Broadcasters by Year 1924 2006

By Wikipedia

John Sterling is a sportscaster and the radio voice of Major League Baseball's New York Yankees. He has announced Yankees games since 1989, calling 162 games a year, plus pre-season and post-season, without missing one. He is one of the most recognized play-by-play voices in all of New York sports.

While he currently announces with broadcast booth partner Suzyn Waldman, his past broadcast partners with the Yankees have included Joe Angel, Michael Kay (who left to do Yankees television broadcasts for the YES Network in 2002) and Charley Steiner of ESPN fame (who left after the 2004 season to call Los Angeles Dodgers games). The partnership of Sterling and sportswriter Kay, in a "friend at the game" approach, lasted 10 seasons.

Since the late 1990s Sterling and Kay have co-emceed the Yankees' annual Old Timers' Day ceremony (following in the tradition of the late Mel Allen and Frank Messer), players' number retirements and the City Hall celebrations after Yankees' World Series victories.

In addition to his radio duties, Sterling hosts the YES Network's Yankeeography series.

Sterling played basketball in high school, where by his own later description he was a shooting guard who liked to shoot. He got his professional broadcasting start in 1971 doing radio for Morgan State University.

Sterling first came to prominence doing radio broadcasts for the New York Nets basketball and New York Islanders ice hockey teams in the Super70s. His siren-like "Islander goal! Islander goal!" catchphrase call would become familiar around an improving team that was on the verge of its four-year Stanley Cup run. Sterling also hosted a sports talk radio show on WMCA in New York for much of the 1970s, where he was one of the early adopters of the abrasive, confrontational style of sports talk host. Sterling also did pre- and post-game shows for the station's Yankees broadcasts.

His stay in New York exhausted, Sterling went to Atlanta and did broadcasts for Atlanta Hawks basketball and Atlanta Braves baseball during the 1980s, before returning to New York at the end of that decade.

Throughout the years, Sterling's deep-voiced, bombastic style has walked the line of being over-the-top, as many of his detractors have criticized him for relying too much on various catch phrases. His famous home run call is "It is high, it is far, it is GONE!". During the 2005 season, Sterling has called an Alex Rodriguez home run "an A-bomb from A-Rod," and a Tino Martinez home run as one for "the Bam-Tino," referencing the "Bambino" Babe Ruth. Sterling also accents the first word in "makes the catch" on routine fly balls, and drags out the first syllable of RBI when pronounced as "riiibby." He also drags out the word "cut" to describe a batter swinging and missing: "Cuuuut on and missed."

Sterling is particularly famous among Yankee fans for his signature radio remark following the final out of a Yankees victory, at which point he exclaims in a Tarzan-like voice, "Yankees win! Theeeeeeeeeeeeeeee Yankees win!" The length of the word "the" is usually held longer and is more pronounced after dramatic victories, as well as after victories resulting in championships. It is played over the PA system at Yankee Stadium after Yankee victories.

The phrase evolved from Sterling's call of Yankee Mel Hall's game-winning three-run homer in the ninth inning on Memorial Day, May 27, 1991, to give the club a win over the arch-rival Boston Red Sox. "The Yankees win! The Yankees win!" shouted Sterling.

He lives in Bergen County, N.J. with his wife, Jennifer, and is the father of four children, daughter Abigail and triplets, Veronica, Bradford and Derek.

Home Run Calls

• "A thrilla by Godzilla!"
• "Jorgie (Jorge Posada) juiced one!"
• "Alexander the Great conquers again. An A-bomb from A-Rod!"
• "Burn, baby, Bern!/Bernie (Williams) goes boom!"
• "The Giambino strikes again!"
• "Back-to-back, and a-belly-to-belly!" (After back-to-back home runs)
• "A home run by Robbie Cano. Don't you know!"
• "The Bam-Tino!"

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