“It is high, it is far, it is…” not John Sterling on the call on Yankees Radio these days. No, he’s not “gone,” he’s just taking some time to, as he put it, “to recharge my batteries,” Sterling told The Post. “I’ve been doing road games with teams for 52 years. I love this game, but I hate being on the road.”
“I’m completely healthy,’’ Sterling told The Record and NorthJersey.com by phone last week. Sterling also said, this move was “very much’’ by his choice. Sterling is cutting back on his travel this season and will do mainly home games. He will sit out around 30 games away from Yankee Stadium. Sterling will only travel to Boston, Baltimore and Queens for games.
“Anyway, I felt it was just time,’’ said Sterling to The Record. “Nowadays, it’s a smart thing to do.’’ Sterling broke a 5,060 consecutive game streak during the 2019 season when he missed his first broadcast in 30 years.
Sterling said he’s spoken to other broadcasters that have cut back on their schedules. He spoke with Mets’ broadcasters Howie Rose and Gary Cohen, his former radio partner Michael Kay, and even Hall-of-Fame broadcaster Vin Scully. Scully decided to cut back his schedule a few years before retiring at the age of 88. He worked mostly home games with an occasional trip to San Diego and San Francisco mixed in. Scully retired after the 2016 season.
Love him or not, whatever, when you’re around for five decades, it’s only natural to become a household name. People around baseball imitate Sterling’s home run call. They’ll also mimic his shaking, gyrating “Yankees Win….the Yankees Win” exclamation after the Bronx Bombers are victorious. Sometimes those imitations are not intended to be the sincerest form of flattery. Nonetheless, people know the words, they come to expect them and will likely miss them, when he is not doing a game.
With Sterling out of the booth for those games, opportunities to fill-in will present themselves to a few broadcasters. The opportunity is awesome, but so is the task of ‘sitting in’ for a legendary play-by-play announcer. I know Sterling has had his share of viral moments, including a couple of botched home run calls this season. But he’s still John Sterling. Filling the shoes, even for one game or series, of these types of broadcasters is not easy, no matter who the person filling in might be.
I speak from personal experience. Very early in my career, I was asked by my sports director at WGN Radio, Dave Eanet, if I was interested in doing some fill-in play-by-play. The question was being asked at a local restaurant and I think I answered ‘yes’ before the full inquiry was made. I had done some baseball before, but I was a bit conflicted. Excited for sure, nervous as well. I would be stepping in during the game for Pat Hughes, the longtime Cubs radio announcer.
Listening to Pat illustrated just how much further and harder I had to work to even make my calls listenable. I was extremely hard on myself, but eventually after many reps and a few years, I was feeling a bit more comfortable. The biggest thing to me was, don’t try and be Pat. Sounds easy right? But, when you’re in the booth with him for every game, or listening to him on the radio, some of his cadence and mannerisms sneak into your brain. He is so successful with his style, why can’t it work for me? Because I’m not him.
Even knowing that, it was hard to fight the urge to try and be Hughes the first few times I went on the air. It was not working.
Eventually after showing some visible frustration after one of my fill-in innings. Ron Santo gave me a look like he wanted to chat. He pulled me aside, because he heard it too. He didn’t have to say much. “Just be yourself,” he said with a smile. Things started to go a little better each time because I wasn’t trying to be what I’m not. With that lesson firmly implanted in me, I tell my broadcasting students now, “It’s hard enough being the first YOU, let alone the 2nd ___”, you can fill in the blank there with whatever name you are trying to imitate.
Entering an established booth isn’t easy either. In San Diego I stepped into a booth that had veterans Ted Leitner and Jerry Coleman in it. They had been there a combined fifty-plus years. Listeners got extremely used to listening to the two of them and how they each uniquely called Padres baseball games. They had a chemistry, routines and were a part of fans’ summers for many, many seasons.
The same could be said when I stepped in for the late Ed Farmer with White Sox broadcasts, with his long-time partner Darrin Jackson. They had a following that was definitely used to the way things were done. Luckily for me in the case of the latter, I had been doing pre and postgame shows for the White Sox previous to my play-by-play stint. Fans got to know me a little and that was a big help. In both cases, it was very important to me to show respect for the booth that was intact.
WFAN has its plan to use several different broadcasters on the road trips that Sterling will miss. Some of these folks are experienced Major League broadcasters and others have been around the game, but never in a full-time play-by-play role. The mix is good and should give Yankees fans a variety of styles and voices to fill those vacant games. It will be easy for some of these people to seamlessly move in because as I pointed out, their voices are familiar to Yankees fans.
Justin Shackil who regularly serves as a digital reporter for the team, got the first crack at filling in, last weekend. Yankees Spanish radio voice Rickie Ricardo moved to the English-language booth in Tampa just a few days ago.
WFAN’s Carton and Roberts announced on their show the next two voices to fill-in for Sterling. Sweeny Murti will head to the booth when the Yankees play the Houston Astros on June 30.
“I know it’s not going to be easy. I’m going to try and have some fun with it,” Murti said when asked by Craig Carton.
“I would hope that maybe I do a good enough job that maybe he’ll ask me to do it a couple more times along the way,” Murti said. He also added, “I would really just like to do a good job so that I can pat myself on the back and say I did a good job and not too many flubs get played on the air the next day.”
The next fill-in was announced as Brendan Burke, who calls Islanders games on MSG Plus. He will take the series in Cleveland July 1-3 and Pittsburgh July 5-6. WFAN’s Carton and Roberts congratulated Burke on the air last week.
“You guys need to understand, this is my great white buffalo, if you will. This is where I got the spark for being a broadcaster. When I was a kid, my dad was the Yankee beat writer and so I used to sit between Sterling and (Michael) Kay in the booth when they were together when I was a nine-year-old .” he told WFAN. “To be able to bring this all the way around full-circle,” Burke continued, “is something that’s even more special than just broadcasting the crown jewel of Yankees radio.”
To me, these guys are taking the right approach to filling in. Have fun, after all this job is supposed to be fun. Make sure to take advantage of the opportunity, you never know if it will come again. Finally, be smart, be yourself and be true to the broadcast.
