It’s still hard to believe that John Sterling is no longer with us. The longtime voice of the Yankees who died at age 87 this past Monday was, in my book, among the greatest broadcasters of all time. He brought unforgettable moments to life with his signature theatrical flair, delighting and entertaining generations of Yankees fans, all while never taking himself or his job too seriously.
Sterling was an institution, having called 5,651 total games for the Yankees, the vast majority consecutively. He was always there; as indelibly stitched into the Yankee tapestry as the walls of the Stadium itself. He may be gone, but he’ll never fully go away.
I’m a broadcaster too; albeit a far less prolific one. As of today, I have served as a play-by-play commentator for 109 games—so I’ve still some way to go before I reach 5,651. But over that comparatively short amount of time, I’ve learned a lot from Sterling about broadcasting; not just as a profession, but as an art.
Like any profession or art, you learn by copying. I can probably name a hundred or more commentators I’ve listened to and made a mental note of something they did that I wanted to borrow for myself. Quite frankly though, I don’t think John Sterling is on that list. That’s because when it came down to it, his style was inimitable.
Sterling defied comparison, particularly with his contemporaries. There’s a reason John Sterling vs. Vin Scully always felt like apples and oranges. Both were, above all, storytellers, and great ones at that. But while Scully was baseball’s poet laureate, trusted to call the World Series for the whole nation, Sterling’s appeal was more personal. Scully personified the Dodgers, but transcended them too. Sterling was somewhat more akin to a local talk show host; fitting given that was how he started in the radio business. He just happened to also call the World Series eight times.
Of course, Sterling had his detractors, largely because his magic didn’t carry outside of Yankee fandom. Fans of rival teams couldn’t get into his schtick the way we could. I used to defend his honor against them, thinking it was such a shame they couldn’t understand his oeuvre, but ultimately it was only fitting. Sterling wasn’t hoping to appeal to fans of the Red Sox, or Royals, or Rockies. He was there for us, and it didn’t particularly matter what the rest of baseball felt about it. When Sterling screwed up by prematurely revving up his signature home run call for a warning-track flyout, fans of other teams had a field day with the soundbite; but we’d just shrug our shoulders and say, “That’s baseball, Suzyn.”
I’m far from the first person to notice this contrast, but it remains striking that such a whimsical guy (a most happy fella, if you will) who was often seen as a caricature wound up being the enduring voice of the Yankees—a team so exceedingly bought into its own hype as to exhaust everyone around them. Just as “it is high, it is far, it is caught” became a meme to denigrate Sterling’s occasional buffoonery, the “27 rings guy” became a meme to mock the median Yankee fans’ sense of unearned superiority, relentlessly encouraged by the franchise’s own rhetoric about itself. All this, of course, as they have failed to back up the talk with championships in recent seasons.
It’s hard to see the Yankees as exceptional these days. Sure, they still haven’t had a losing season since the early 1990s, but that was never the rubric for success their fans use. Predicating your mythology on winning championships is only so effective when the championships have dried up. By the Yankees’ own logic, the two-time defending champion Dodgers have usurped them as the Evil Empire, signing most of the league’s most coveted free agents and winning those trophies—including one against the Yankees, which felt then and continues to feel now like a coronation for Los Angeles as the new kings of baseball.
Now, let me clear. I don’t actually care about that. I like the Yankees, and I like that they win a lot, but I don’t care if they’re exceptional or not. I want them to win the World Series, but I don’t generally expect them to. And given how much harder winning a title is in the 2020s, I don’t necessarily think the Aaron Judge Era will be ‘wasted’ if he never wins one here. The Yankees were never guaranteed to be the greatest forever. And I’m cool with that. But their postseason defeats become all the more enervating when the team relentlessly postures about being first among equals.
And it makes it all the more miraculous that a man like Sterling was tapped to be their voice. Sterling was in the broadcaster’s chair for every last game throughout one of the Yankees’ greatest dynastic periods; and as a lifelong fan has an intimate connection with many more. But that decorated history—and his intimate connection to it—never negatively colored his work. He didn’t buy into his own hype, at least not fully. (The home run calls definitely got long in the tooth after a while, but it was still always interesting to see what he would come up with for a new face in the Bronx, since your first guess was usually wrong.)
Ultimately, the contrast was this: the Yankees saw their games as conquest—Sterling saw them as theatre. I prefer Sterling’s perspective.
Circling back to my perspective as a broadcaster, I mentioned that while I don’t attempt to directly emulate Sterling with my calls or my methodology—as a child of the internet, I could never manage his entirely analog style of prep—I certainly believe him to be a great example for the rest of us. John Sterling never pretended to be anyone other than himself. He was genuinely, authentically, himself. And since he embraced that so fully, I could never get too upset when he made a gaffe on the air.
Upon reflecting on my short time broadcasting in the wake of Sterling’s death, I recognized that originality to be his greatest quality, and one I should embrace in my own work. I shouldn’t get too caught up in the details and grade myself so harshly, as I’m wont to do. The most important question is: first and foremost, did I call this game the way I like to call games? Did I narrate with enthusiasm, passion, and a good sense of humor? Do I think my audience enjoyed themselves listening to me? If yes—and the answer is usually yes—then I succeeded.
John Sterling always passed that test. He was an inspiration to every aspiring broadcaster seeking to find their voice, and while I’ll miss him, I’ll always be thankful for his example. Rest easy, John.
