New York Yankees play-by-play announcer John Sterling is totally fine.
The longtime radio voice of the Yankees insisted that he was OK on Sunday after a foul ball traveled into the booth at Yankee Stadium and hit him in the head the night before.
And, as promised, he was back in the broadcast booth for the third and final game of their series against the Boston Red Sox on Sunday night.
“To all the Yankee fans, I am fine,” Sterling said while wearing a bandage above his eye. “It hit me in the head, a muscle up there, so I was OK. I thank you for all the warm, wonderful, loving thoughts. Anyway I’m fine. As I told Suzyn, Suzyn was the first when I was driving home, it produced phone calls and texts from all the people who loved me. So it really turned out to be a very good thing.”
Red Sox star Justin Turner hit a foul ball in the ninth inning at Yankee Stadium on Saturday night that went all the way up and hit Sterling in the forehead in the booth. Fans heard Sterling react in real time on the broadcast, although he remained in the booth for the rest of the game.
“It really hit me, I didn’t know it was coming back that far,” he said on the broadcast after yelling out in pain.
The Yankees then shared a video of the ball actually hitting Sterling in the face on Sunday.
Turner reached out to Sterling after the fact, too, and signed the ball that hit him.
Thankfully, Sterling was fine after the incident that could have been much, much worse.
Sterling has called Yankees games since 1989. At one point, he had called an impressive 5,060 consecutive games — though that streak ended in 2019.