Bob Sheppard

Robert Leo Sheppard (October 20, 1910 – July 11, 2010) was the long-time public address announcer for numerous New York area college and professional sports teams, in particular the New York Yankees of Major League Baseball (1951–2007), and the New York Giants of the National Football League (1956–2006).

Sheppard announced more than 4,500 Yankees baseball games over a period of 56 years, including 22 pennant-winning seasons and 13 World Series championships; he called 121 consecutive postseason contests, 62 games in 22 World Series, and six no-hitters, including three perfect games.

Sheppard was secretive about his age throughout his life, but according to New York voter records he was born October 20, 1910, in Richmond Hill, Queens, New York City.

He graduated from Saint John's Preparatory School in Astoria, Queens in 1928, and attended St. John's University on an athletic scholarship, where he earned seven varsity letters from 1928 to 1932; three in baseball as the starting first baseman, and four in football as the left-handed starting quarterback.

He was also elected president of his senior class.

In 1933, he received a master's degree in speech education from Columbia University.

Sheppard began his career playing semiprofessional football on Long Island with the Valley Stream Red Riders and the Hempstead Monitors, earning $25 a game, and teaching speech at Grover Cleveland High School in Ridgewood, Queens, New York.

During World War II he served in the Navy as a gunnery officer aboard cargo ships, both in convoys and on independent missions in the Pacific Theater.

After the War he became Chairman of the Speech Department at John Adams High School in Queens, and taught evening courses in public speaking at his alma mater, St. John's University.

He also served as speech and debate coach for Sacred Heart Academy's Forensic Team in Hempstead, New York.

His multiple teaching jobs overlapped more than 25 years into his announcing career, and he always maintained that his academic work was far more important than his accomplishments as an announcer.

"My sports activity", he said,"...cut down on what I really contributed to society, and that's teaching...when I hear from former students and they say I helped them achieve their goals, I feel I have contributed to society more than all I have done in sports."

As an announcer, he said, "All I have to recommend is longevity."

In the late 1940s, he became the announcer for the Brooklyn Dodgers of the All-America Football Conference at Ebbets Field.

He came to the attention of the Yankees when a front-office official heard him deliver a tribute to Babe Ruth at a Dodgers football game in 1948.

He was offered the Yankees announcing job, but did not accept it until three years later when the Yankees agreed to hire an understudy, so that his duties with the team would not interfere with his teaching responsibilities.

He debuted at Yankee Stadium on April 17, 1951 with the Yankees' home opener, a 5–0 win over the Boston Red Sox.

His 1951 salary was $15 per game, $17 for a doubleheader.

Sheppard's distinctive announcing style became an integral component of the Yankee Stadium experience.

For more than half a century each game began with his trademark cadence – "Good afternoon (evening)...ladies and gentlemen...and welcome...to Yankee Stadium" – his words reverberating around the massive structure.

Each in-game announcement began: "Your attention please, ladies and gentlemen."

He introduced every player, Yankee or visitor (as described on his Monument Park plaque), "with equal divine reverence."

He communicated the players' position, uniform number, name, and repeated the number, during his first at-bat ("Now batting for the Yankees, the first baseman, number 23, Don Mattingly, number 23"), while announcing the players' position and name during each succeeding at-bat ("The first baseman, Don Mattingly").

He eschewed flamboyant nicknames; Dennis Boyd was never introduced as "Oil Can", nor Jim Hunter as "Catfish."

He once listed (in order) his favorite names to announce: Mickey Mantle, Shigetoshi Hasegawa, Salomé Barojas, José Valdivielso and Álvaro Espinoza; and he expressed his special affection for the natural resonance of many Latino players' names.

"Anglo-Saxon names are not very euphonious", he said.

"What can I do with Steve Sax? What can I do with Mickey Klutts?"

But Mickey Mantle remained his favorite; Sheppard said Mantle once told him, "'Every time Bob Sheppard introduced me at Yankee Stadium, I got shivers up my spine.' And I said to him, 'So did I.'"

Sheppard took great pride in pronouncing every name correctly, and made certain to check directly with a visiting player if he had any doubt on the correct or preferred pronunciation.

He admitted that early in his career, whenever the Senators were in town he particularly feared tripping over Wayne Terwilliger's name.

"I worried that I would say 'Ter-wigg-ler'", he recalled, "but I never did."

He was also the in-house voice for New York Giants football games for more than a half-century, encompassing nine conference championships, three NFL championships (1956, 1986, 1990), and the game often called "the greatest ever played", the classic 1958 championship loss to Baltimore.

Sheppard's smooth, distinctive baritone and precise, consistent elocution became iconic aural symbols of both the old Yankee Stadium and Giants Stadium.

Reggie Jackson famously nicknamed him "The Voice of God", and Carl Yastrzemski once said, "You're not in the big leagues until Bob Sheppard announces your name."

In 1956, when the New York Giants football team moved from the Polo Grounds to Yankee Stadium, he began announcing their games as well, and remained with them when they moved to Giants Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey in 1976.

Sheppard's first year as the Yankees' announcer was the only one in which Joe DiMaggio and Mickey Mantle shared the outfield.

His first game featured eight future Hall of Famers: DiMaggio, Mantle, Johnny Mize, Yogi Berra, and Phil Rizzuto for the Yankees, and Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, and Lou Boudreau for the Red Sox.

The first player he introduced was the Yankee Clipper's brother, Dominic DiMaggio.

After World War II, Sheppard was hired as the public address announcer for St. John's football and basketball games, a job he kept well into the 1990s.

He did stumble on at least one rookie's name: Jorge Posada was called up from Columbus late in the 1995 season, and made his first appearance as a Yankee in Game 2 of the 1995 American League Division Series against Seattle, as a pinch runner for Wade Boggs.