As the New York Yankees continue the 2024 season, game broadcasts on WFAN are utilizing a rotation of play-by-play announcers. This came after the retirement of John Sterling in April following 36 years calling games for the organization. Within the rotation over the last few seasons when Sterling was unable to make a game are Justin Shackil, Rickie Ricardo, Brendan Burke and Emmanuel Berbari. A successor for the position has not yet been named, nor is it known when such a move could happen; however, there has been discussion pertaining to the broadcasts themselves on Boomer & Gio in morning drive on WFAN.
Last week, co-host Gregg Giannotti offered Berbari constructive criticism towards his home run call and stated that there was room for improvement. He ultimately wanted him to find a middle ground between his “Gone, goodbye” home run call and the signature call Sterling delivered for Yankees outfielder Giancarlo Stanton. After playing another clip of Berbari announcing a home run this week, Giannotti asked anchor Chris LoPresti to rank the four Yankees play-by-play announcers in the rotation.
“I’ve got to go Brendan Burke first,” LoPresti replied. “I’ll be honest – I have a lot of respect for Rickie [Ricardo]; he’s been doing it a long time. I haven’t heard enough of him because I don’t generally listen to the Spanish broadcast obviously and he hasn’t done that many games regularly on the Fan.”
Giannotti then asked LoPresti if he was taking Ricardo out of consideration for the list, to which he replied that it was not the case. Conversely, LoPresti felt that he was not able to provide an informed opinion on the matter, but followed up by articulating that Ricardo could rank at the top of the list if it was based on the energy they bring to the broadcast. Co-host Boomer Esiason explained that LoPresti had just said he didn’t listen to him, leading Giannotti to ask again how he would rank the rest of them.
“I’ll go [Justin] Shackil, Rickie [Ricardo], Emmanuel [Berbari],” LoPresti said, “and I love Emmanuel…. Again, he’s relatively new to doing the Yankee broadcasts – obviously he has minor league experience. For me to critique anyone – the last play-by-play I did was women’s hockey at Quinnipiac like 15 to 18 – no, got to be almost 20 years ago now – so what do I know?”
Giannotti and Esiason both emphasized that LoPresti is a consumer of the broadcasts and a baseball fan, hence why he is offering his opinion on the matter. LoPresti previously worked with Shackil at SiriusXM and has known him longer than Berbari; however, he has worked with Berbari more in recent years.
