Dave Sims responds to Boomer Esiason’s criticism over time off from Yankees radio booth

When Boomer Esiason’s name came up on the Awful Announcing Podcast, Dave Sims could do little more than shake his head.

Sims, the new radio voice of the New York Yankees, enjoyed a rare few days with family in Seattle in May, until Esiason caught wind of it. On a West Coast road trip that kicked off in Sacramento without Sims behind the mic, the veteran announcer flew straight to Seattle for the series’ second leg, prioritizing time with his son and family.

It was a natural move for Sims, who spent 18 seasons as the Mariners’ play-by-play voice before joining the Yankees. But to former Cincinnati Bengals and New York Jets quarterback, it was anything but natural. He sharply criticized Sims for taking time off just 40 games into his Yankees tenure, questioning the commitment so early in the job.

“I’m sorry, I love Dave Sims, but unless there’s something major going on that I don’t know about, then I’ll gladly retract the criticism – what are you doing?” Esiason said on his WFAN morning show with co-host Gregg Giannotti. “You just took the Yankee job! It’s supposed to be the job of your life.”

“We love Dave Sims,” Esiason later insisted. “But I’m gonna call it out as I see it. He just got started as the Yankee announcer. He’s 40 games into his career as the Yankee announcer, and he decided to take off… it could be in his contract. I just found it very interesting that 40 games in, we’re already taking a weekend off.”

Sims is in his rookie season as the Yankees’ radio voice, stepping into the sizable shoes of legendary play-by-play announcer John Sterling, who retired last year after an ironman streak spanning three decades. Yet, despite the weight of that legacy, Sims has already faced an earful of criticism for taking a series off so early in his tenure.

Now, Sims has finally had his chance to respond.

“People in our business — in this line of business — take time off,” Sims told AA Podcast host Brandon Contes. “I have a son in Seattle. And the three games I blew off were in Sacramento. If you look at the schedules of just about every broadcaster in the major leagues, they take time off. It’s not like I took time off Labor Day in the middle of a pennant race. It was May — almost middle May — and I wanted to see my son. And it was the only time we were going to be going out west, and we had some things we had to take to him, yada, yada, yada. I wasn’t going to make my wife do that.

“The radio station said, ‘Fine, you have X amount of days off. If those are the days you want to take off, hey, you’re good. We got you covered for it. Safe travels.'”

To his credit, Sims didn’t get defensive. He explained his position plainly. He had a rare chance to see his son during a soft stretch of the schedule, and the Yankees (and WFAN) were fine with it. And while Boomer framed it like Sims was skipping work at Yankee Stadium in September. In reality, it was three games in Sacramento in mid-May. Not exactly high-stakes.

The eventual response from Sims came over two months later, so perhaps the moment had passed. But his explanation didn’t really need any explaining. Sims stuck to the facts, and in doing so, he made it clear he’s not trying to be John Sterling.