SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
This weekend, John Sterling returns to the broadcast booth to call the final stretch of 2024 Yankees games on New York's WFAN. If you like baseball, you probably know who Sterling is.
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JOHN STERLING: An A-bomb from A-Rod.
DETROW: If you like the Yankees, you'll love his act. If you don't, maybe you roll your eyes at it, especially the signature way he ends the broadcast when the Yankees win. My apologies - I didn't say that anywhere near dramatically enough.
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STERLING: Ballgame over. Yankees win. (Yelling) The Yankees win.
DETROW: Sterling has called Yankees games on the radio for 36 years. Earlier this season, at age 85, he abruptly called it a career. But a midseason retirement with no advanced notice didn't seem like the right way to go out. And now the Yankees are bringing Sterling back to call the team's final stretch of games, as well as the playoffs. We gave John Sterling a call.
STERLING: I've told the story before. I'll tell you.
DETROW: And even on a phone line, his broadcast voice booms through. Sterling has spent 64 years behind a mic.
STERLING: I was a little boy at home, maybe 10, and the radio was on. And this is what I heard. The announcer with a great voice was saying, live from Hollywood, it's "The Eddie Bracken Show." Well, I didn't want to be Eddie Bracken. I want to be the guy who said, live from Hollywood.
DETROW: He never seriously considered doing anything else.
STERLING: And I'll tell you why that was important, Scott, for me. I never had to worry about school. And it was a good thing because I was a terrible student - the worst.
DETROW: But he was great behind a microphone.
STERLING: I'm going to do this interview as honest as I can instead of playing, you know, golly-dang-gosh Harry Humble at times. That's the one thing I could do the first day on the year - open the mic and talk. I kid to everyone that I live life by the seat of my pants. Well, I broadcast by the seat of my pants.
DETROW: Sterling held all sorts of broadcasting jobs over the years, but he's most associated with the Yankees, a team with more World Series titles than any other franchise, but a team that had been in a long title drought when Sterling started calling their games. That changed in 1996, when a squad of young, likable players led by Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams and Andy Pettitte led the Yankees back to the World Series.
STERLING: They hired a buddy of mine to be manager, Joe Torre. And they weren't expected to do anything. And they had this miracle year; everything was a miracle.
DETROW: It was the beginning of a dynasty. It seemed like the Yankees were in the World Series just about every year.
STERLING: I called every game Derek Jeter played.
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STERLING: That ball's high. It is far. It is gone. And there it is - hit No. 3,000.
In fact, near the end, when Derek was going to retire, one of the writers who has covered the Yanks for years, Bryan Hoch, he went to Jeter, and he said, do you know that John Sterling has seen every game you've played? And Jeter said, boy, you must be tired of seeing me play.
DETROW: The mid-'90s were also the time that Sterling really started polishing his home run call.
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STERLING: Burn, baby, burn.
DETROW: As the years went on, he made them more and more elaborate. Several players got multiple signature phrases when they knocked (ph) a ball over the fence.
STERLING: Sir Lancelot rides to the rescue. C'est lui. C'est lui.
DETROW: One of the things Sterling is most excited about as he returns to the booth - the chance to debut new calls he's been working on for this year's standout players. Before I let him go, I had to ask, what is it about radio and baseball?
STERLING: In the spring or the summer, you know, fans are going to the pool or the ocean or whatever. They're going somewhere to enjoy the weather. That's one thing about radio. You can take the game with you. You know, as the expression goes, I saw it on the radio.
DETROW: As a radio host who spent many a late night in my childhood listening to John Sterling on the old brown GE alarm clock radio in my bedroom, I have to agree. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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