John Sterling, the radio voice of the New York Yankees for more than three decades, died on Monday. He was 87.

New York radio station WFAN, which carries Yankee games, announced Sterling’s death but did not give a cause or say where he died.

Sterling, who was Jewish, had a heart attack in January, and the Yankees play-by-play announcer on the YES Network, Michael Kay, said on his ESPN radio show on Monday that Sterling recently experienced heart failure and “finally succumbed today.”

“He was an unabashed Yankee fan, and he grew up a Yankee fan in New York,” Kay, Sterling’s broadcast partner for years, said on ESPN. “It meant the world to him to have the stature of being the voice of the Yankees on the radio.”

Sterling retired in 2024 after more than 35 years broadcasting Yankees games. “I am a very blessed human being,” he stated at the time. “I have been able to do what I wanted, broadcasting for 64 years.”

The broadcaster was a “a Yankees radio legend,” WFAN said. It added that he had “one of the most distinguished broadcasting styles ever heard in New York sports.”

Sterling capped off every victory by proclaiming, “Yankees win! Theeeeee Yankees win!”

He described home runs by saying, “It is high. It is far. It is gone,” though he sometimes began such calls prematurely, and the ball never left the park.

Besides those catchphrases, Sterling had no shortage of stories to tell on the air, according to Hart Seely, who runs the blog “It is high, it is far, it is caught” about the Yankee announcer.

“Well, he was definitely a shtick guy,” Seely told JNS. “He would have been a theater kid in school even though he was a huge fan of sports. He could have been a Catskill comic, or anything along those lines.”

For many years, Sterling’s broadcast partner was Suzyn Waldman, who is Jewish.

“He just loved it when Suzyn would introduce him, ‘and now the voice of the legendary voice of the New York Yankees, John Sterling,’ and he would say, ‘I thank you, Susan, I thank you everybody,’ and he would go right from there,” Seely said. “If that isn’t shtick, what is?”

Sterling, who grew up in New York City, was born Josh Sloss on July 4, 1938, and began his broadcasting career in Wellsville, N.Y., in 1960.

His style was classic New York, said Ben Dworkin, director of the Rowan University Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship.

“He was flamboyant. He talked with his hands,” Dworkin told JNS. “What John Sterling had was he was New York, and to the degree that anyone identifies New York with being Jewish, therein lies the connection.”

“It’s New York and to the degree that you can actually connect New York with being Jewish, that is Jewish,” Dworkin said.

In 2021, Randy Miller of NJ Advance Media told Sterling, “I listen to you and Suzyn a lot, and I can feel your energy.”

“That’s a great compliment. In Tampa once—it must have been a Jewish holiday because Suzyn wasn’t there—Tino Martinez, who lives there, did the game with me,” Sterling told Miller. “It was a very close game, 2-0 or 2-1, and at the end of the game I do the ‘Yankees win, theeeee Yankees win!’ Tino then told Michael Kay, ‘I actually saw John do it! I was sitting next to him and I saw him do it!’ That was cute.”

Sterling didn’t talk about his Judaism. In fact, he didn’t talk about religion or politics or anything controversial, according to Seely.

“That was one of the elements of Sterling that he kept very privately. He would never talk about things like religion or politics,” Seely told JNS. “Who he was as a person, you would never know.”

“Some people talk about ‘my wife’ and ‘my kids,’ all that sort of stuff,” he said. “Sterling never, ever did that.”

He did sing a little bit of Jerry Bock’s “L’Chaim” from Fiddler on the Roof when he was a guest on a talk show that ran on a Jewish cable network. And he was a teammate on a softball team with the host, the late Rabbi Mark Golub.

“Now I’ve ruined that song,” he said after singing “to life,” which he mistakenly identified as by Jerry Herman.

The team was called the Four Corners, a reference to the tzitzit that observant Jewish men wear under their clothing.

Tributes to Sterling came in from the baseball world.

“John Sterling breathed life and excitement into Yankees games for 36 years while wearing his passion for baseball and the Yankees on his sleeve,” the New York Yankees stated.

“He informed and entertained generations of fans with a theatrical and unapologetic style that was uniquely his own,” it said.

“John treasured his role as the voice of the New York Yankees,” the club added. “His enthusiasm for the art of broadcasting perfectly complemented our city and our fans.”

Major League Baseball stated that it is “saddened” by Sterling’s death and that “through his unique style and passionate play-by-play calls, Sterling endeared himself to generations of players and fans as the radio voice of the Yankees from 1989 to 2024.”

Sterling also called games for the Atlanta Braves and Atlanta Hawks, the New York Islanders, the New York and New Jersey Nets (now the Brooklyn Nets), the Baltimore Colts and the Baltimore Bullets (now Washington Wizards).

His greatest claim to fame came behind the microphone for Yankee broadcasts—which he did for 5,631 games in all, including 5,060 in a row, according to the Athletic. That included eight World Series.

“John was something else, but above all else, he was kind and he loved putting on a show for people,” wrote Brendan Kuty, of the Athletic.

“I’m grateful to have known him,” he said. “We last spoke on opening day. He had good energy, and he was excited just to talk a little baseball again, and his voice was strong.”

Geoff Arnold, who called games for the Baltimore Orioles, divisional rivals of the Yankees, stated that “in my career, I’ll never meet another John Sterling.”

“John’s style and presence was unmistakable and will never be duplicated,” Arnold stated. “He was the definition of an original. More importantly, he was great to me from the moment I arrived in the big leagues. Rest easy my friend.”

The Mets, too, mourned the loss of Sterling.

“We are deeply saddened to learn of the passing of John Sterling,” the club said. “We send our deepest condolences to his family, friends and the New York Yankees organization.”

Mets radio play-by-play announcer Howie Rose, who said he would retire at the end of the year, stated that he was “terribly sad” to hear of Sterling’s death.

“He was truly one of a kind,” Rose said. “A unique character who was blessed with pipes from above. Spoke to him a little over a month ago and although he didn’t sound great, this news still comes as a shock. Rest in peace, old friend.”

Sterling and his ex-wife, Jennifer, have four children—Abigail and triplets Veronica, Bradford and Derek. They all survive him, Fox Sports said.

   | Read More JNS.org – Jewish News Syndicate