John Sterling returned to the WFAN Yankees booth on Tuesday night, where he will call play-by-play for every game the Yankees play the remainder of this season – and his partner, Suzyn Waldman, is glad to have him back in the fold.
“We really did have fun – you kind of forget and it took about two seconds,” Suzyn told BT & Sal Wednesday when asked how it felt to have Sterling back and if there was any transitional period back into the groove. “What did they say about Billy (Martin)? He was tanned and rested every time George (Steinbrenner) brought him back? You could tell he had missed it, and I thought it was great.”
Sterling of course retired abruptly earlier this year, leaving Justin Shackil and Emmanuel Berbari (among others) to call more games than anticipated over the summer – but it’s the John & Suzyn show one last time until the Yankees throw their final pitch this fall, meaning their 20-year partnership can go out ‘the right way’ as the Yankees’ season unfolds.
“I’ve seen it this year, but I never really thought about it a lot because when it involves you, you don't really think about it like that,” Suzyn said. “But I remember when, growing up and listening to certain pairs of people that were on for 30 years, it means summer, it means when you first fell in love with Yankees baseball. It’s all of that, very personal, and we’re totally John & Suzyn, wherever we go.”
Nowhere was that more evident, though, than in the final series before John returned.
“When we were in Oakland, I've seen the same people in Oakland for all the years I've gone there, and one family actually said to me, ‘oh, we're so glad you're here to say goodbye, didn’t John want to come and say goodbye?’” Suzyn said. “And it really struck me when that family told me I'd watched their kids grow up, because the same people sat in that stadium for all those years, and it used to be quite the place. But it’s always John & Suzyn, not John Sterling & Suzyn Waldman, and it’s very personal to people, Think back to when Bill White and Phil Rizzuto were on, that was many, many years of those people being your summer.”
BT, a lifelong Yankees fan, totally gets it, and baseball on the radio is just Americana.
“Whatever fans are using now, there’s still little kids who go to bed with the radio, or whatever they use to get that broadcast – it’s the most personal medium, and there's no doubt about that,” Suzyn said. “I'm afraid we're losing that, and it makes me very sad, because it was that voice that you remember going to sleep, and that voice you turned on even if the team was losing 10-0, you always turned it back on just in case.”