John Sterling on the phone call that changed his career and Yankee history

Tomorrow I’ll stop humming “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” but for now it’s John Sterling, who’s been the voice of the Yankees since we were only 13 states. He retired last season.Sterling: “I was then broadcasting baseball in Atlanta.A phone call said the Yankee GM didn’t like their broadcast team, knew my work and so I should come over.

I had no agent.I called a lawyer friend.

I said, ‘Call this guy and make a deal.’ No audition, no nothing.He rang me back and said, ‘We have a deal.’ ”Why’s everyone, the whole world, crazed for baseball?“Because they make a lot of money, that’s why.

When I was 21 I got on the air way upstate.I made 60 bucks a week — and the last 50 years it’s been the Yankees.

I have broadcast every one of Derek Jeter’s games and all of Mariano Rivera’s.“But, listen, we all sometimes screw up.Like in San Francisco.

They play afternoons because it’s so cold there at night.So I’m on air making a point and I say, ‘Great that we have Saturday night off in San Francisco, so we can taste the fruits of this great city.’“My partner next to me went pale.

I thought he was going to have a stroke.After a minute I realized what I’d said.“Other than what I just said, the team has wanted other changes, like they want the pitchers to pitch quicker because the games take so long.“Listen, I even once got hit by a foul ball.

The guy fouled the pitch back and that ball hit me right over my left eye.”I told him I myself wasn’t happy with Boston’s Fenway Park.Once I was there checking on a game.

I ordered a frank.What they brought me was beige.

BEIGE.A beige frank? Looked like a dog dropped it.

So I wrote about that.They then barred me from ever being mentioned again in the Boston Globe.

I then informed them what I thought they could do with their paper.We just lost Richard Chamberlain, who started life as a supermarket clerk.Then he worked as a chauffeur.

He lived in Hawaii.He loved Ha...