Also, another good "my last day of baseball" story has been added to the comments of the fairly recent Ivan Dejesus (Chicago Cubs) post. I feel that I bungled an opportunity by not more stridently lobbying readers for similar stories with that post, so I hope if anybody's got one they'd like to share they'll add it to the Dejesus post (and I'll direct readers to it via a comment attached to the current post).

http://tinyurl.com/6bb4gg

Paul O'Neill, Jimmy Key and Wade Boggs showed up in 1993, Jim Abbott threw his no-hitter that year (against a Cleveland lineup that included Manny Ramirez in his third major league game), and things have been better ever since.

Fun fact: the Red Sox got their early lead in that game against Dave Eiland, who is now the Yankee pitching coach.

Oh, and here's the Joy of Sox post:

http://tinyurl.com/566c8r

My sister and her two kids went the next day. I decided not to go. Crap.

9 : Ah, Manny. Things got a little better for Red Sox fans at Yankee Stadium after he and Pedro joined the team. Suddenly we had a ton of Dominican allies.

Gee, I thought only us L.A. fans left early - at least that's the impression I get. (I actually have never left a ballgame early; I'm staying to the end, triumphant, bitter or otherwise.)

I couldn't stand having my error about the "bleachers" in the post anymore, so I struck it out and replaced it with the generic "stands". I wonder of that rescues my beloved cauldron simile from damning innacuracy.

1990 was during a baseball semiexile for me. I was in the army and didn't follow the game that closely. I'm pretty much provincial anyways. Never got into rotisserie, so my focus has pretty much been on the Red Sox; everything else is incidental. But I did see a game in 1990. Went to Chicago to meet up with a couple of army buddies who left the nite before. Got busted for doing 101 outside of Watseka, Illinois. After the fine they gave me, I hope they named the high school gym in my honor. Almost saw history. Rnady, me, and some other guy whose name escapes me saw the game before the Andy Hawkins nohitter non-nohitter. Then we got drunk and watched PPV at the hotel.

I wonder what it's like to see a non no-hitter no-hitter (i.e., a Andy Hawkins/Matt Young no-hits allowed loss). There's no catcher-leaping-into-arms moment (or in David Cone's case, no tackling-and-making-tearful-love-to-Joe-Girardi-on-the-infield-grass moment), so when do you cheer for these guys? Or do you cheer? I'm just glad I never saw such a game as a kid. I think the ambiguity of it would have stunted my growth.

19 : You know, I like cheeseballs too, and if he did games for any team other than the Yankees and I just might enjoy his schtick. But I'm a small man. Also, I first started hearing his whole deal around when I started listening to a lot of Bob Murphy doing the Mets. Quite the gulf between those two.

I grew up with Phil Rizzuto, so being a homer and straying from strict, dry play-by-play isn't necessarily a problem. (In fact, I think there are a whole lot of announcers who are a whole lot more partisan than Sterling, Ron Santo being the worst. Among other things, Sterling never, ever refers to the Yankees as "we.")

The difference is that Rizzuto was completely natural. Everything just came bubbling out of him in an uninhibited stream of enthusiasm. It was never shtick, it was just Scooter.

With Sterling, everything is prepared and rehearsed; it's nothing but shtick. Worse yet, he says the same damn thing over and over, the exact same way, day after day, year in and year out.

Baseball is the most unpredictable game. I defy anyone to predict the game of baseball. It's because you change the starting pitcher every day - imagine that, the most important player on the field, and he changes every day! You can throw your stat book right out the window. The patented Jeterian swing. Blahbitty blah blah blah.

The game is like an excuse for Sterling to do his routines. I can't wait for someone who will actually say something different, something he didn't say yesterday.

FYI: A good story (thanks JL25and3) about "La Lob" has been added to the comments of the Gorman Thomas (Brewers) post, and the Jack Clark (Giants) post of a couple days ago has a new comment that raises an urgent (in my mind anyway) question about memories of Jack Clark's johnson.

28 : That's one of my favorite things about the site too.

When Sterling was teamed with Jay Johnstone, I thought the pair was excellent. Of course, in that pairing, Johnstone was full of shtick (Sterling: "the Yankees are brought you by Snapple, makers of Peach Melba...". Johnstone: "Peach Melba? I used to date her in high school), and Sterling was the straight man.

A subsequent pairing with Joe Angel didn't work out because both men hated each other, but individually, both men were very good...almost as if they were in competition.

Sterling's longest partner, Michael Kay, produced some of the best radio broadcasts I can remember as a fan, at least at the very beginning of their tenure. Kay was a young reporter cracking into the radio biz, while Sterling was the veteran with a booming voice. Neither posed a threat to each other, and each's strengths made up for the other's weaknesses (Kay, the intrepid reporter, had a poor radio voice and wasn't great at play-by-play; Sterling, the veteran, had the golden pipes, but didn't bring anything more than ply-by-play). This relationship also seemed to drive the other to improve upon their shortcomings. Also, the enormous size of both men's egos seemed to keep the other's in check. At it's best, this pairing was so good, that I would go out of my way to turn down the TV audio to listen to them instead, and at the time, the Yankees had very good broadcasters doing games on MSG.

Toward the end of their run together, it seemed as if Kay and Sterling were talking past each other. Still, they were solid until Kay left to takeover YES. Absent each other, however, I have found their individual efforts lacking. The Steiner/Sterling combo was awful, but sadly better than the current pairing with Susyzn Waldman, who gives life to every negative stereotype about women doing sports. Without another heavyweight to challenge him, Sterling has become a rehearsed, regurgitated tired old show. And yet, his excitement for and love of the game and the Yankees still makes him listenable, even though he really is a shell of the broadcaster that he used to be.

One of the worst things about the current pairing: Waldman apparently thinks Sterling is just about the funniest, most clever man she's ever met.

Once upon a time, Suzyn Waldman was a pretty darn good beat reporter for WFAN. Then somewhere along the way she got starry-eyed about the players - especially Paul O'Neill and Tino Martinez - and lost all perspective.

In addition to his impeccable pipes, I have to Sterling credit for professionalism and dedication. He hasn't missed a single game since he's been with the Yankees, and at least one year he broadcast every inning. And, finally, he did come up with one nickname that I thought was brilliant: Gino "Clang, Clang, Clang Went" Petralli.

John Sterling is a disgraceful sideshow to the game and its participants. His shrieking, VU-Meter destroying "Is-lan-der Gooooooalll! (4x)" howls are firmly embedded in my subconscious psyche somewheres between air raid sirens and the screams of burn victims.

His Yankee calls similiarly explode out of nowhere, out of context to any flow of the game. The schtick is indeed rehearsed. And fake. And pandering. And annoying.

And just right for the New York Yankees.
The unlistenable Suzyn Waldman only complements Sterling perfectly.

G-d bless you, Bob Murphy.

However, I must say that I really hate the Red Sox announcers more. I don't mind a little home town favoritism, but at least describe the game. I turned on an O's-Red Sox game last year, and it took me two innings to find out who was pitching for the Orioles!

I will say that sometimes he makes me nuts with his missed calls, to wit: "It is high!!!!...it is far!!!!..it is...caught for an out on the warning track...3 away at the end of the 5th."

I live in Birmingham, Alabama and have to hear Sterling on XM. Until I got a boom box for my radio, I would sit in my car in our driveway and listen to Yankees games after the kids went to sleep (my wife still sez I'm crazy). I'll never forget hearing him call that bottom of the 9th homerun from Jorge against the Rangers 2 years ago in May. That one was special.

I agree that Suzyn's not the best compadre for Sterling. She's a bit whiny and grates on my nerves.

I actually liked Steiner with him. The 2003 Aaron Boone shot was a great call from both of them.

Couple interesting facts about that weekend -- I was also at the first game of the series, which was Kevin Maas' first big-league game (he got a single for his first hit). That was not the biggest event of the evening, however, as that is the same night Fernando and Dave Stewart threw no-hitters in different games. The game Ennui Willie Keeler went to (from comment 18) featured Kevin Maas' first big-league homer. I'll never forget that weekend, in some ways unfortunately ...