Guest Post by Jack Nuckols

In my family, John Sterling is not just a broadcaster, but a verb. Whenever a Nuckols has been led to believe something wonderful and glorious, only to be told it isn’t true at the very last second, they have been ‘Sterlinged’. 

A teacher promises that you’re going to watch a movie in class only to change her mind at the last minute and lecture? You’ve been Sterlinged. A person volunteers to cover your shift only to text you that morning because they can’t make it? Sterlinged. An Alex Rodriguez flyball gets cranked into deep left center only to…well you get the point. 

The Yankees iconic radio announcer John Sterling is set to announce his retirement this Friday, and I am shattered by the news. Sterling has called games for my Yankees since 1989, well before I was born. 

My dad’s friend once said of Sterling, “His voice, it’s like butter”—and so it is. Even in 2024, he sounds like he’s talking into an old microphone straight from the Polo Grounds. Radio announcing for baseball is much different than it is for other sports, as there is an immense amount of down time, and because of that requires a perfect balance of play by play, analysis, small talk and silence. John and Suzyn had that down to a tee. The conversation was always light, fun, engaging, and peaceful. In all, Sterling recorded a legendary 5,631 baseball games at an elite level. 

It was the little things that always got me. Sterling, while never grouchy about it, is a baseball traditionalist, and would occasionally get very annoyed at some of the newer trends in baseball. One such was the shift. “Now, Suzyn, what I don’t understand is why Gallo wouldn’t just flick his bat out and ground it to left side. It’d be a gua-runt-eed base hit. Everytime.” I’m pretty sure she gave up trying to reason with him about this years ago. 

The Tampa Bay Rays dump of a stadium, lovingly named the Trop, is an arch nemesis of Sterling. During a three game set in Tampa, you are almost guaranteed to hear four or five Sterling complaints about the noise; “I just don’t get why they make it so loud”. 

Too many times, announcers call the game off a script. The reactions don’t feel authentic, the conversation doesn’t flow. Instead, they analyze in a logical way with 50 different statistics. John and Suzyn need none of that. They knew when to talk, when to let the other one talk, when to call the game, when to throw in some color, and when to be quiet and let the sounds of baseball do their magic. Baseball is a game of oddities and coincidences and when another announcer would stumble over explanations and reasonings, John would just turn and say, “That’s baseball, Suzyn”. 

You’re damn right it is John.

My favorite John Sterling story is during the Yankees 2017 playoff run. For a crucial game 4 against Houston, my dad had to drive my brother to diving practice at La Salle University. So, instead of watching this incredibly stressful event from the safety of my own home, I sat shotgun on the way to La Salle, exposed to society. And, instead of watching it on FOX like everyone else, me and my dad were, as ever, turning back to John and Suzyn. 

I remember the entire game. Slowly, the Astros beat up on the Yankees starter and finally broke through in the sixth for three runs. The next inning, they scratched across another to take a 4-0 lead into the bottom of the 7th. 

By this point, my father and I had dropped off the divers and found a sports bar. Solemnly, we trudged in with our matching Aaron Judge T-shirts and sat down next to the weight of all 170+ games we had struggled through to get there. I remember feeling oddly at peace, with a gloomy sense of acceptance. The team had outperformed expectations and promised to be even better next year.

In the bottom of the 7th, Judge hit a home run and we cheered politely. Then we gathered up our stuff and hopped back in the car. The Yankees scored a second run in the 7th inning off a sacrifice fly. Suddenly, as we turned on the radio for the last two innings, my heart rate was rising. 

Me and my dad drove through North Philly as John Sterling and Suzyn Waldman conducted us through the most thrilling inning of baseball we have ever experienced. Third baseman Todd Frazier led off with a single. Chase Headly followed with a line drive into the gap in left field. A Brett Gardner groundout plated the first run, putting Frazier on third. Up stepped Aaron Judge. 

Everything the Yankees had been that year started with Aaron Judge. 

Sterling described the pitch, we heard the crack of the bat…

“The 2-2…SWUNG ON AND DRIVEN TO DEEP LEFT! IT IS HIGH! IT IS FAR! It is…”

Judge had done it. The guy who’d dragged us out of the darkness, pulled me back to Yankees baseball, restored the Bronx Bombers to all their glory, had homered in the biggest at bat of his life to give the Yankees the lead in the ALCS. It’s everything I could have possibly imagined. My dad and I exploded out of the car into the parking lot…

“Wait! Nope…it’s off the wall”

—

Sterlinged.

I still think about that moment. The one second of my life where Aaron Judge had gone deep to beat the mighty Houston Astros. The second where they started the next great Yankee dynasty, my great Yankees dynasty. 

Would a ‘better’ play by play guy have called that a homerun? Almost certainly not. Would a ‘better’ play by play announcer have given me that moment? No shot. Only John Sterling.

Sterling is the harborer of spring, a siren warding off all things cold and gloomy to give way for life and warmth. Sterling is the sound that echoes across my backyard on a cool June night as my dad grills burgers with one hand and throws me a football with the other. Sterling is who sat in between my parents on long drives across rolling planes in the dead of summer. Sterling is the voice of my hero’s greatest triumphs and most heartbreaking defeats, the backing track to my most treasured relationships. Sterling is the phone stuffed in my pillow after I’ve been sent to bed, turned on just loud enough to hear through the fabric. Sterling is the voice announcing over a million speakers in a million empty parking lots.

Night after night, John and Suzyn showed up to the stadium and invited the entire tri state, the entire world, to watch a ballgame with them. They kept me company for hundreds of nights, every year of my life. John Sterling is, above all else, my friend. I am heartbroken to see him go.