Suzyn Waldman (born ) is an American sportscaster and former musical theater actress. Since the 2005 season, she has been the

color commentator A color commentator or expert commentator is a sports commentator who assists the main (play-by-play) commentator, typically by filling in when play is not in progress. The phrase "colour commentator" is primarily used in Canadian English and t ...

for

New York Yankees The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the Boroughs of New York City, New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) Amer ...

baseball Baseball is a bat-and-ball sport played between two teams of nine players each, taking turns batting and fielding. The game occurs over the course of several plays, with each play generally beginning when a player on the fielding tea ...

, working with John Sterling on radio broadcasts, first for

WCBS-AM WCBS (880 AM, "WCBS Newsradio 880") is a radio station licensed to New York, New York and is owned and operated by Audacy, Inc. WCBS's studios are located in the combined Audacy facility in the Hudson Square neighborhood of lower Manhattan an ...

and currently for

WFAN WFAN (660 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to New York, New York, carrying a sports radio format known as "Sports Radio 66 AM and 101.9 FM" or "The Fan". Owned by Audacy, Inc., the station serves the New York metropolitan area while ...

in New York City.

Early life and career

Waldman was born in

Newton, Massachusetts Newton is a city in Middlesex County, Massachusetts, United States. It is approximately west of downtown Boston. Newton resembles a patchwork of thirteen villages, without a city center. According to the 2020 U.S. Census, the population of Ne ...

, the daughter of Jeanne and Philip Waldman. She loved baseball from childhood; she recalls going to a game with her grandfather when she was three and a half years old. She also has joked that she chose

Simmons College Institutions of learning called Simmons College or Simmons University include: * Simmons University, a women's liberal arts college in Boston, Massachusetts * Simmons College of Kentucky, a historically black college in Louisville, Kentucky * Har ...

because it was near Fenway Park. She graduated from Simmons with a degree in Economics. Prior to her broadcasting career, Waldman worked for many years as an actress and singer in musical theater. Her most notable role was as

Dulcinea Dulcinea del Toboso is a fictional character who is unseen in Miguel de Cervantes' novel ''Don Quijote''. Don Quijote believes he must have a lady, under the mistaken view that chivalry requires it. As he does not have one, he invents her, mak ...

in ''

Man of La Mancha ''Man of La Mancha'' is a 1965 musical with a book by Dale Wasserman, music by Mitch Leigh, and lyrics by Joe Darion. It is adapted from Wasserman's non-musical 1959 teleplay ''I, Don Quixote'', which was in turn inspired by Miguel de Cervantes ...

.'' Her rendition of "There Used To Be a Ballpark" appeared on historian

David Pietrusza David Pietrusza (born November 22, 1949 in Amsterdam, New York) is an American author and historian. Career David Pietrusza has produced a number of critically acclaimed works concerning 20th-century American history, including five volumes ( ...

's 1995 WMHT-TV documentary ''Local Heroes: Baseball on Capital Region Diamonds.'' Also, she has performed the

National Anthem A national anthem is a patriotic musical composition symbolizing and evoking eulogies of the history and traditions of a country or nation. The majority of national anthems are marches or hymns in style. American, Central Asian, and European n ...

at many Yankee home games (most recently before a 2020

Yankees The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. They are one of ...

home game on July 31) as well as the 1986 ALCS Championship game 7 at Fenway Park.

Broadcasting career

Waldman is considered a pioneer in the male-dominated field of sports broadcasting. In the mid-1990s, she was a

play-by-play In sports broadcasting, a sports commentator (also known as sports announcer or sportscaster) provides a real-time commentary of a game or event, usually during a live broadcast, traditionally delivered in the historical present tense. Radio was ...

announcer for the Yankees' local TV broadcasts on

WPIX WPIX (channel 11) is a television station in New York City. Owned by Mission Broadcasting, it is operated under a local marketing agreement (LMA) by Nexstar Media Group, making it a ''de facto'' owned-and-operated station and flagship (broadcas ...

, which made her the second woman to serve in that capacity on TV for a major league team, after

Gayle Gardner Gayle Gardner (born ca. 1950) is an American sportscaster who worked for ESPN and NBC Sports beginning in 1987 until 1993. Gardner is considered a pioneer in sports broadcasting, having been the first female sports anchor to appear weekly on a ma ...

in 1993. In 2005, she was hired to do color commentary for Yankees baseball on WCBS Radio, partnering with John Sterling. According to the Yankees, Waldman was major league baseball's first full-time female color commentator. Waldman has worked in sports reporting for more than 30 years, as a former broadcaster for the

YES Network The Yankee Entertainment and Sports Network (YES) is an American pay television regional sports network owned by Yankee Global Enterprises (the largest shareholder with 26%), Sinclair Broadcast Group and Entertainment Studios (which owns 20%), A ...

as the reporter on the New York Yankees Pre-Game Show and the

New York Yankees Post-Game Show The Yankee Entertainment and Sports Network (YES) is an American pay television regional sports network owned by Yankee Global Enterprises (the largest shareholder with 26%), Sinclair Broadcast Group and Entertainment Studios (which owns 20%), A ...

and New York sports radio station

. Her voice—on a live sports update—was the first heard on WFAN when it premiered on 1050 AM at 3:00 PM on July 1, 1987 (it moved to 660 AM a year later). At WFAN, she covered both the Yankees and the

New York Knicks The New York Knickerbockers, shortened and more commonly referred to as the New York Knicks, are an American professional basketball team based in the New York City borough of Manhattan. The Knicks compete in the National Basketball Associat ...

basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular Basketball court, court, compete with the primary objective of #Shooting, shooting a basketball (ball), basketball (appr ...

teams and co-hosted the daily mid-day sports talk show. Suzyn Waldman (38761979732)

Following the 2013 season, the Yankees moved their radio rights to

, and announced that Waldman and John Sterling would return for their tenth year together in the booth. She signed a two-year contract extension in February 2016 that ran through the 2017 season. On December 16, 2017, Waldman signed a contract through the 2018 season. She is currently under contract through the 2022 season. From June 29–30, 2019, Waldman called the first MLB games played in

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

. Her long association with the Yankees has earned her the nickname "Ma Pinstripe" from

New York Daily News The New York ''Daily News'', officially titled the ''Daily News'', is an American newspaper based in Jersey City, NJ. It was founded in 1919 by Joseph Medill Patterson as the ''Illustrated Daily News''. It was the first U.S. daily printed in ta ...

writer Bob Raissman.

George Bell incident

At the start of the 1987 Major League Baseball season,

Toronto Blue Jays The Toronto Blue Jays are a Canadian professional baseball team based in Toronto. The Blue Jays compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. Since 1989, the team has played its home games ...

outfielder An outfielder is a person playing in one of the three defensive positions in baseball or softball, farthest from the batter. These defenders are the left fielder, the center fielder, and the right fielder. As an outfielder, their duty is to cat ...

George Bell George Bell may refer to: Law and politics * George Joseph Bell (1770–1843), Scottish jurist and legal author * George Alexander Bell (1856–1927), Canadian pioneer and Saskatchewan politician * George Bell (Canadian politician) (1869–1940) ...

was not talking to the New York media, thinking they had cost him the

Most Valuable Player In team sports, a most valuable player award, abbreviated 'MVP award', is an honor typically bestowed upon an individual (or individuals, in the instance of a tie) whose individual performance is the greatest in an entire league, for a particu ...

award the year earlier. He broke his silence after a win at

Yankee Stadium Yankee Stadium is a baseball stadium located in the Bronx, New York City. It is the home field of the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball, and New York City FC of Major League Soccer. Opened in April 2009, the stadium replaced the origi ...

, and the regular beat writers hurriedly gathered around his locker. New on the beat (women had just recently been allowed access to the locker room), Waldman joined the group; Bell immediately started screaming at her in Spanish and English. "There was a deathly silence. I think the other writers were shocked, but I also think they still resented me more than a bit, and they certainly didn't want to lose this interview," she recalled on a radio show. "At the time, I was a little less tough than I am now. Tears welled up in my eyes and I said I better get out of there." As she rushed to leave, Bell's teammate

Jesse Barfield Jesse Lee Barfield (born October 29, 1959) is an American former professional baseball player and coach. He played in Major League Baseball as an right fielder from 1981 to 1992 for the Toronto Blue Jays and the New York Yankees. A two-time Gold ...

called out to her: "Suzyn, I went three for four today. Don’t you want to ask me any questions?" Waldman and Barfield, now a baseball announcer himself, became friends and have remained close since then.

Yogi BerraGeorge Steinbrenner feud

In 1985, Yankees owner

George Steinbrenner George Michael Steinbrenner III (July 4, 1930July 13, 2010) was an American businessman who was the principal owner and managing partner of Major League Baseball's New York Yankees from 1973 until his death in 2010. He was the longest-serving own ...

sent his

general manager A general manager (GM) is an executive who has overall responsibility for managing both the revenue and cost elements of a company's income statement, known as profit & loss (P&L) responsibility. A general manager usually oversees most or all of ...

Clyde King Clyde Edward King (May 23, 1924 – November 2, 2010) was an American pitcher, coach, manager, general manager and front office executive in Major League Baseball. King's career in baseball spanned 67 years, including 35 full years with the New ...

, to fire manager

Yogi Berra Lawrence Peter "Yogi" Berra (May 12, 1925 – September 22, 2015) was an American professional baseball catcher who later took on the roles of Manager (baseball), manager and Coach (baseball), coach. He played 19 seasons in Major League Baseball ...

. This greatly angered Berra because in his previous firings, the team owner had personally delivered the news. Yogi vowed not to visit

and not to participate in any Yankee function as long as George Steinbrenner was the owner of the Yankees. In 1999, Suzyn Waldman helped arrange a meeting between the two men that brought an end to the 14-year feud. Yogi returned on Opening Day of the 1999 season, a day also designated as "Joe DiMaggio Day."

Personal life

In 1996, Waldman was diagnosed with

breast cancer Breast cancer is cancer that develops from breast tissue. Signs of breast cancer may include a lump in the breast, a change in breast shape, dimpling of the skin, milk rejection, fluid coming from the nipple, a newly inverted nipple, or a re ...

. She sued Mount Sinai Hospital and two of its

pathologists A list of people notable in the field of pathology. A * John Abercrombie, Scottish physician, neuropathologist and philosopher. * Maude Abbott (1869–1940), Canadian pathologist, one of the earliest women graduated in medicine, expert in co ...

for misdiagnosing her as cancer-free, eventually winning over $2 million in damages from the case. While her

chemotherapy Chemotherapy (often abbreviated to chemo and sometimes CTX or CTx) is a type of cancer treatment that uses one or more anti-cancer drugs (chemotherapeutic agents or alkylating agents) as part of a standardized chemotherapy regimen. Chemotherap ...

regimen limited (and eventually ended) her day-to-day role of broadcasting Yankees games on TV, she continued in her role at WFAN throughout her illness. Her cancer has been in remission for several years. Waldman is currently a resident of

Croton-on-Hudson Croton-on-Hudson is a administrative divisions of New York#Village, village in Westchester County, New York, Westchester County, New York (state), New York, United States. The population was 8,327 at the 2020 United States census over 8,070 at the ...

Westchester County, New York Westchester County is located in the U.S. state of New York. It is the seventh most populous county in the State of New York and the most populous north of New York City. According to the 2020 United States Census, the county had a population o ...

. Waldman received an honorary Doctor of Journalism from Simmons University in May 2021. She was selected for induction into the Radio Hall of Fame on July 25, 2022.

References

External links

New York Yankees biography

Suzyn's reaction to the Roger Clemens signing
* {{DEFAULTSORT:Waldman, Suzyn Major League Baseball broadcasters American musical theatre actresses National Basketball Association broadcasters New York Yankees announcers Actors from Newton, Massachusetts American radio sports announcers American television sports announcers Living people Women sports announcers YES Network Simmons University alumni New York Knicks announcers New York Giants announcers People from Croton-on-Hudson, New York 21st-century American women Year of birth missing (living people)