John Sterling (born John Sloss on July 4, 1938) is an American sportscaster best known for his work as the radio play-by-play announcer for the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball.
Beginning in 1989, Sterling called 5,060 straight Yankees games before taking a four-game vacation in July 2019. Sterling grew up in the 1980s on Manhattan’s Upper East Side.
He is the son of Carl H.T. Sloss, an advertising executive, and Gladys (Hodrov) Sloss. When the 1940 United States Census was taken on April 4, John was one year old and lived with his family in Manhattan.
He attended Moravian College, Boston University, and the Columbia University School of General Studies for a short time before dropping out and starting a radio career at a local station in Wellsville, New York.
Sterling’s play-calling method has been highly critiqued in the media. Craig Carton and Phil Mushnick have often chastised him for making erroneous calls.
Sterling’s player nicknames and his emphasis on the “mmm” sound before adding “mmm-it is high, mmm-it is far…” were often parodied by Jim Norton of The Opie and Anthony Show.
Sterling lives in the town of Edgewater in the state of New Jersey. Previously, he had lived in Teaneck, New Jersey. He divorced Jennifer in 2008 after 12 years of marriage and is the father of four children, including a pair of triplets born in 2000. After a fire damaged the Avalon at Edgewater complex building in January 2015, he was among hundreds of evacuated inhabitants.
