls and then he started doing these home run calls, and I remember you playing them one after another after another.”
As they talked more about their relationship with the legendary voice throughout the years, Francesa added, “Sterling’s a character…he likes Broadway, he likes theater, he likes bouncing around New York city, he likes piano bars. He’s like a character with a great booming voice. And he created his own style. Critics may have hated it, but you know what, the fans ate it up with both hands.”
Francesa and Russo hit the airwaves as Mike and The Mad Dog in September 1989, shortly after Sterling had taken over as the radio voice of the Yankees. Prior to that, he had worked for Turner Sports covering the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks. He had also called hockey and football.
Francesa said, about radio play-by-play broadcasters, in general is “the guy who is the soundtrack of a baseball team and he is the one fans remember, the one that the city remembers. In October the TV guys go away, network guys take over. They never have the great call; they never have the dramatic playoff call or World Series call. They don’t work those games, the radio guys work those games.
“And Sterling worked every one of those great Yankee wins and great Yankee World Series wins and all the dynasty years of the 90s and became the soundtrack of New York City.”
Sterling certainly had his own style and Francesa said, “Sterling described it differently; he had his own way of doing it. He left out a lot of the regular technical stuff…but he was very theatrical, he was very dramatic, and he was great at the big moment. He created a lot of stuff that the fans just absolutely ate up…I always got a kick out of him. He is a very unique personality…he is very entertaining.”
Russo said, “He has two things that are very important. He’s got a great voice and a great laugh…when he allows his partner to say something he contributes with a wonderful, big booming laugh, I think that goes a long way, too.”
“…He was blessed with a voice that he could take anywhere, to any octave and it never broke, and that’s the great voice. A voice like Nantz has, like Sterling has … that big, booming silky voice and he had one of those great voices. He used that as an instrument, he played it like it was an instrument. He knew he had that voice, and he played that voice all the time.”
