SUZYN WALDMAN

Trailblazing sportscaster, award-winning journalist and longtime radio broadcaster for the New York Yankees

Award-winning broadcaster Suzyn Waldman this year begins her 40th year either covering or broadcasting the New York Yankees, and her 22nd season as the Yankees’ radio color commentator.

Inducted into the Radio Hall of Fame in 2022, Waldman has spent the last four decades overcoming the obstacles that go along with being a female sports broadcaster, and has been an inspiration and mentor to two generations of girls and women wanting to enter the sports arena.

Forty years ago, in 1987, Waldman became the first voice heard on New York’s WFAN-AM — the first all-sports station in the country — creating the job of the radio beat reporter, covering the Yankees and New York Knicks. Her news-breaking reports, exclusive interviews and controversial opinions won her countless journalism awards, including the International Radio Award for Live and Emotional Reporting from the upper deck in Candlestick Park during the San Francisco earthquake.

The word “first” precedes the name Suzyn Waldman in every facet of her television and radio career. She was the first woman to work on a nationally televised baseball broadcast (for the Baseball Network) and the first to provide TV play-by-play for a Major League team, broadcasting New York Yankees games for WPIX, MSG Network and WNYW in the mid ‘90s. She is the first woman to host an NBA pre- and post-game show, provided play-by-play for the WNBA on Lifetime TV, and was an analyst for St. John’s basketball and the NIT for MSG and WFAN. She was the first woman to broadcast a World Series, and her scorecard and microphone are among other artifacts of her career in the “Women In Baseball” exhibit at Cooperstown.

She has been honored by countless organizations, including the Thurman Munson Foundation, the March of Dimes, the Jimmy Fund of Boston, the Gracie Awards, American Women in Radio and TV, the US Federal Women’s Foundation, and was the first recipient of the Women’s Global Health award from the Albert Einstein College of Medicine at the United Nations for her work speaking with and inspiring fellow breast cancer survivors. She has been named one of the “100 Most Influential Women in Radio” 12 straight years by Radio Ink Magazine, and in 2016, was inducted, with her former longtime radio partner, John Sterling, into the New York State Broadcasters Hall of Fame. On January 25, 2025, at the 100th New York Baseball Writers’ Dinner, Waldman and Sterling received one of baseball’s highest honors, the William J. Slocum/Jack Lang Award for “Long & Meritorious Service.”

A native Bostonian with a B.S. in economics and anhonorary doctorate of Journalism from Boston’s prestigious Simmons University, Waldman spent 15 years on the Broadway musical stage and performed in countless night clubs around the world.

She is proudest of two things in her long and varied career: her two years in theater starring opposite the late Richard Kiley in Man of La Mancha, and her bringing together George Steinbrenner and Yogi Berra after 14 years of not speaking. She lives in Westchester County with her German Shepard, Margo.