Suzyn Waldman shares favorite John Sterling moment: ‘He was crying’

John Sterling, the iconic radio voice of the New York Yankees, died at 87 years old, and few people knew him better than his longtime broadcast partner, Suzyn Waldman.

WFAN morning hosts Boomer Esiason and Gregg Giannotti broke the sad news Monday morning, with Sterling reportedly passing away from heart surgery complications after suffering a heart attack earlier this year.

Sterling retired from a 64-year broadcasting career in April 2024, with 36 of those years spent as the voice of the Yankees. He briefly returned later that year to call the Yankees’ playoff run to the World Series before fully retiring from the booth. But his longevity was unmatched, with Sterling starting an impressive Iron Man streak of 5,060 consecutive games in 1989.

Sterling became synonymous with the Yankees, particularly their most recent dynasty, as a generation of fans gravitated toward his signature style, home run calls, and gentle personality. And no one knows that personality better than Waldman, who called Yankees games with Sterling for two decades. Monday morning, Waldman joined WFAN midday hosts Evan Roberts and Shaun Morash to reflect on her former broadcast partner’s life.

According to Waldman, the person Yankee fans heard in the radio booth all those years was exactly the person Sterling was off-air.

“He didn’t have a mean bone in his body,” Waldman said. “He never understood why anyone would be mean to him or to anybody else. That’s who he was. He was kind to everybody. He didn’t know how to fight back when people were mean to him…he had the best soul of anyone I’ve ever met in my life, and I don’t think we’re ever going to see that again.”

We’ll certainly never see another broadcaster like Sterling because he was uniquely himself as an announcer, with a style and lilt that cannot be replicated. And for Waldman, her favorite call from Sterling was Jeter’s 3,000th hit, because it was so authentic.

“He did a perfect job, and he had tears coming down his face. I was crying, and he was crying. When you see someone’s whole career, we both met Jeter when he was 18,” Waldman noted. “He (Sterling) never flinched, the call was absolutely perfect, and he had tears running down his face as he was doing it. Those kinds of things get me. It’s not what he said…it’s that he did it perfectly while he was really emotional about it.”

As Waldman explains, the emotion Yankee fans heard from Sterling in that moment was consistent with who he was on and off the mic.

“He never wrote anything down, ever,” Waldman told WFAN. “What came out of him came out of his heart. And if you listen to it, it’s absolutely spectacular.”