Who is New York Yankees Announcer Suzyn Waldman
Suzyn Waldman is a former musical theater actress who now works as a sportscaster in the United States.
She has been the color commentator for New York Yankees baseball since 2005, working on radio broadcasts alongside John Sterling, first for WCBS-AM and now for WFAN in New York City.
Waldman was born in Newton, Massachusetts, and earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Simmons College. Waldman had a long career as an actress and singer in musical theatre before transitioning to TV.
Dulcinea in Man of La Mancha was her most famous part.
Local Heroes: Baseball on Capital Region Diamonds, a 1995 WMHT-TV documentary by historian David Pietrusza, featured her interpretation of “There Used To Be a Ballpark.”
She has also sang the National Anthem at many Yankee home games, including the 1986 ALCS Championship Game 7 at Fenway Park (most recently before the 2020 Yankees home opening on July 31).
Suzyn Waldman Career
In the male-dominated world of sports broadcasting, Waldman is regarded as a pioneer. She is the first woman to work as a full-time color commentator for Major League Baseball on a regular basis.
She worked as a play-by-play announcer for the Yankees’ local TV broadcasts on WPIX in the mid-1990s, becoming only the second woman after Gayle Gardner in 1993 to do so for a major league team.
She has more than 30 years of experience in sports reporting, having worked for the YES Network as a reporter on the New York Yankees Pre-Game Show and Post-Game Show, as well as New York sports radio station WFAN.
On July 1, 1987, her voice was the first heard on WFAN when it debuted at 1050 AM at 3:00 PM with a live sports update (it moved to 660 AM a year later).
She co-hosted the weekday mid-day sports talk program at WFAN and covered both the Yankees and the New York Knicks basketball teams.
Following the 2013 season, the Yankees relocated their radio rights to WFAN, and Waldman and Sterling confirmed that they will be back in the booth for their eleventh season together.
In February 2016, she agreed to a two-year contract extension that would take her through the 2017 season.
Waldman signed a contract through the 2018 season on December 16, 2017. She has a contract that runs through the 2022 season.
Waldman called the first MLB games played in Europe on June 29–30, 2019.
Suzyn Waldman Private Life
Waldman was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1996. She sued Mount Sinai Hospital and two of its pathologists for misdiagnosing her as cancer-free, and the case resulted in a settlement of more than $2 million.
While her chemotherapy regimen hampered (and finally ended) her day-to-day employment as a TV broadcaster for the New York Yankees, she remained at WFAN throughout her illness. For several years, her cancer has been in remission.
