Suzyn Waldman

Suzyn Waldman

• School Simmons College

• Born September 7, 1946 in Newton, MA USA

Biographical Information

Suzyn Waldman was the first woman to hold a regular job as a commentator on a major league team's broadcasts when she was hired to partner with John Sterling on the radio broadcasts of the New York Yankees on WCBS beginning in 2005.

She began her career working as an actress and in musical theater. A gifted singer, she performed the National Anthem at Yankee Stadium numerous times while holding engagements on Broadway. A sports fan her whole life, she started working for WFAN, New York's first all-sports radio, when it began broadcasting in 1987. She first did episodic work for the Yankees as a play-by-play announcer on local television broadcasts in the mid-1990s. She also worked for the YES Network as a pre-game and post-game reporter on Yankees telecasts. She also did play-by-play broadcasts for the New York Knicks of the NBA during those years. She then was named to the prestigious regular radio gig in 2005.

While she was not the first woman to hold a broadcasting job in baseball, her few predecessors as play-by-play announcers and color commentators only worked stints of a year or less, or were confined to sideline reporting. She celebrated her tenth anniversary in the booth in 2015 and has given no hint that she plans to move elsewhere. She and Sterling were both retained when the broadcasting contract moved from WCBS to WFAN after 2013 season.

She was a close friend of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and in 1999 helped to resolve a feud with former Yankee great Yogi Berra, who had vowed never to speak to "the Boss" again after being unceremoniously fired in 1985. She has sometimes been criticized for showing excessive emotion or enthusiasm for the Yankees, especially in her first years on the job, but then again, she was no worse than her partner Sterling in this regard. The criticisms became less as having woman broadcasting games became less of a novelty and it became clear that she was a competent announcer.

Further Reading

• Betelhem Ashame: "Balkovec latest in line of women shattering baseball's barriers", mlb.com, January 24, 2022. [1]
• Sarah Langs: "A discussion with trailblazer Suzyn Waldman", mlb.com, March 19, 2021. [2]