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Pregame

I’m not sure I’ve met a baseball announcer who seemingly knows everyone like the energetic, always-on-the-move Suzyn Waldman.

“When you say I know everybody, I don’t know everybody, but I know people who do know everybody,” she told me on my podcast in 2022.

She’s humble, but my eyes don’t lie. Every time the Yankees face the Royals, I watch her work the clubhouse, gathering details and passing on information about the players. I often say that I keep getting older, and the athletes I cover keep getting younger. When I began working with the Royals, I was in my thirties, ten years older than the players. Now in my fifties, I’m connecting with the next generation of twentysomethings every day. Suzyn is still mastering it in her seventies. The Yankees radio color commentator is an inspiration to women who are finally making progress after being ignored for generations in sports broadcasting. But it’s not just the amazing women in my profession who try to be like her.

I find myself wanting to emulate Suzyn, too, because she’s a master storyteller. I watched her track down Kansas City’s twenty-four-year-old first baseman Nick Pratto to polish a story before the game one night. Then on to Jose Cuas, the former-FedEx-driver-turned-Royals-reliever and winner of the Tony Conigliaro Award. It’s given to a “Major Leaguer who has overcome adversity through the attributes of spirit, determination, and courage that were trademarks of Tony C.” the former Red Sox outfielder whose career was cut short by a beanball in 1967. Conigliaro passed in 1990, and Suzyn was a friend of Tony C’s. She wanted to make sure Cuas knew about the man before he played at Fenway later that summer because he would be asked about it by the Boston media. Of course, she knew Tony C. She knows everybody.

As I watched her at work and listened back to her appearance on my podcast,Rounding the Bases, I thought to myself,I’ve done this a long time, and I have so much room for improvement. Suzyn Waldman is proof it’s never too late to chase a dream.

Game

Suzyn Waldman attended Red Sox games as a kid. Dreams of broadcasting for the Yankees? No chance. Nor the Sox or any team, for that matter.

“I grew up in the ’50s. I mean, there were no women doing this. You never thought about it.”

Sitting and chatting with Suzyn in the Yankees radio booth on a Sunday morning in July 2023, I told her I wanted to write a chapter about her in this book. I passed on the story of my mom, and when I shared the challenge my mother faced in being told sh