The announcers who shared a booth with the great John Sterling, and the players and manager who became the main actors in his theatrical telling of the game, arrived at Yankee Stadium on Monday to celebrate a life well lived, and lived only the way one man could.
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Try it freeSterling, the legendary and longtime radio voice of the Yankees, died Monday morning at the age of 87, giving way to a day of tributes and remembrances around the Yankees for the play-by-play man who became a fabric of the franchise.
“There is no one like him, and there never will be,” Suzyn Waldman said Monday morning. “He was totally unique and was an original.”
“The thing that comes to mind is one of one,” Michael Kay said.
“A giant in the sport, did it his own way,” manager Aaron Boone said.
“He brought that New York theater to the ballpark,” said Aaron Judge, he of the many “Judgian blasts” that Sterling called. “He brought this game to life on the radio.”
The Yankees honored Sterling with a ceremony before their game against the Orioles, which included a video, and Waldman and Kay — his most notable partners in the broadcast booth — laying flowers on home plate ahead of a moment of silence.
Every Yankee had the initials “JS” on the back of their caps, above the MLB logo, honoring the man who called 5,426 regular-season Yankee games and 225 more in the playoffs from 1989-2024.
And the Bleacher Creatures finished their roll call with chants of “John Sterling!”
With his iconic calls — from “Thuuuuuuh Yankees win!” to unique home run calls for each player — Sterling’s voice will remain part of Yankees lore.
So, too, will the character that he was.
“The best way to describe John, to me, is he looked at life like this one big cocktail party,” said Kay, who was Sterling’s radio partner from 1992-2001. “He wanted everybody around him and everybody he was around to be having fun.”
Sterling in the booth was the same as Sterling in everyday life, said Waldman, who described him as an “older brother.”
The two sat next to each other on the Yankees team bus since he arrived in 1989 and then shared the WFAN booth from 2005-2024, giving Waldman an appreciation for what Sterling meant to the generations of fans for whom he called the game.
“He was doing Yankee games for Yankee fans,” Waldman said. “He knew who was out there. They loved the references to Broadway shows and things in New York. This was a broadcast for New Yorkers, and people loved him for that. He described things in a way nobody else did.”
“He was their childhood, he was their summers. I hear it from ballplayers that grew up in New York.”
Sterling was also a family man, so proud of his four children who were his “biggest accomplishment,” Waldman said.
Sterling, who suffered a heart attack in January, was looking forward to walking his oldest daughter, Abigail, down the aisle for her wedding in June.
“They were the love of his life, were his children and the New York Yankees,” Waldman said.
“He was very emotional about a lot of things,” Kay added, “but when it came to his kids, that was his whole world.”
Waldman’s favorite memory in the booth with Sterling came in 2011, when Derek Jeter recorded his 3,000th career hit and Sterling nailed the call with tears streaming down his face.
They had known Jeter since he was 18 years old and Sterling called every single one of his hits on the way to 3,000, as part of the 5,060 consecutive games he called from 1989-2019.
One iconic moment that Sterling did not call was Boone’s walk-off home run against the Red Sox in Game 7 of the 2003 ALCS, which Charley Steiner was on the microphone for in extra innings.
But when Boone was later working for ESPN, he revealed Monday, Waldman handed him a tape from Sterling in which he made his own call of the historic moment.
“Which is so John,” Boone said, smiling at the thought.
Boone has also taken on the tradition of channeling his inner Sterling after every Yankees win.
As soon as the final out is made, the manager lets out to no one in particular, “Ballgame over! Yankees win! Thuuuuuuugh Yankees win!”
“I loved his calls, I love it,” Boone said. “It’s a sad day, but what a life and what an amazing character John was.”
Judge, meanwhile, said he listened again Monday to Sterling’s call of his record-breaking 62nd home run in 2022.
The captain’s parents, especially his mom, Patty, would often listen to Sterling and Waldman — more affectionately known as John and Suzyn — while working in the yard, he said.
“John meant so much to us as Yankee fans,” Judge said, “but also baseball fans, just the way he described the game, the beauty he brought to it.”
