When John Sterling stepped aside as the radio voice of the New York Yankees after the season had started, WFAN and the Yankees had to make a decision on how to move forward. Originally the plan was for Sterling to call around 110 games while Justin Shackil and Emmanuel Berbari would split the other 50 or so. Now, it is a different situation as the station and team look for a permanent replacement. That subject came up again this morning on ‘Boomer & Gio‘ with hosts Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti on WFAN.
As Shackil and Berbari have continued to call games with Suzyn Waldman, other names have come up as possibilities such as Spanish language play-by-play voice Rickie Ricardo and Brandan Burke, the voice of the New York Islanders who works for NBC Sports and TNT Sports as well. On this day, it was Ricardo who was being talked about, all because of a social media exchange between WFAN evening host Keith McPherson and SI sports media columnist Jimmy Traina.
Giannotti started the conversation by saying, “I saw this interaction between one of the hosts here and someone in sports media on X yesterday and it was interesting to me because I wasn’t sure whether or not one of the hosts here was digging at [this person] or they were agreeing with them or they were co-signing. I didn’t know how to take this whole thing.”
Gio reads the initial post from Traina which read, “Memo to WFAN: If John Sterling’s replacement will come from the rotation of guys who have filled in since his retirement, the man who should get the job full-time is Rickie Ricardo.”
Next, they read Keith McPherson’s response to Traina which said, “No one needs a memo. We know who Rickie is. We know how good he is He is already full time. Find the next Spanish broadcaster to replace him.”
Giannotti and Esiason disagreed on what McPherson meant by his tweet. Giannotti thought McPherson was co-signing what Traina said and while Esiason believed he was agreeing with Traina, he said, “I kind of feel like he is taking a shot at Jimmy Traina…The way he phrased it. ‘We don’t need a memo here,’ that’s a bitch slap is what that is…that’s exactly what that is.”
“We all know how good he is, but who are you to put out a memo, that’s how I look at it,” is how Esiason summarized it.
Both hosts agreed the context and tone get lost in a text message or a social post and that in the end Traina and McPherson were both endorsing Ricardo for the position.
“Both of them agree on the same subject,” Esiason said. “They have total agreement that Rickie Ricardo should be the English voice of the Yankees.”
Esiason later added, “Like we were saying yesterday, Rickie’s voice cuts through, Rickie’s passion cuts through. But I would just tell everybody hang on, hang on, we are going to have a couple more. You’re going to hear Brendon Burke very soon and Brendan, as we all know, is 100% professional and he too…you hear it, you hear the passion in his voice.”
