Yankees, Suzyn Waldman celebrate John Sterling: ‘This man lived life to the fullest’

Judge wasn’t the only one to take a trip down memory lane on Monday.

Waldman, who loved Sterling “like an older brother,” smiled over their similar tastes in music, books and theater, and she laughed how he would read in the booth between innings. Or how Sterling, a fine-dining aficionado, would share their dinner plans on the air, which would naturally attract dozens of fans to their restaurant of choice.

Aaron Boone, meanwhile, giggled over the way Sterling reacted to getting hit by a foul ball in the booth in 2023. The impact left a cut over his eye. “Ow, ow, ow, it really hit me,” Sterling yelled on the air, but he shook off the pain and kept calling the game.

“The boyish, 6-year-old reaction that he just kind of spews out,” Boone said, “encapsulates him so much.”

The manager also recalled how, when Boone worked at ESPN, Sterling re-recorded the former third baseman’s 2003 pennant-winning homer for the Yankees. The original radio call belonged to Charley Steiner, but Sterling made his own version and asked Waldman to deliver it to Boone.

“Which is so John,” said Boone, who lamented that he no longer knows where the tape is. “‘Could you give this Boonie for me?’”

Boone added that he always appreciated Sterling’s kind and supportive words over the years. So has Waldman, who remains in a job that she wouldn’t have gotten without Sterling’s endorsement.

“If it weren’t for John, I wouldn’t have gotten this job,” Waldman said. “Because when people were saying you can’t have a woman do Yankees radio, George [Steinbrenner] came over and said, ‘Well, what do you think of this, a woman?’ [Sterling] said, ‘I think a woman is wonderful as long as it’s this woman! Go ahead and hire her.’ And he did that also with [former radio partner] Michael Kay. A lot of people wanted that job. A lot of players wanted that job. And John said to George, ‘This is who I want.’ So both of us owe him a lot.”

While Waldman expressed her gratitude for Sterling’s friendship, Boone said that he’s been paying tribute to the National Baseball Hall of Fame nominee for a while. The skipper shared that, for the last few years, he’s been shouting the announcer’s signature “The Yankees win!” call after victories.

“My coaches look at me like I’m nuts,” Boone said, but he always loved the energy Sterling brought.

Boone also adored Sterling’s home run calls, which were often wonky and full of puns. There were some whiffs over the years, but Bernie Williams’ “Bern Baby Bern,” Alex Rodriguez’s “An A-Bomb For A-Rod,” Hideki Matsui’s “A thrilla by Godzilla” and countless others became iconic over the years.

Waldman said Sterling described his home run calls, always a surprise to her, as his “cottage industry,” but he didn’t initially intend to have one for every Yankee.

“Bern Baby Bern was the first, and it came out of joy for what was going on. And [the calls were] just supposed to be for special people and special things,” she said. “But players wanted it.”

A showman with a love for theater, Sterling certainly had his critics over the years. Some, Waldman said, thought he was too “flowery” and not a fit in New York. Others would ridicule some of the mistakes he made as he got older.

But Sterling reminded Waldman of a bygone era in the city’s history, and she insisted “he was perfection” as a younger broadcaster.

She also revealed that the naysayers bothered Sterling, even if he claimed otherwise.

“He was very emotional,” Waldman said. “See, John had no guile. He didn’t understand it when people were mean to him because he could never be mean to anybody, and he didn’t know how to fight back because that wasn’t who he was. And he would say, ‘Well, I don’t care what this guy said.’ He cared very much, but we were somewhere, and he was reading something, and some little kid came up and he said, ‘This is who I’m talking to.’ He knew that he was talking to the fans.

“But yes, he was very emotional. He had very deep feelings about everything, and it hurt him very much. I know that. He said he didn’t care, but he did.”

And yet, Sterling always stayed true to himself, authentic and, as Boone put it, “a little on the quirky side.”

“He was his own,” Boone said. “He was an original. Never before, and never will there probably be anyone like him the way he did it. I appreciate that, and I ate it up.”

“He’s the only person I’ve ever met who did everything he ever wanted to do in his life, ever. There’s nothing that he didn’t do,” Waldman concluded, adding that Sterling was most proud of his four children. “I think this man lived life to the fullest. It should be a celebration, not a mourning.”