He suffered a heart attack in January,<\/a> he told Yankees Spanish-language broadcaster Rickie Ricardo.<\/p>\nAn eclectic and eccentric character well-versed in Frank Sinatra, classic films, Broadway show tunes, and his favorite soap operas, Sterling was just as apt to break into a song from the second act of \u201cOklahoma\u201d as he was to describe the intricacies of a well-executed 3-6-3 double play.<\/p>\n
His over-the-top imprimatur immediately following the final out of Yankee victories \u2014 \u201cBallgame over. Yankees win. Thuuuuugh Yankees win\u201d \u2014 was a fan favorite as were his hokey salutations celebrating Yankee home runs. It was a shtick \u2014and Sterling gladly admitted he was doing shtick \u2014that began with the simple and benign \u201cBurn Baby Burn\u201d (Bernie Williams). Over the years that led to \u201cA Thrilla from Godzilla\u201d (Hideki Matsui), \u201cIt\u2019s an A-bomb from A-Rod\u201d (Alex Rodriguez) and \u201cRobby Cano, don\u2019t you know,\u201d all the way to \u201cGiancarlo, non si pu\u00f2 stoparlo\u201d in tribute to slugger Giancarlo Stanton\u2019s Italian heritage.<\/p>\n
While Yankees fans loved that Sterling saw everything through pinstriped glasses, he did have his critics who decried his many affectations and the accuracy of some of his calls. His signature \u201cIt is high, it is far, it is gone,\u201d stuck in a lot of listeners\u2019 craws since Sterling would use it no matter the trajectory or distance of a home run<\/p>\n
And Sterling, who wore a jacket and tie to every game \u2014 and white pants after Memorial Day but never beyond Labor Day \u2014 couldn\u2019t have cared less.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf someone tells you you stink, what do they know. It\u2019s just their opinion,\u201d he once said. \u201cThere will always be people who don\u2019t like what you do. It\u2019s like any art form. That\u2019s just the way it is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Said his longtime broadcast partner Suzyn Waldman: \u201cHe is more comfortable in his own skin than anyone I have ever met in my whole life.\u201d<\/p>\n
After missing a pair of games during the 1989 season \u2014 his first with the Yankees \u2014 following the death of his sister Jane, Sterling did not miss a game for 30 years until a health issue forced him to skip a handful of contests in July 2019. Sterling also missed a handful of games during the truncated 2020 season with a blood infection that required a brief hospital stay.<\/p>\n
John Sloss was born on July 4, 1938 in New York City to Carl, an advertising executive, and Gladys Sloss and was raised on the Upper East Side. He would eventually adopt the surname Sterling because he thought it sounded better than Sloss.<\/p>\n
In an interview he said he knew he wanted to be a broadcaster since childhood.<\/p>\n
John Sterling behind the mic in 2019. Charles Wenzelberg\/New York Post<\/p>\n
\u201cI must have been a little boy,\u201d he said. \u201cI heard an announcer say \u2018Live from Hollywood, it\u2019s \u201cThe Eddie Bracken Show\u201d with Eddie\u2019s special guest \u2026\u2019 I didn\u2019t want to be Eddie Bracken. I wanted to be the announcer. I don\u2019t know why. It just appealed to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sterling, who never spoke much publicly about his childhood, said he tried to spend as little time as possible in his parents\u2019 apartment \u2014 they would later divorce \u2014 and often made pilgrimages to Yankee Stadium, the Polo Grounds, Ebbets Field and Madison Square Garden with his friends all the while keeping track of the latest happenings on the New York stage and in Hollywood.<\/p>\n
\u201cI knew every actor, every singer, every impressionist, every comedian,\u201d Sterling said. \u201cI knew what singers worked for what record companies. \u2026 I knew what actors worked for what studio. They were like ballclubs to me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blessed with a booming voice at a young age, Sterling said he left college at 19 to take that entry-level job in Wellsvillle.<\/p>\n
John Sterling greets Derek Jeter during a ceremony at Yankee Stadium, where the Yankees retired the captain\u2019s number. Charles Wenzelberg\/New York Post<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you work at one of those little stations you did everything,\u201d he said. \u201cI pulled a six-hour shift, afternoons, disc jockey work, you read the news. \u2026 Back then you had to work with platters, and tapes and cartridges.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was good training because you find out what you\u2019re good at. You have to find your own style. \u2026 That\u2019s how I did it anyway. I had it in my mind what I wanted to do. I could always ad lib. I could go on the air my first day and do a show like I was doing it on WNEW because that\u2019s what I listened to growing up.\u201d<\/p>\n
From Wellsville there were stops in Providence where he was a rock n\u2019 roll disc jockey and Baltimore, where he hosted a sports talk show and also broadcast the games of the Baltimore Bullets of the NBA for one season. While working there, Sterling was asked to come to New York and be one of several people filling in for a vacationing Bob Grant on his popular WMCA talk show.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was just after Attica,\u201d Sterling said of the 1971 prison uprising in upstate New York, \u201cand it was a general talk show. We did Attica for three hours. That was my first show on WMCA.<\/p>\n
John Sterling (l.) and longtime radio partner Suzyn Waldman (r.) pose during Sterling\u2019s retirement ceremony at Yankee Stadium on April 20, 2024. Robert Sabo for NY Post<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen Bob returned he asked his girlfriend how the shows went. She said, \u2018Oh, it was all right. But there was one guy who could really do it He was actually a pro.\u2019 Bob told me that story years later.\u201d<\/p>\n
While maintaining his duties in Baltimore, Sterling occasionally filled in doing sports on WMCA. In 1972 he was hired by the station to host a nightly sports talk show and later did Islanders\u2019 play-by-play for three seasons after WMCA acquired the rights. He also broadcast Nets games for the station from 1975-81 as the team transitioned from the ABA to the NBA.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt was a very exciting time in my life,\u201d Sterling said. \u201cI had made New York but you don\u2019t know if you\u2019re going to make it or not. \u2026 But it all worked out.\u201d<\/p>\n
He would eventually leave New York and spend nine years in Atlanta broadcasting the Braves and the Hawks before returning to his hometown to join the Yankees\u2019 booth in 1989. Beginning in 2005, when he was joined by Waldman, Sterling did every inning of play-by-play except for those few games he missed.<\/p>\n
Despite all those Yankees World Series victories, perfect games and no-hitters, Sterling had little trouble singling out the greatest game he was ever behind the microphone for. And it had nothing to do with his beloved Bronx Bombers.<\/p>\n
It was Game 7 of the 1988 Eastern Conference semifinals between the Hawks and the Boston Celtics. The Celtics won, 118-116, after a duel between Larry Bird, who scored 34 points, and Dominique Wilkins, who scored 47.<\/p>\n
\u201cDominique was magnifique,\u201d as Sterling was wont to say.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe best game I\u2019ve ever broadcast in my life,\u201d Sterling, who called the game from courtside at the old Boston Garden, told Newsday. \u201cIt was like I was in the game. It was fabulous. Utterly, utterly fabulous.\u201d<\/p>\n
Sterling is survived by his four children, Abigail and triplets Veronica, Bradford and Derek.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"John Sterling, whose mellifluous voice became the soundtrack of spring, summer and quite a few Octobers to generations…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":219221,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[86355,20,9,11,10,321,322,319,2085,6475,33281],"class_list":["post-219220","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york","tag-john-sterling","tag-mlb","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-headlines","tag-new-york-news","tag-new-york-yankees","tag-obituaries","tag-sports","tag-sports-entertainment","tag-sports-media","tag-wfan"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219220","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=219220"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/219220\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/219221"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=219220"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=219220"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=219220"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}