NorthEast Radio Watch 11/18/2024: Sims Gets Yankees Callup

In this week’s issue… Yankees hire Dave Sims – Wallace, Maxwell move in NYC – Gray cuts news in Maine – Remembering CT’s Pinto

By SCOTT FYBUSH

Jump to: ME – NH – VT – MA – RI – CT – NY – NJ – PA – Canada

*The New York Yankees radio booth has always been a little different from anything else in baseball.

Where else, after all, could a 71-year-old announcer be welcomed as the new kid on the block?

That’s what’s coming in 2025, when the Yankees bring Dave Sims on board as the replacement for the 86-year-old John Sterling, who retired abruptly early in the 2024 season only to return to the mic for the postseason.

While Sims has spent the last 17 seasons with the Seattle Mariners, he’s making a return home. The Philadelphia native was a sportswriter for the Daily News in the 1980s, hosted “Sports Night” on WNBC (660) in the middle of the decade, then co-hosted middays on 660 after it became WFAN, working there from 1989 until 1993 while also calling Knicks basketball on radio. Later in the 90s, he did weekend sports on WCBS-TV (Channel 2) before heading off to do more national TV play-by-play work.

“I can’t wait for Opening Day and to work with my good friend Suzyn!,” Sims said on social media, anticipating his forthcoming WFAN partnership with Suzyn Waldman, Sterling’s longtime on-air partner, herself 78 years old.

As for the next generation of would-be Yankees announcers, they’ll have to wait a little longer: the other voices who took turns in the booth after Sterling’s departure, Justin Shackil, 37, and Emmanuel Berbari, 25, will presumably still be fill-ins, at least until some other team comes calling. The third major voice of the last season, Rickie Ricardo, remains the Spanish-language radio voice for the Yankees, as much as some of us would have liked to have seen him occupy the English-language booth on a full-time basis.