In January of 1999, on the heels of a historic 114-win regular season and a second World Series title in three years, the Yankees were on top of the baseball world. After a wilderness period that included a multi-year ban from baseball, the team’s owner, George Steinbrenner, was surely feeling vindicated.
But there was still an elephant in the room. Yogi Berra, who won 10 championships and three MVPs during his 18 years in the Bronx, had been in a self-imposed exile since 1985, when Steinbrenner relieved
him of his managerial duties a couple of weeks into the season. Worse still for the proud Berra, the Boss didn’t deliver the news in person, deputizing GM Clyde King to do his dirty work. Berra swore he’d never return to Yankee Stadium as long as Steinbrenner was at the helm.
After a decade-plus cold war, there was only one person with the relationships, tenacity, and feel for the Yankee mystique to bring the two warring titans to the table.
Suzyn Waldman
Born: September 7, 1946 (Newton, MA)
Yankees Tenure: 1987-present (as broadcaster)
Suzyn Waldman grew up in Newton, MA, idolizing Ted Williams and developing what would become a lifelong love of baseball. After getting a degree in economics from Simmons University — a school she chose in part for its proximity to Fenway Park — Waldman embarked on a musical theater career. She reached the pinnacle of that field, co-starring in Man of La Mancha on Broadway. When that show hit the road in 1979, she joined the touring company, using it as an opportunity to see ballparks around the country.
When the show came through Minnesota, Waldman was offered a private tour by a couple of Twins employees who’d seen her perform. Her hometown Red Sox were in town, and she struck up a conversation with their famously reserved star, Jim Rice. Overhearing their chat, broadcaster Wes Parker told Waldman, “if you can get that man to talk to you that way, you should think about doing this for a living.”
She took the feedback to heart, taking journalism classes as she continued her acting career. In 1986, Waldman sung the national anthem before Game 7 of the ALCS at Fenway Park.
A year later, she was hired by the nascent WFAN radio station in New York. On July 1, 1987, the station went live, with Waldman’s voice the first on its airwaves. She covered the Yankees and Knicks as well as St. John’s basketball. Throughout her ascent in sports media, she was often the first woman each step of the way. With that came unfair and, at time, frightening backlash. “I remember thinking: Why would someone actually want to kill me because I’m talking about the New York Yankees?” Waldman said, recalling the first death threats she received in 1989. “The Stadium got letters, and the station got them, that was in Queens, so I had two precincts that were watching me…I was terrified. I’m still scared. I still get a little nervous when I go through crowds ’cause I don’t know who’s in there. That doesn’t go away, by the way.”
A huge first came on July 24, 1995, when Waldman became the first woman announcer on a nationally televised baseball game. The Baseball Network was carrying a Monday night game between Rangers and Yankees and tapped Waldman to join former ballplayers Bobby Murcer and Steve Busby on the call. “I wasn’t scared until the red light went on,” Waldman said a few days later. “I thought I was ready. But when that red light went on, my whole body started to shake. I thought I could perform through that. I was surprised I got that nervous.” Ever the perfectionist, after making history, she returned to her hotel room to cry, picking apart her performance. “Now I’d like to do the whole thing over and do it right,” she said of her debut.
She would get that chance. Waldman began a regular stint calling Yankees games on TV for WPIX in 1996. But before she could start her life-changing, historic gig, she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Waldman didn’t let it get in the way of her dream job. “I had my whole treatment centered around my going to spring training — I fired my first oncologist because, ‘Well sweetheart maybe one day you can go to lunch,’” Waldman relayed. “I said, ‘No, no, no, no, no, I’m going to spring training, so you better do something so I don’t die.’ And I found an oncologist and she made my protocol to go with what I wanted to do, ’cause she believed that your life, and living your life, is a big part of cancer treatment. I was having chemo through that whole ’96 season. I missed the day I had chemo and the day after.” The Yankees’ championship that season, their first in nearly 20 years, was particularly special for their newest play-by-play woman. “When they won,” she said, “it was like I won, too.”
A couple of years later, she would broker the détente between Berra and her good friend Steinbrenner, arranging for the Boss to visit Berra’s museum in New Jersey and make amends. She then hosted a live show on WFAN with the two to which Berra’s close friend Joe Garagiola and Waldman’s childhood idol, Ted Williams, phoned in, helping publicly cement their rapprochement. That night, she called Steinbrenner to debrief. “I called George back at the hotel and I said, ‘What did you think, George?’” Waldman said. “And he said, ‘Well it was a great night for the New York Yankees.’ Then he paused, and this was so George. He said, ‘And it wasn’t too fucking bad for you Waldman either, was it?’”
After her time with WPIX, Waldman transitioned to the YES Network upon its launch, where she did some play-by-play as well as studio work and clubhouse reporting. When Charlie Steiner left the Yankees’ radio booth after the ‘04 season, Waldman left YES to begin the partnership which would come to define her career. Steinbrenner was at first trepidatious about hiring a woman to broadcast full-time. “What do you think of this? A woman?” he asked John Sterling, the team’s longtime play-by-play man. “I think a woman is wonderful, as long as it’s this woman. Go ahead and hire her,” Sterling replied. Sterling and Waldman would spend the next 20 years together, developing a playful chemistry and unabashed enthusiasm for the game that came to define car rides, barbeques, and beach days for Yankees fans throughout the city.
One of Waldman’s most divisive moments in the booth came in 2007, when Roger Clemens announced live at Yankee Stadium that he’d be unretiring at the age of 44 to return to the Yankees. Waldman, who’d known the fireballer since he was a Red Sox in the ‘80s, later admitted to getting emotional in the moment as she relayed the surprising news.
Waldman was similarly criticized for crying after the Yankees were eliminated in the 2007 ALDS, with longtime manager Joe Torre’s departure from the club a fait accompli. “That’s what I felt. I am who I am. I’m emotional,” said Waldman. “A lot of people like it, a lot of people don’t. I didn’t do it in a game, and I recovered.” Of the criticism she received throughout her career, Waldman offered an insight which hinted at the way she was treated differently due to her gender. “Nobody ever criticized my work, ever,” she said simply. “They just criticized me.”
As Waldman’s career progressed, though, she continued to be feted for her excellence and her trailblazing. She was recognized in the Women in Baseball Room at the National Hall of Fame. When she showed pictures of the exhibit to Steinbrenner, “He got really teary-eyed, and he said, ‘I’m really proud of you,’” said Waldman. Her benefactor was not around to see her induction into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2020 in recognition not only of her excellence but her “professionalism and resolve while staring down countless obstacles as a pioneering woman in her field.” She has also been honored by the Alliance for Women in Media Foundation with their Gracies Lifetime Achievement Award and entered the New York State Broadcasters’ Hall of Fame alongside Sterling.
Waldman has become a Yankees institution, a reality best demonstrated by her courting of Gerrit Cole. While Cole was still an Astro, Waldman did some light lobbying, telling the acethat he’d “make a great Yankee.” Cole, aware of her musical theater background, replied, “If I do, you have to sing the national anthem on Opening Day.” When the Yankees signed Cole before the 2020 season, he held Waldman to her promise, as she sung the anthem before the home opener, a moment made more poignant in a stadium left empty during the COVID pandemic.
After Sterling’s retirement during the 2024 season, Waldman has remained a constant in the booth, calling games first with Justin Shackil and now with Dave Sims, a longtime friend with whom she has developed a quick rapport. As she reaches a milestone birthday today, please join us in celebrating the extraordinary career of the Broadway performer with a Massachusetts accent who’s become an indelible voice of the Yankees.
See more of the “Yankees Birthday of the Day” series here.
