As the start of baseball continues to draw near, New York Yankees fans will start to hear the new radio broadcasting duo of Dave Sims and Suzyn Waldman calling games throughout the year. Sims, the former play-by-play voice of the Seattle Mariners and former WFAN host, is returning to the New York airwaves following the retirement of John Sterling after 36 years on the radio broadcasts. With the team trying to return to the World Series and win the championship for the first time in 16 years, Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti discussed the communication between the broadcasters and those who have purview over the broadcasts regarding feedback and making incremental improvement.
During the Thursday morning edition of the show, Giannotti questioned who would be responsible for reaching out to Sims and Waldman with notes as they are trying to become acclimated with one another on the airwaves. Esiason concurrently opined his belief that they are professionals who have been working in the business for a long time and that they would be fine. As a result, he did not think there was anyone to reach out, nor should they do so.
“It’s going to sound fine,” Esiason said. “It’s a baseball game for God’s sake, and they both have been doing it for a long time.”
Giannotti referenced when former WFAN programmer Eric Spitz reached out to Wayne Hagen to give him notes about his broadcasts of New York Mets baseball. The station previously had the broadcast rights to the team until the 2013 season, after which the Yankees moved their radio calls to the station from WCBS. Morning show producer Al Dukes, when asked his thoughts on the situation, contended that such feedback could come from the Yankees organization instead.
“Interesting – as opposed to the broadcasting people,” Giannotti replied. “Or maybe the Yankees reach out to the broadcasting people because they don’t want to do it themselves and say, ‘Hey, can you pass this along to your guys?,’ because they are WFAN employees, not Yankees employees.”
Despite the potential chain of communication being posed by Dukes, Esiason still did not believe that anyone would be reaching out to the duo. While Sims is new to the broadcasts, he has been calling MLB games for several decades and is familiar with the New York marketplace. Furthermore, Waldman was the longtime broadcast partner of Sterling and in the radio booth for 20 seasons, including during the 2009 World Series championship.
“There’s no way anybody is saying anything to these two professionals – that’s all I can say,” Esiason articulated. “That’d be like calling Jim Nantz and saying, ‘Enough with the ‘Hello friends.’’ You’re just not doing that.”
Whereas Esiason could evince new announcers who filled in for Sterling last year, such as Emmanuel Berbari and Justin Shackil, receiving calls with constructive criticism, he did not think this would be the case with Sims. Giannotti then asked if former program director Spike Eskin would have reached out, averring that he did not know the whole history of the station and was learning about everybody. Esiason replied by concurring that he could see Eskin becoming involved because he seemed like someone was confrontational. Moreover, he expressed that Eskin and Giannotti had a weird relationship when working together at the station.
“I thought it was good, but I thought it was weird,” Esiason stated. “Like he’s screaming at you, you’re screaming at him. There’s a lot of screaming back and forth.”
“That’s your opinion/perceptions, so I’m not going to fight against that if you thought it was weird,” Giannotti followed. “I didn’t see it as weird. I saw it as more emotionally charged than it needed to be.”
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