Dave Sims will call Yankees games on WFAN Radio, replacing John Sterling
Dave Sims attends The Players Alliance Game Changers Celebration at AQUA by El Gaucho on July 9, 2023 in Seattle, Washington. Credit: Getty Images for The Players Alliance
Dave Sims is coming home.
The longtime TV voice of the Seattle Mariners — and longtime Manhattan resident — will succeed John Sterling as the Yankees’ lead radio play-by-play voice in 2025.
Audacy, parent company of WFAN, announced the hire on Thursday evening, making Sims the first official new lead radio voice for the Yankees since Sterling began in 1989.
The former WFAN midday host has been eager to return to New York, where he makes his home in the offseason and where he can be closer to his family.
With Sterling, 86, retiring, Sims, 71, saw an opportunity and applied for the job, on which he will work alongside an old friend in Suzyn Waldman.
Sims had been calling Mariners games since 2007.
“It’s great to be home,” he said in a news release. “What an honor to be part of the iconic Yankees franchise. New York is where it all started for me, and I can’t wait for Opening Day and to work with my good friend Suzyn!”
Sims’ name first surfaced in June, when a caller to WFAN who identified himself as “Dr. Joe” said he had heard from Waldman that Sims was a top candidate.
In September, Sims confirmed his interest to NJ.com.
Sims and Rickie Ricardo, the Yankees’ Spanish-language announcer, emerged as the two finalists for the job.
Ricardo, Justin Shackil and Emmanuel Berbari were among the fill-ins on Yankees games after Sterling announced his retirement in early April.
Sterling returned for the last week of the regular season and playoffs, but now he appears to be retired for good.
While Chris Oliviero, market president for Audacy New York, was the key figure in the decision-making process for WFAN, the Yankees also sign off on such hires.
“The radio voice of the Yankees is a storied position in the history of baseball,” Oliviero said in a release.
“From Allen and Barber to Rizzuto to Sterling, the names are synonymous with the pinstripes. Dave Sims is a worthy successor to that lineage. We are honored to have Dave join the incomparable Suzyn Waldman in the booth in the Bronx.”
Sims grew up in Philadelphia and settled in New York in the 1980s.
He hosted a midday show with Ed Coleman on WFAN from 1989-93.
Sims has done a variety of other local and national work, including in New York as a writer at the Daily News and on WNBC-AM radio, MSG Network and WCBS-TV.
Neil Best first worked at Newsday in 1982, returned in 1985 after a detour to Alaska and has been here since, specializing in high schools, college basketball, the NFL and most recently sports media and business.
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