As Aaron Judge is on the verge of making AL history, John Sterling is elated to call his home runs. The New York slugger is two away from Roger Maris’ 61 home runs and will play six games at Yankee Stadium and 10 games away. Sterling will be in charge of the booth.
Also, the sportscaster now has the opportunity to call all 16 of the Yankees’ games on WFAN. So, if and when Judge goes past Maris before the home crowd, the play-by-play announcer has the honor of calling the historic home run.
Ryan Ruocco was supposed to call the series in Toronto next week. John Sterling wants to be there to watch Judge try to make history at home and allow him the historic opportunity to call the record homer.
John Sterling turned 84 years old on July 4th.
This past June, Sterling decided to cut down on road games by a lot. In one of the games against Tampa,
Howard Kellman took over, as he was not there. When asked about his absence recently, the announcer replied:
“It is just to recharge my batteries; I’ve been doing road games with teams for 52 years; I love this game, but I hate being on the road.”
Despite his age, John Sterling is back. The enticement to call Judge’s historic homer is more than anything for the sportscaster. He couldn’t afford to lose and is back on WFAN.
Judge, who is 30 years old, hit his 59th home run of the season against the Brewers on Sunday. In 1961, Maris made 61 home runs.
Baseball fans and the media don’t agree on whether Maris’s number of home runs is the most important record. However, in the American League, he is the leader. In MLB, Barry Bonds leads with 73 home runs while Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa have more than 61 homers in a single season, But many
people thought that these three players used PEDs to reach their marks.
Do you think steroid powered NL home-run records? How many homers Aaron Judge will hit?
Will John Sterling get the chance to call the historic homer of Judge?
