“Some people, most of them not Yankees fans, think that because the Yankees are a flagship franchise, they should have a network-level announcer who is never a homer,” Mr. Seely told The New York Times in 2011. “But the truth is, when the Yankees do something wrong, John rips them, like any psychotic Yankees fan. At the same time, like a true Yankees fan, when they win, John cannot control himself. The joy bursts from his breast.”
John Sloss was born in Manhattan on July 4, 1938, to Carl and Gladys (Hodrov) Sloss. His father was an advertising executive. John grew up on the East Side listening to the radio and admiring the vocal dexterity of stars like Bob Hope, Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra.
“I studied and mimicked everyone — disc jockeys, news readers, baseball and football announcers,” he told The Times. “I used to get teased as a young boy for my deep voice, but I learned I could use it to adapt to different radio styles.”
He briefly attended Moravian College, in Bethlehem, Pa., and Boston University, but when his mother died, he returned to New York City, and took some classes at Columbia University’s School of General Studies.
He gave up his studies at 19 and got an on-air job at a radio station in Wellsville, N.Y., near Buffalo, where he changed his surname to the glossier Sterling. He worked at a series of small stations in the Northeast before moving into larger markets like Providence, R.I., where he was the disc jockey for a rock ’n’ roll program, and Baltimore, where he was the host of a talk show. During the 1970-71 basketball season, he called some Baltimore Bullets (now Washington Wizards) games.