TORONTO — Whenever the Yankees would acquire a new player or call one up from the minors, the conversation on the team bus would often turn to one question.
What will John Sterling’s new home run call be?
“What’s John going to come up with this time?” Aaron Judge said Monday. “What’s he going to use? Will he go last name, first name, how’s he going to do this? He always outsmarts us and comes up with something great that the fans love, we love, as players, listening to it.”
The next player to hit their first home run as a Yankee will not feel the same thrill as Judge or Anthony Volpe did when they first heard Sterling call their home runs, as the longtime Yankees radio play-by-play man retired Monday, effective immediately.
“He was so witty, smart,” Judge said. “John’s a big part of this family and we’re going to miss him.”
Judge has hit plenty of home runs over the years for Sterling to call.
His line: “It’s a Judge-ian blast! All rise, here comes the Judge!”
“I think just hearing my first home run call from him,” Judge said when asked for his favorite Sterling memory. “As a kid, you always hear it, you watch old Yankee games, you hear the old broadcasts. Getting a chance to hear your own name for the first one, that was pretty special.”
Judge’s dad was at the game when Judge hit his first home run but later went home to find the call on YouTube and “replayed it over and over again,” the Yankees captain said.
For Volpe, a native New Yorker like Sterling, the home run call was one of a few that used a different language: “Anthony Volpe! A spettacolo oggi! Ohhh, the fox socks one to left.”
Volpe, of course, translates to fox in Italian while “spettacolo oggi” roughly translates to putting on a show.
“It was definitely special,” Volpe said of hearing Sterling’s call for the first time. “Super special. … Definitely very surreal. He’s iconic.”
Volpe’s family enjoyed it, too.
“Any game they weren’t at, yeah, they were listening to him on the radio,” Volpe said.
Sterling’s home run calls were just as memorable as the, “It is high! It is far! It is gone!” that preceded them.
“The things he comes up with, sometimes you scratch your head at,” manager Aaron Boone said. “But we all can’t wait to hear it and can’t wait to hear his voice calling them. I think those guys appreciate that.”
