NEW YORK — John Sterling spent 36 years telling the Yankees’ story to the world. What fewer people knew was the deeply personal Yankees story he carried at home.
Sterling, who died May 4 at 87 after suffering a heart attack in January, left behind four children who grew up inside the orbit of the franchise he loved. And one of them carries a name that tells you everything about how he saw the Yankees and the players who wore the pinstripes.
His son’s name is Derek. It was not a coincidence.
A marriage, four children and a life built around the Yankees
Sterling married Jennifer Contreras in 1996, nearly a decade into his Yankees tenure. He had waited a long time before starting a family. By the time he did, the Yankees were in the middle of a dynasty.
Their first child was a daughter named Abigail. Then, on Oct. 11, 2000, Contreras gave birth to triplets in Englewood, N.J. Sterling called them “the trips.”
The triplets arrived at an extraordinary moment in Yankees history. Oct. 11, 2000 was Game 2 of the American League Championship Series. Sterling was at the hospital that morning for the births. That night, he was in the booth calling the Yankees’ win over Seattle. Then he boarded the team charter.
Sterling and Contreras divorced in 2008 after 12 years of marriage. They maintained a cordial relationship after she remarried. The Yankees legend described her husband with warmth.
“He’s a great guy and his family have adopted us,” Sterling said. “Everything is good.”
He spoke about his children with unmistakable pride throughout the final years of his life. In a June 2024 interview with the New York Post, he reflected on what fatherhood had meant to him.
“I waited a long time before getting married and having children so it meant even more to me,” Sterling said. “In the newspapers it will read so corny, but what I did was just give them all the love I could every day of their lives.”
The Jeter connection that surprised and moved so many
Of the four children Sterling raised, one carries a name that stopped Yankees fans cold.
He named his son Derek after Derek Jeter, the Yankees shortstop Sterling called every inning of every game across all 20 seasons of Jeter’s career. To the Yankees voice, the naming needed no explanation.
In April 2024, Sterling spoke about Jeter with a reverence that made the decision feel inevitable. He described what separated Jeter from every other Yankees player he had called in nearly four decades behind the microphone.
“You name something, he’s done it, and done it right too,” Sterling said of Jeter. “He’s gone on from there to have this phenomenal career. We know that he’s got 3,465 hits, that’s a lot of hits, but he just did it by being consistently terrific all the time.”
For Sterling, calling Jeter’s career was not just a professional privilege. It was a daily front-row seat to baseball royalty. He named his son to mark how much that experience meant.
What the Sterling children remember
Bradford, Veronica and Derek grew up in a household shaped by their father’s passions. Frank Sinatra played on the stereo. Broadway musicals filled the calendar. The Yankees were always somewhere in the background.
Abigail painted a warm picture of what it was like to grow up as Sterling’s child. She described a father who was present in the ways that mattered most, even while calling five Yankees World Series championships and never missing a game for years on end.
“When we were little, he said he never minded watching Disney movies with us because the music was so great, and this is a man who sat through many showings of ‘Beauty and the Beast,'” Abigail recalled.
Sterling marked his children’s birthdays with Broadway shows, finding a way to blend his love of musical theater with the moments that belonged to them. Abigail noted that the arrangement seemed to work equally well for her father.
“Each year for our birthdays, he would take my brothers to see one show and my sisters to another,” she said. “I think this was mostly an excuse for him to see two different musicals, but we weren’t complaining.”
Bradford went on to work in finance in Manhattan. Derek was studying at Ramapo College as of 2024. When Sterling suffered his heart attack in January 2026, his children rallied. They were present for his final weeks.
Sterling on fatherhood: ‘I really mean that’
In his final interview about his family, Sterling dropped his usual theatrical flair and spoke simply about what his children represented to him.
He was asked by the New York Post to describe his four kids. His answer had none of his famous home run call energy. It had something quieter and more lasting.
“I have four wonderful kids,” Sterling said. “And I really mean that. They’re very good people. And they have no prejudices. And they’re a joy.”
For 36 years, Sterling told the Yankees‘ story every night. His son carries the name of the player he considered the embodiment of everything the Yankees stood for. That is the connection that makes Sterling’s family story impossible to separate from the franchise he served.
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