Rant #3,938: Voices Carry

The Yankees did the right thing with their salute to the late John Sterling on Monday night, but I think that the YES Network botched it a bit.

What they did is that before the night's game against the Baltimore Orioles, they had the Bronx Bombers line up on the field, and a short video was shown to fans on the scoreboard, highlighting Sterling's great radio calls of past great games in Yankees' history.

Then Michael Kay--who began his broadcast career with Sterling--and Suzyn Waldman--a trailblazer herself who worked with Sterling for two decades behind the mike--came out and placed flowers on home plate.

But in what seemed to be a millisecond after the flowers were placed on the plate, YES went right to a commercial.

It was too quick, too abrupt, and the viewer lost the sense of the moment with the quick departure by YES, where Sterling appeared regularly on several shows devoted to the Yankees.

It just seemed so hollow.

But leave it to others to bring us back to the occasion at hand.

When the game started, the Yankees displayed their uniform tribute to Sterling, with a "JS" put on the back of their caps.

I would have preferred a patch or something else on their uniform, but this will certainly do--

And plenty of fans already want to add this tribute cap to their collection, as a fitting tribute.

The fabled Bleacher Creatures did their thing, yelling out the Yankee starters like they always do--

But at the end of their regular chanting, they added a vibrant chant for John Sterling.

Then, in an almost scripted moment that just had to be that way for the Yankees, Aaron Judge hit a first inning home run, and Michael Kay called it almost as John Sterling would have--

And yes, he used Sterling's "Here Comes the Judge" mantra as Judge rounded the bases and touched home plate.

It was fitting, it was touching, and it was the right thing to do.

And I am sure Sterling was happy with it, as the homer put the Yankees up 2-0 en route to their eventual 12-1 win.

The YES botch was odd, because the network came on the air with almost two hours of John Sterling memories to start the day, but they broke away just so quickly from the ceremony, as if to say that they had commercials to fit in--

Almost like Sterling would read one succession of ads after another in between pitches of every broadcast.

Maybe that was the point, and maybe that celebrated Sterling even more than I thought it did, but their leave of the ceremony was really the only blemish on the entire day.

Sure, Sterling's death was certainly not welcomed, but the plethora of tributes online, on radio, and on television had to make you smile amidst the sorrow, and the playing back of clips where he announced homers and big wins on the radio had to make any baseball fan smile, at least a little bit.

Sure, he rubbed a lot of people the wrong way with his calling of games, but he was revered as much as any baseball announcer I can remember, up there with Vin Scully and Bob Uecker when they passed away.

As I said yesterday, I was not a fan of Sterling, but I understood his importance in the grand scheme of Yankees things, and his death really was a shock.

He was one of those people who you thought would live forever--

And thanks to modern technology, he will.

Just go to YouTube, type in "John Sterling." and you will see--and hear--exactly what I mean.