John Sterling (sportscaster)
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John Sterling (born July 4, 1948) is an American sports broadcaster and the radio voice of the New York Yankees (baseball). He has announced Yankees games since 1989, calling 162 games a year, plus pre-season and post-season, without missing a one. He is one of the most recognized, and imitated 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 Michael Kay (who left to join the YES Network in 2002) and Charley Steiner of ESPN fame (who left after the 2004 season to become the radio voice of the Los Angeles Dodgers).
Sterling got his start in 1971 doing radio broadcasts for Morgan State University. He first came to prominence doing radio broadcasts for the New York Nets basketball and New York Islanders hockey teams in the 1970s. 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.
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. 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 for 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 "ribby."
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.
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.
External links
New York Yankees biography (http://newyork.yankees.mlb.com/NASApp/mlb/team/broadcasters.jsp?c_id=nyy#john_sterling)