By JOHN ANDERSON (In the photo posted by Aaron Judge, Judge and Sterling sharing a moment at Yankee Stadium)
When John Sterling, the voice of the New York Yankees, retired in 2024 after Game 5 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium, his bio mentioned he was the voice for biggest teams and biggest names in sports — and also mentioned WLSV-AM in Wellsville.
I thought it was a typo, maybe they meant WFAN? Mike Vaccaro of the New York Post is one of the most decorated sports columnists in the nation. He mentioned in his Vac’s Whacks that Sterling did indeed get his start in Wellsville.
Phil Neikro (pitcher) and Jerry Coleman (hitter) both mentioned Wellsville in their Hall of Fame speeches because they played minor league baseball here during the old Class A PONY League days at Tullar Field.
However, Sterling came here for work unrelated to the former minor league team. Sterling was calling Wellsville High School football, basketball and baseball on the radio for WLSV-AM during the 1960’s. Today, Bob Mangels is keeping that tradition going with his majestic baseball voice.
Sterling passed away on May 4 at the age of 87 in Englewood, New Jersey.
Vaccaro not only revisited Sterling’s Wellsville start, but he recounted a conversation and dedicated a good portion of his column to Sterling’s local connections. Vaccaro is a proud St. Bonaventure graduate, and as a former Olean Times Herald sports writer, he knows this area well.
Vaccaro wrote about their conversation (full column HERE):
This was at Newark Airport, Terminal C, maybe 10 years ago. John Sterling and I were on the same flight bound for Tampa, the start of another spring training for both of us, and as we whiled away the time toward boarding the plane we found ourselves, quite remarkably, transported to a place called Wellsville, N.Y.
“I’ve called it a one-stoplight town,” Sterling told me with a laugh, “although I have to tell you, I’m not sure I remember there ever being even one in those days.”
We’d both gotten our careers started there, Sterling at WLSV-AM radio at the dawn of the ’60s, me at the Times-Herald in neighboring Olean 28 years later. He was talking about the impossibly big dreams young men with ambition place on themselves.
“Here I was, reporting on a Wellsville High-Allegany High football game,” Sterling said, “and to me it was the Army-Navy game, in front of 100,000 people, with a hundred million listening. I tried to treat every game that way.”
Sterling got his big break in 1988.
“This is one of the lucky things that happen in our nutty business,” Sterling said in an MLB.com interview. “I got a phone call in September of ’88 … and he said, ‘Would you like to do the Yankees?’ I never auditioned for the Yankees. What a nutty business. I didn’t apply for it and I didn’t audition, and I got it right away.”
After he settled in, he was known for his “Sterling Shake” victory call as he would bellow, “Yankees win … theeeeee Yankees win!” MLB.com mentioned his “humorous phrases tacked onto play-by-play action (“Back to back, and belly to belly!”) and personalized home run calls (“Bern, baby, Bern!”), Sterling called 5,060 consecutive games from September 1989 to July 2019 – every at-bat of Derek Jeter’s career, every inning of Mariano Rivera’s, and many more.”
And Vaccaro summed it up perfectly in his column:
Some people make days better simply by being a part of them. John Sterling was that way. For parts of five decades, for 5,060 straight games once, and for an endless string of Nets, Islanders, Hawks, Braves and Wellsville High School games before that, you’d click on a dial and your day was immediately that much better. What a gift. What a life.
