“It is high, it is far, it is gone!”
John Sterling’s home run calls were one-of-a-kind.
Along with his trademark catchphrases, over his 35 years as the voice of the New York Yankees — from “Bern, Baby, Bern” for beloved centerfielder Bernie Williams to “Robbie Cano, Don’t Cha Know” for the former second baseman, Robinson Cano — even those who did not root for the pinstripes couldn’t help but chuckle.
Sterling died Monday at the age of 87. He had suffered a massive heart attack in January.
“Summer will never be the same without John calling a Yankees game,” David Donovan, president of the New York State Broadcasters Association, told us.
Sterling was inducted into the NYSBA Hall of Fame in 2016. He was also a 12-time Emmy Award winner.
His contributions to sports broadcasting, as a voice in multiple leagues, were vast, as was his presence on radio in general, from his beginnings at WLSV(AM) in Wellsville, N.Y., in 1960.
Some 64 years later, in April 2024, Sterling retired from the Yankees’ broadcast booth as play-by-play voice, but he came back to call the Yankees’ postseason games ending with their World Series appearance that year on flagship WFAN.
Even as recently as last year, Sterling hosted an hour-long Saturday talk show on WABC.
Radio was in his blood, Sterling told Barrett Media in 2024. He cited “The Eddie Bracken Show” — or more specifically, the announcer who introduced Bracken — as a primary influence while growing up as a child in Manhattan.
“I had spent my life listening to every broadcaster I could listen to,” Sterling told Barrett Media. “My favorite was the then-WNEW(AM) – that station was considered the darlings of Madison Avenue – and they had personalities and newscasters, and boy did I want to be on WNEW.”
Sterling would move on to Providence, R.I., and then Baltimore’s WCBM(AM), where in 1964 he took calls on air, which at that point was rather cutting edge.
It was in Baltimore where he began broadcasting Bullets’ NBA games, as well as a handful of Colts’ NFL broadcasts.
Sterling came back to the Big Apple in 1971 to host a sports talk show on WMCA(AM).
He would then gain play-by-play announcing duties for the then-New York Nets of the ABA in 1975–1980, and he followed the team after it relocated to New Jersey in 1977. He would also develop memorable catchphrase calls while as the voice of the New York Islanders’ hockey games from 1975–1978.
In 1981, Sterling moved to Atlanta as part of the launch for the short-lived Enterprise Radio Network, an all-sports national network. Atlanta’s WSB(AM) offered him a job to host a talk show there afterward, before he began calling games for the Hawks and Braves.
Sterling never missed a Hawks or Braves game during his time in Atlanta, according to The Athletic’s 2020 profile.
Then-WABC(AM) General Manager Fred Weinhaus, who knew of Sterling from his ’70s WMCA show, took notice of Sterling’s calls thanks to TBS’ national presence, The Athletic recounted, and Weinhaus moved to hire him for WABC’s Yankees’ broadcast booth in late 1988.
“It’s your medium. You do what you want,” Sterling once said according to MLB.com. “You have to paint the picture, which I love doing.”
His quirky, creative calls became a hallmark of the “Mike and the Mad Dog” WFAN show the day after Yankee games — as Mike Francesa and Chris Russo reminisced together on “Mad Dog Unleashed” on SiriusXM Monday — and helped solidify Sterling’s position as an announcer.
Sterling would go on to call approximately 5,420 Yankees’ regular season games and around 210 more in the postseason. He was heard on WABC as the team’s flagship until 2002, when then-Infinity Broadcasting’s WCBS(AM) gained Yankees’ broadcast rights. WFAN would become the Yankees’ flagship in 2014.
Famously, from September 1989 until July 2019, Sterling called 5,060 consecutive games.
We estimated that, during the ironman streak, the Yankees came out on top about 2,860 times, including five times victorious in the World Series.
Naturally, that meant many evenings the New York airwaves resonated with the sound of Sterling concluding a game with his most trademark catchphrase of all.
[Do you receive the Radio World SmartBrief newsletter each weekday morning? We invite you to sign up here.]
