A friend texted me a stat about the late New York Yankees radio guy John Sterling calling 5,271 consecutive Yankee games over a 30-year stretch, before finally taking a day off in 2019, and my initial thought: a three-game weekend series would wear me out.
And I say that from experience.
Among the cool things I’ve been able to do in life, I worked for ESPN+, through VMI Athletics, from 2016-2019, and 2021-2022 – doing mostly baseball games, between 15-20 games a year.
I haven’t tallied the exact number, but probably in the vicinity of 100.
I also did VMI Football home games on the radio between 2015-2021, a couple of TV football games, and one basketball game on TV.
One more line item to throw in: I was the play-by-play voice of the Waynesboro Generals, a summer college baseball team, for five years.
OK, humble bragging over.
My sum total, all sports, is in the range of 250 games.
A drop in the bucket, me, to John Sterling, who never got a day off.
Get past the, OK, he had winters.
He needed them.
MLB is a grind, because they play games six days a week, most weeks, and some stretches, they go a couple or three weeks without an off-day.
It starts in spring training, late February, through the latter part of October, if you’re the guy on the call for the Yankees.
With travel – a three-game series, Monday-Wednesday, maybe Thursday off, then the weekend; maybe you go straight from one series on the road to the next one at home, or reversed, without a travel day.
My experience at VMI wasn’t that.
We were mainly doing conference games, so, for VMI, SoCon games, Friday-Sunday, maybe with a midweek game before or after, so, there were stretches of four games in five days, and five in seven.
Now, for me, I do also have a day job, writing and editing AFP, so, I had to do my prep around that, and then get myself an hour down the road to Lexington for the call time, normally two hours before the first pitch, so that we could record our game open and get it in the system, and get situated.
The Friday game was usually the best one, just because, in college baseball, Fridays mean the two teams are starting their aces.
Most of the Saturdays were good – #2 vs. #2.
Sundays could be interesting – #3 guys at the SoCon level tend to be on a shorter leash, so Sundays often turned into staff days.
Between that, and the earlier start for Sundays – getaway days for the visiting school, intent on getting home so the kids can get to class on Monday – and I was close to running on fumes by the time it was all said and done for.
The one that came to mind immediately when my buddy texted me about Sterling’s 30-year streak came, and this one took some research for me to verify, the weekend of May 7-8, 2021, for VMI-Samford.
Friday was a scheduled doubleheader, with a single game on Saturday.
My recollection is, my usual booth partner, Wade Branner, the longtime SID at the school, and the Voice of the Keydets, was out of town for the weekend, so it was me and a young, still-getting-experience fill-in, and I can’t remember who that was, unfortunately, but I was the lead guy, is the point.
Wade picked a great time to be out of town.
Game 1 of the Friday doubleheader was a 25-1 Samford win.
Twenty-five, as in – six in the first, five in the fifth, 12 in the sixth, two, for good measure, in the seventh.
The art to sports broadcasting is, when the game is out of hand, your job as a broadcaster is to try to keep the viewers engaged.
It can be hard to do that in a 25-1 game, and then, keep in mind, this was still just Game 1.
Game 2 that day was a little more competitive – Samford came away with an 11-5 win, coming back from a 5-4 deficit in the fifth and pulling away late.
Very late; that one ended, per the archived box score, at 8:59 p.m.
Game 1 started with a 2:02 p.m. first pitch.
Meaning, I was on the premises at around noon, having left home at 11 a.m.
After recording the voiceover for the highlight video for ESPN+, I was on the road toward home around 9:30 p.m.
I should’ve just slept in the press box; Game 3 on Saturday was a 1 p.m. first pitch, so, I left home at 10 a.m.-ish to be at the stadium by 11.
The final score in Game 3: 18-1.
I sh-t you not.
I was out of stories to tell to fill the time midway through the sixth inning in Game 1.
It was to the point of needing to find a phone book to start reading the names out of as Game 3 played to its conclusion.
That’s one weekend; John Sterling got through the equivalent of about 1,750 weekends, and kept coming back for more.
And don’t assume, well, he was calling Yankees games, they won all those World Series.
Yes, four world titles in five years between 1995-2000, another one in 2009, Series losses in 2001 and 2003.
Sterling’s first five years in the Bronx were all sub-.500 seasons; 2013-2016 had one playoff appearance, a loss in a wild-card game.
He said “th-u-u-uh Yankees win!” more often than he didn’t, but he had his share of VMI-Samford weekends.
Between pregame shows and postgame wraps, we’re talking 20,000 hours of his life on the air – emphasis on, on.
When you put that headset on, and I always told my wife this after games, a nuclear bomb could take out DC, and I wouldn’t know it until I was done with the wrap.
John Sterling did that for 5,271 days without missing a beat.
Me, I need a mental health break just from writing this column.
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Chris Graham
