Suzyn Waldman has been the Yankees’ radio color commentator for nearly two decades now, currently on WFAN but starting when the Bombers were on WCBS 880-AM – so it was fitting that on the day she was named to the Class of 2022 for the Radio Hall of Fame, she joined Steve Scott on our sister station 880 AM to explain that sports is actually what led her to broadcasting.
“What led me to broadcasting actually was sports; I was aging out of the musical theatre world and the only other thing I ever knew was sports,” Suzyn explained. “Someone set me up with the then-GM of WFAN, so I made a tape, and I was hired, and I was the first voice on WFAN.”
The first voice, but as she tells it, she didn’t expect to last very long at all.
“Some of the comments after my first update made me realize, ‘oh wow, they don’t like women here,’” she recalled. “I was middle-aged by then and I was thinking this wouldn’t be what I thought it was, and so from that second on, it became something else – it became a ‘why can’t women be in radio and talk about sports?’ Those were not good days on WFAN for females, but I guess I was very, very tough, because I outlasted everybody and I’m still here.”
In the 35 years since that fateful July 1, Suzyn has shattered ceilings and been a trailblazer for women in sports media in several realms – and the Hall of Fame induction is a fitting cap on a career where she has had an impact on numerous young women with aspirations to walk in her shoes…and had many of those young women make an impact on her, too.
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“I remember getting tapes from little girls who heard me and had no idea a woman was not supposed to be on the radio talking about sports,” she beamed. “Some of them are out there – a lot of them are out there! I’d listen and a lot of them talk to fast like I do or make the same mistakes I do, and that part of it is really gratifying. One of the great things is that seven women who are out doing minor-league play-by-play took a picture together and sent it to me – that really made me cry, because they said there’s no way we’d all be together doing this if it weren’t for you.”
And even though we live in a world where content can be consumed in so many formats on so many devices, she’s happy to be working in baseball radio, which she feels is the best way to consume the game if you’re not there live.
“I think baseball is a radio sport, and radio is special; all of the important moments I remember happening in the world were all on radio,” Suzyn said. “My first baseball game, back in Boston in the 1950s, and the convention where JFK was nominated, I heard on radio – and was with my mom in the car listening to the radio when Kennedy was shot. There is something about radio that brings you into a moment that nothing can be equal to; when you hear it, and it enters your mind and you picture what is going on, that can’t be taken away. Baseball to me is a radio sport, because in your mind, you’re sitting and making up the story for yourself.”
One of those times where she got to tell a story that people couldn’t see on TV? The 1989 World Series, which was interrupted by an earthquake in San Francisco prior to Game x – which knocked out just about every broadcast outlet except for Suzyn Waldman and WFAN.
“My phone back to WFAN did not go off the air, so I was on the air as the earthquake was happening in San Francisco, talking to Gary Cohen on the air about what was going on and describing it,” she said. “I stayed there and worked cityside for days, and was on the radio all the time. I think that’s the first time anyone ever took me seriously, but people who were there remember those radio reports and what that meant, because television all went off the air, but for some reason, my phone did not go out.”
Now, 33 years later, that phone will hopefully be heading into the Radio Hall of Fame, alongside Suzyn’s plaque and the story of her incredible career.
Follow Lou DiPietro on Twitter: @LouDiPietroWFAN
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