John Sterling’s botched Giancarlo Stanton home run call vs Blue Jays is worst yet

It is time, once again, for New York Yankees fans to defend long-time play-by-play man John Sterling’s honor at the worst possible time.

Sterling is an honest-to-goodness legend whose less-than-self-serious calls have become the soundtrack to decades of Yankee summers. He also, unfortunately, has a long-held tendency to make mistakes on difficult-to-spot fly balls, dating back to his dynastic prime.

That tendency, unfortunately, has gotten much worse in recent years — but can you really blame Sterling, who loves this job, but likely can’t handle it anymore? Who’s going to tell him “no,” though?

Back in the old days, Sterling used to occasionally get too boisterous on long fly balls, but he’d typically ramp up his own classic home run call before closing it with a downer. “It is high! It is far! It issssss…caught, how do you like that?”

These days, unfortunately, he sometimes gets the whole thing out before realizing the error of his ways.

On Wednesday night, Sterling joined Yankees Universe in being fooled by a long, potential game-tying drive off the bat of Giancarlo Stanton. Perhaps he lost the ball in the pageantry. Or maybe he watched the YES Network broadcast, which panned over the wall for no reason.

Regardless … this is bad.

Yankees legend John Sterling’s Giancarlo Stanton home run call mistake

Another season, another sad, spiritual sequel to the Green Monster shot that helped sink the 2021 season (and fooled Sterling, too).

Here’s the worst part, though: this one also fooled me. So did the Wild Card Game shot! Are we all, collectively, washed? I can’t even blame Sterling with my whole heart. Every single thing about Wednesday’s shot looked, sounded and smelled like a dramatic, game-tying pinch-hit shot. Even 12 hours later, I have no idea how the narrative of Wednesday’s game wasn’t fundamentally changed by that impact.

The only thing I can reasonably advise, though, is that Sterling should probably return to his old habit and keep the home run call unfinished until the ball’s actually in the seats/fans are leaping around.

So far, the Yankees are stuck at .500 and nearly all of the home runs they’ve drilled at Yankee Stadium have been unicorns, which only would’ve gone out in their specific ballpark.

Then, when presented with something that looks like an actual monster dong, we get nothing but false hope.

What a wonderful world.

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