Yanks for the memories!
Tomorrow I’ll stop humming “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” but for now it’s John Sterling, who’s been the voice of the Yankees since we were only 13 states. He retired last season.
Sterling: “I was then broadcasting baseball in Atlanta. A phone call said the Yankee GM didn’t like their broadcast team, knew my work and so I should come over. I had no agent. I called a lawyer friend. I said, ‘Call this guy and make a deal.’ No audition, no nothing. He rang me back and said, ‘We have a deal.’ ”
Why’s everyone, the whole world, crazed for baseball?
“Because they make a lot of money, that’s why. When I was 21 I got on the air way upstate. I made 60 bucks a week — and the last 50 years it’s been the Yankees. I have broadcast every one of Derek Jeter’s games and all of Mariano Rivera’s.
“But, listen, we all sometimes screw up. Like in San Francisco. They play afternoons because it’s so cold there at night. So I’m on air making a point and I say, ‘Great that we have Saturday night off in San Francisco, so we can taste the fruits of this great city.’
“My partner next to me went pale. I thought he was going to have a stroke. After a minute I realized what I’d said.
“Other than what I just said, the team has wanted other changes, like they want the pitchers to pitch quicker because the games take so long.
“Listen, I even once got hit by a foul ball. The guy fouled the pitch back and that ball hit me right over my left eye.”
I told him I myself wasn’t happy with Boston’s Fenway Park. Once I was there checking on a game. I ordered a frank. What they brought me was beige. BEIGE. A beige frank? Looked like a dog dropped it. So I wrote about that. They then barred me from ever being mentioned again in the Boston Globe. I then informed them what I thought they could do with their paper.
It’s aloha to acting great
We just lost Richard Chamberlain, who started life as a supermarket clerk. Then he worked as a chauffeur. He lived in Hawaii. He loved Hawaii. Died in Hawaii. In the 1960s, it was “Dr. Kildare.” Hit big in the 1980s. Was a priest in the spiky “Thorn Birds.” Taken prisoner in Japan in “Shogun.” Three-time Golden Glober, three more nominees, four-time Emmy nominee. He did Broadway, too. Hosted the Tonys. Singing even. “My Fair Lady,” “The Sound of Music.” Earlier it was plays. Tennessee Williams, Noël Coward.
So once I called him. Took forever to get him on the phone. Why? Finally on the phone, I ask, why so difficult? He said: “It’s easy. They’ll get a message to me.”
Global actions
Asked to name their prime issues, a tense world grows more dangerous. The problem is geopolitics. Not just the price of oil, but China controls minerals and produces important products not mined in the West. Pay attention, so nobody’s caught investing off guard. Like when a major event comes, like when there’s a coming attack. On Iran by Israel.
Holiday season. Lent, Good Friday, Holy Week, Passover, Ramadan, Ash Wednesday, Easter. To celebrate the season there was just a party in Delaware. An embarrassing moment occurred. Joe Biden came disguised as the president.
Downsizing? Everybody’s downsizing? This morning turning on the TV — and for sure only in New York — I heard the Mormon Tabernacle Trio.
