Dave Sims on Yankees' radio broadcasting job on WFAN: 'It's pretty amazing'

Dave Sims was busy preparing to call Saturday’s Seton Hall-Wagner basketball game on Fox Sports 2. But on Friday afternoon, he found himself dealing with the happy fallout from an unrelated piece of sports media news.

“It’s a madhouse,” he told Newsday, referring to his first full day as the new lead radio play-by-play voice of the Yankees.

Audacy, WFAN’s parent company, made the announcement late Thursday, which led to Sims appearing on the station on Friday morning, then to a day-long wave of best wishes.

He said as he and his wife, Abby, walked home from the subway after his WFAN appearance, a young man of 30 or 35 caught sight of him.

“He said, ‘Hey, Dave, big fan, Yankees fan, stay up late at night and watch your games in Seattle,’ ” Sims recalled. “Then, ‘Hey, can I get a selfie?’ I loved it. So that was the first interaction.

“My wife says, ‘Get used to it. There’s going to be a lot more of that coming.’ ”

So it goes for one of the plum assignments in sports radio. Sims, 71, will succeed John Sterling, 86, who retired last season after holding the job since 1989.

It was enough of a lure to bring Sims back to New York — where he began his career — after 18 years doing TV and radio play-by-play for the Seattle Mariners.

Sims also coveted the job for personal reasons. He grew up in Philadelphia but has lived in New York for most of his adult life. He also has a son who lives in New Jersey.

“Coming home and doing the Yankees is like a double bonus,” he said.

Sims began as a newspaper reporter for the Daily News before transitioning to TV and radio work, including as a midday host in the early years of WFAN.

“Now I’m the radio voice of the Yankees,” he said. “It’s pretty amazing. I wish my parents and grandparents were around to see this.

“They would be flipping out, especially when you consider the dearth of lead Black sportscasters in the industry and in most of sports broadcasting.”

Sims said he first caught the New York baseball bug reading World Series programs from his father’s trips with his friends to New York in the late 1940s and early ’50s.

“The Dodgers were Black America’s team,” Sims said. “When I was a kid, I knew all about the Brooklyn Dodgers.”

As a young boy, Sims lived a short walk from Connie Mack Stadium and saw all the great National League stars of the era play there.

Sims expects a smooth transition working with Suzyn Waldman, a friend since the late 1980s, when Sims was at WFAN and Waldman was a reporter for the station.

He said he first met with WFAN officials in mid-May for a “feeling-out process.” The interest became public when a caller to WFAN in June said he had heard from Waldman that Sims was a candidate.

Sims was shocked by the news of the caller, who called himself “Dr. Joe,” and phoned Waldman to tell her his name had been floated publicly. Five months later, he got the job.

Audacy New York market president Chris Oliviero cited the Yankees’ long history of iconic voices and called Sims “a worthy successor to that lineage.”

After all these decades in the business, Sims respects the task of following Sterling but will not be intimidated by it.

“I’ve got my own style,” he said. “And I’ve already followed another legend [in Seattle’s Dave Niehaus]. So I’ve walked this path before.”

By Neil Best

neil.best@newsday.com@sportswatch

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.