John Sterling, the radio voice of the New York Yankees for 36 seasons and one of the most recognizable figures in the history of sports radio, is dead at 87. Audacy New York City’s WFAN, the Yankees’ longtime flagship station, confirmed the news on social media.
WFAN’s statement read, “We are devastated to hear about the passing of John Sterling, a WFAN and Yankees radio icon whose voice was synonymous with an entire generation of Yankee fandom.”
A native Manhattanite, Sterling started in radio at a small station in Wellsville, NY, then built his career in Baltimore and Atlanta before returning home. Before his Yankees run, he served as play-by-play voice for the Washington Bullets, New Jersey Nets, New York Islanders, Atlanta Hawks, and Atlanta Braves.
He joined the Yankees booth in 1989 and over the next three-and-a-half decades became inseparable from the team’s identity. He called 5,060 consecutive games from 1989 to 2019 before missing four games in July of that year. By the time he stepped away, he had called 5,420 regular-season games and 211 postseason games, including five World Series championships.
He initially retired in April 2024 due to health concerns, then returned to call the final homestand of the regular season and the full postseason, including the 2024 World Series.
He hosted talk shows on WMCA and later on WFAN. His announcing partners in the Yankees booth included Michael Kay, Charley Steiner, and Suzyn Waldman, with whom he shared the booth from 2005 through his final broadcast. Sterling and Waldman were inducted together into the New York State Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2016.
His last regular project was The John Sterling Show, a weekly sports-talk program on WABC in New York that launched in April 2025.
