3 hours Ago
It was chilly, and the cloudless blue sky hung bright over Yankee Stadium. A jackhammer hummed from right field. There was no dirt on the infield, and the seats were empty.
It wasn’t Opening Day. Not yet. For Dave Sims, it was almost as good.
He was standing for the first time in the home radio booth since becoming the New York Yankees’ new play-by-play announcer, replacing franchise institution John Sterling after his 36 years in the role. Advertisement Surveying the stadium, Sims drew in the late February air and closed his eyes. He imagined the packed crowd.
He pictured the Yankees on the field preparing to host the Milwaukee Brewers. He envisioned his first afternoon on the job of his dreams. Holy s— , he thought.
I’m at Yankee Stadium. I’m going to be here in four weeks doing this. Adrenaline rushed through him.
“I’m trying to be cool, calm and collected,” Sims recalled recently. “But I’m saying to myself, ‘Can you believe this? This is unbelievable, man.’” As his heart raced, his mind did, too, especially when he imagined color commentator and longtime friend Suzyn Waldman introducing him on air for the first time right before first pitch.
He even could hear her voice: “It’s time to turn it over to the voice of the Yankees, Dave Sims.” “And if I know her,” he said, “she’ll put a little extra into it.” Sims thought about what his first words would be.
“I know that will be a moment where I’m like, ‘Dear Mom and Dad, I wish you were here. Dear Grandma and Grandpop on both sides, I wish you were here.’” Now that Sims is here, he wants to make it clear: He has a deep respect for the 86-year-old Sterling, who called 5,631 Yankees games, including eight World Series appearances.
But Sims knows he deserves this chance. He won’t wither in Sterling’s shadow. “He had his time,” Sims said.
“This is my time.” He calls Sterling a “legend” and pointed out that while Sterling was nominated for the Baseball Hall of Fame’s Ford C. Frick Award for broadcasting excellence in 2024, so was he.
“I’m not coming in to do impersonations or anything like that,” he said. “I must have done something right.” For Sims, it’s not his first time replacing a local legend.
In 2007, he joined the Seattle Mariners broadcast team, working closely with Dave Niehaus, who had been the team’s lead play-by-player since its inaugural season in 1977. In 2010, Niehaus died, and Sims became the Mariners’ primary TV personality. Advertisement What made Sims a beloved figure in Seattle will come East with him.
His booming voice and energy belie his age at 72. Unlike Sterling, Sims enjoys arriving at the stadium hours before a game and working both clubhouses, seeking information he can sprinkle throughout his broadcast. It’s a skill he picked up during his years as a reporter for the Philadelphia Inquirer and the New York Daily News in the 1970s.
He also won’t rip off Sterling’s trademark of creating a new home run call for every player. “Every home run is different,” he said. “That ball that (Aaron) Judge hit in Cleveland (American League Championship Series) last year was a high, towering job.
(Giancarlo) Stanton hits that five iron into the bleachers into right field. Some home runs are wall scrapers. “It won’t be rehearsed.
I’m watching them and calling them in real time.” He won’t try to beat Sterling’s ironman streak of calling 5,060 consecutive games either. Emmanuel Berbari, who filled in at times last year for Sterling and will be WFAN’s Yankees postgame host, will pinch hit when Sims takes time off.
Sims is looking forward to being there when the younger of his two sons gets married this summer. He also will take off a couple of games to host the HBCU Swingman Classic for his good friend Ken Griffey Jr. He doesn’t expect to hang around until 86, like Sterling, though he’s not sure how long he’ll go.
“I just want to savor every minute of it right now,” he said. Of course, Sims’ most famous catchphrase — “Hey now!” — will inevitably be dotted throughout most broadcasts. He also has considered bringing back one of his most popular home run catchphrases.
When Nelson Cruz was crushing homers for Seattle from 2015 to 2018, Sims would yell, “Boomstick, baby!” “I swear to god I was thinking about that,” he said. “I can probably figure out a way to work it out.” Advertisement And he won’t be scared to criticize the Yankees — if warranted.
“You’ll know that I’m rooting for the Yankees,” he said. “I don’t use ‘you,’ ‘we,’ and ‘us.’ But you’ll know.
But mistakes are made. You have to describe them.” In the late 1970s, Mike Krzyzewski wasn’t yet “Coach K,” the all-time great Duke University basketball coach.
At the time, he was coaching at Army. Back then, the coaches of the Eastern College Athletic Conference would sometimes gather for lunch at Mamma Leone’s in Brooklyn, and reporters would show up, too. That’s where Krzyzewski met a young reporter for the Daily News named Dave Sims.
The pair quickly hit it off. “Right away,” Krzyzewski said, “he was such a personable guy. Smart.
He’s a really good guy. He’s completely trustworthy.” Sims and Krzyzewski have maintained a friendship that has spanned nearly 50 years and so many jobs for Sims.
After working in newspapers, he spent time hosting on WFAN, WCBS and ESPN. From 2006 to 2012, he did play-by-play for the NFL’s “Sunday Night Football” and was named National Sports Media Association Sportscaster of the Year three times in Washington. “When you start thinking about the Yankees and it’s like, ‘Is he ready for the big moment?’ I’m sorry, but he’s been on the big stages already,” MLB Network host and former Mariners infielder Harold Reynolds said.
“This isn’t his first rodeo.” Sims also hosted a Sirius radio show with Krzyzewski for 16 years called “Basketball and Beyond.” Krzyzewski put in a word for Sims with Seattle in 2007 when he was up for the Mariners job.
“That was an easy thing,” Krzyzewski said. “He’s a great friend. .
.. I thought it would be amazing for the Mariners to have him, and for Dave to have that opportunity.
He really wanted the job. I did ask him (about it). That’s all the way on the other coast.
It shows his level of commitment to what he wants to do. He really wanted to do that. Now, he’s been rewarded with doing it on the other coast, where he’s from.
” Advertisement Sims first steps in media were at Bethany College, where he became the school’s basketball and football public address announcer. And though he was raised in northern Philadelphia, he considers himself a New Yorker. He’ll have kept a home in Manhattan for 50 years come September, and plans this season to volunteer with Big Brothers & Big Sisters of New York.
“That’s where his heart is,” Krzyzewski said. Sims is also one of three Black lead broadcasters in baseball, along with the Houston Astros’ Robert Ford and NBC Sports Chicago’s John Schriffen, who covers the White Sox. Reynolds said it’s difficult to understate the significance of having a Black voice as the lead for the Yankees.
“If you want to reach across the aisle, so to speak, and to communities that maybe don’t listen to baseball, there’s not a bigger platform for him to do that,” Reynolds said. “There’s not a better ambassador that will carry himself with class, with dignity. He’s going to say the right things.
He’s going to be prepared. All the things that you want someone to be able to be if you’re going to put a pioneer out there to be the guy, and he’s the guy.” Shortly after getting the Yankees’ gig, Sims visited with Bill White, who did play-by-play and color for the Yankees on TV and radio from 1969 to 1988 before becoming president of the National League.
“I told him, ‘If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t be sitting here,’” Sims said. Sims’ familiarity with the city played a role in Audacy, which owns WFAN, choosing him to take Sterling’s place. He had his first talks with executives at Audacy and the Yankees last May, weeks after Sterling announced his initial retirement.
WFAN also considered a handful of other candidates, including Justin Shackil, Berbari, Ryan Ruocco, Brendan Burke and Rickie Ricardo, the station’s Spanish language Yankees play-by-player. Advertisement Chris Oliviero, the president of Audacy New York, said it was also important that the right candidate had personality aside from the ability to call a game. “Do they have the gravitas to sit in that booth?” Oliviero said.
“How is their voice quality, their pipes? That’s a big part of radio play-by-play. How do you sound? “Another intangible is casting. It’s not a solo work environment.
It’s not Vin Scully doing the game by himself. How will this person work with or complement a color commentator, in this case Suzyn? How is the yin and yang working out? Dave, out of everybody we’ve spoken to, graded out on all of the intangibles.” Sims has known Waldman since the late 1980s and said they have a “kinship.
” “She’s funnier than heck (and) she knows a lot of stuff,” he said. The ability to go viral mattered to WFAN, too. “So many of his calls were big on social (media),” Oliviero said.
Sims’ signature moment with the Mariners came in 2022. Seattle ended its 21-season playoff drought with Cal Raleigh’s walk-off home run over the Oakland Athletics that clinched a playoff berth a week before the end of the regular season. “The dream lives!” Sims yelled, pumping his fist.
“They’re going to the playoffs. The drought is over. Cal Raleigh! Wow! Hey now! Hey now! Hey now!” “THE DREAM LIVES! THEY’RE GOING TO THE PLAYOFFS! THE DROUGHT IS OVER!” @TheDaveSimsShow just doesn’t miss.
pic.twitter.com/DmbJRvsbJW — Seattle Mariners (@Mariners) October 1, 2022 “He captured the emotion of the moment like any fan listening would,” Oliviero said.
“In a moment like that, you don’t know if Cal Raleigh is going to hit a walk off,” Reynolds said. “ You don’t know if the Mariners are going to win the game. That’s spontaneity.
That’s the true genius of the call.” Ruocco is a Sims disciple. Sims often visited Ruocco’s broadcasting classes at Fordham University as a guest lecturer.
Advertisement “He is a true embracer and student and master of the art of play-by-play, and he takes such pride in how he does a broadcast,” Ruocco said. “You can feel what Dave is feeling,” Waldman said. “That’s the beauty of a baseball announcer.
That’s why there are so few really brilliant ones. It’s hard to be totally real on the air. There is not a moment of dishonesty in anything that Dave Sims says.
You get what he is feeling through the prism of a great broadcaster.” Another key to hiring Sims? Audacy had to be sure that Sterling was actually retired, Oliviero said. After Sterling called it quits last April, he got the urge to return late in the season — and he did, using the final week of September and the postseason as his farewell tour.
In November, Sterling told “Foul Territory” that he would be open to doing “one game a week on a Sunday.” But Sterling won’t call any games this year, Oliviero said, though he’ll be welcome to join the booth for occasional appearances. “The broadcast team is Suzyn Waldman and Dave Sims in 2025,” Oliviero said.
Not like Sims was going to be looking over his shoulder for Sterling, anyway. “I think doing what I’m doing is working,” Sims said. (Top photo of Dave Sims: Porter Binks / Getty Images).
