NEW YORK -- For the past couple of seasons, New York Yankees manager Aaron Boone has celebrated each win with a line familiar to baseball fans everywhere.
"I still do this, and my coaches look at me like I'm nuts," Boone said Monday. "I don't even know if they know what I'm doing. But as soon as the final out is made and I get up to shake players' hands, I go, 'Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeee Yankees win!' And I'm shaking all my coaches' hands. I got goose bumps thinking about that."
John Sterling used that call to punctuate every Yankees victory on the air as the team's radio voice over parts of 36 seasons to complete a broadcasting career that spanned six decades. It became, along with Sterling's personalized home run calls, synonymous with his eccentric style. The beloved radio play-by-play broadcaster died Monday at a New Jersey hospital months after undergoing heart surgery following a heart attack. He was 87.
"A giant in the sport," Boone said before the Yankees took on the Baltimore Orioles. "Did it his own way. Walked to his own beat as much as he can and truly one of a kind. And a sad day, but also one where we get to celebrate an iconic figure."
The Yankees honored Sterling with a moment of silence before Monday's game. Michael Kay and Suzyn Waldman, Sterling's broadcast partner for his final 20 seasons, placed bouquets of flowers at home plate.
Sterling was on the air for 5,420 regular-season and 211 postseason games when he retired in April 2024 before returning for the club's postseason run to the World Series for a final stint.
He was on the microphone for 5,060 consecutive games from September 1989 through July 2019. He called 24 Yankees postseason trips, seven World Series appearances and five World Series titles. He was on the call for monumental milestones, from Derek Jeter's 3,000th hit to Alex Rodriguez's 500th home run to Aaron Judge's record-breaking 62nd homer in 2022.
"I'm just gonna remember he brought the New York theater to the ballpark," Judge said Monday. "I think it's the best way to describe it. He just brought such enthusiasm. He's almost a kid up there on the broadcast."
When Judge went deep in the first inning Monday, Kay paid tribute to Sterling with his home run call: "It is high! It is far! It is gone! Aaron Judge! A Judgian blast! Here comes the Judge!"
Boone authored one of the few memorable moments that Sterling didn't call when he sent the Yankees to the World Series with a walk-off home run against the Boston Red Sox in Game 7 of the 2003 American League Championship Series. Charley Steiner, Sterling's partner at the time, was on the microphone in extra innings. Years later, when Boone was a broadcaster for ESPN, Waldman gave Boone a tape of Sterling calling it.
"Which is so John," Boone said with a smile.
Boone said his fondest memories of Sterling off the field were the "sweet, funny, encouraging" comments he regularly made when the team was traveling -- whether by bus or plane -- and toiling through a rough patch.
He recalled Sterling's "boyish" reaction when he was hit by a foul ball while on the air during a game at Yankee Stadium in 2023.
He reminisced over Sterling's booming voice serving as the summer soundtrack for generations of fans.
"He was his own," Boone said. "He was an original. Never before, never will there probably be anyone like him the way he did it. And I appreciate that. And I ate it up. I loved it."
