John Sterling, the enthusiastic and eccentric broadcaster for the New York Yankees who spent more than three decades calling more than 5,800 games on radio for the Bronx Bombers, died Monday. He was 87 years old.
A finalist for the National Baseball Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award in 2024 and 2025, Sterling suffered a heart attack in January and was recovering at his home in Edgewater, New Jersey. His death was announced by New York radio station WFAN.
Sterling began playing play-by-play with the Yankees in 1989 and handled 5,060 consecutive radio broadcasts until he missed his first game in July 2019. He also pitched in more than 200 postseason contests — announcing the final game of five World Series — until his retirement in 2024, his most popular line being “The Yankees win.”
“I’m a very blessed human being,” Sterling said when he announced that his days as a play-by-play man were over. “I was able to do what I wanted, broadcasting for 64 years. When I was a little kid growing up in New York as a Yankees fan, I was able to broadcast the Yankees for 36 years.”
Born John Sloss on July 4, 1938, Sterling grew up on the Upper East Side of Manhattan. He attended Moravian College, Boston University, and Columbia University before landing his first job at a radio station near Buffalo, New York, in 1961.
He worked at stations in Providence, Rhode Island and Baltimore, where he called the NFL’s Colts and NBA’s Bullets games, then returned to New York in 1971 to join radio station WMCA.
He also worked drafts for the NBA’s New Jersey Nets from 1975 to 1980 and the NHL’s New York Islanders from 1975 to 1978 before moving to Atlanta to handle Atlanta Braves and NBA’s Hawks baseball games for TBS and WSB Radio.
He took over as Yankees pregame host and play-by-play announcer for WABC at age 50 in 1989 and spent 10 seasons in the booth alongside Michael Kay and 19 more with Suzanne Waldman, two of his color analysts. Along the way, he joined a group of notable Yankees broadcasters including Red Barber, Phil Rizzuto, Bill White, and Frank Messer.
His superlative house calls included “Bernie goes boom! Bern, baby, Bern!” For Bernie Williams, “It’s a Jeter shake!” For Derek Jeter, “It’s an atomic bomb from A-Rod!” For Alex Rodriguez, “Giambino!” by Jason Giambi and “Godzilla Thriller!” By Hideki Matsui.
The Ironman’s baritone streak ended on July 4, 2019, when illness forced him to miss the first of three games. He even worked the 2000 American League Championship Series on the day his wife, Jennifer, gave birth to triplets Veronica, Bradford, and Derek. (Survivors include another daughter, Abigail.)
After being replaced by Seattle Mariners broadcaster Dave Sims, the 12-time Emmy Award winner hosted a weekly radio show on WABC last year.
“He showed up to perform nearly every day since 1989, and was a pillar of Yankees fans who relied on the comfort and familiarity of his voice to be the soundtrack of the spring, summer and fall,” the Yankees said in his retirement. He added: “Given the tremendous care he showed for the team and his live performance, it is not an exaggeration to believe that our fans live and die with every stadium, because John Sterling did the same.”
