In the 1990s, Joe and Mary Ellen D’Amico were Yankees fans living in Morris, Conn., and to their five children, John Sterling’s voice was almost as familiar as their own.
“Dad would be grilling, and I would be out in the driveway with my brothers playing catch,” recalls Nate D’Amico, 32. “And we’d have the radio on listening to the games and all of John’s home run calls. It was a very quintessential part of our childhood.”
Young Nate took to imitating Sterling’s play-by-play calls, coached on by his father, who had Yankee fandom passed down to him by his father and grandfather.
“We’d watch the games all the time with the sound turned off so we could listen to Sterling,” said 70-year-old patriarch Joe D’Amico. “He was the soundtrack to our lives.”
Sterling, the longtime radio voice of the Yankees, passed away in May at age 87. With that news, the family group chat -- which includes Nate’s brothers, Joe III and Andrew, and his sisters, Ellen and Anna -- began churning with memories of old games and good times.
And that’s when the talk naturally came back to 1996, when the Yankees won the World Series and 2-year-old Nate broke out his Sterling impression to the legend himself.
The second of the D’Amicos’ five children, Nate had always been a little precocious and theatrical. He would go on to participate in plays and musicals all through high school, but his earliest performances were mimicking Sterling’s calls in the backyard and the living room. Nate copied Sterling so well that Joe decided he had to share this gift with others.
On October 27, 1996, the morning after the Yankees beat the Braves to clinch their first World Series championship in nearly two decades, Joe picked up the phone and called in to Mike Francesa’s Sunday morning show on New York’s all-sports radio station WFAN.
“I knew Nate could do this, and I just said, 'I’m gonna give it a shot,'” Joe recalled.
After convincing the show’s producer that his 2-year-old son did a spot-on Sterling impersonation, Joe made it on the air and handed the phone to Nate, who delivered in perfect cadence on live radio like Derek Jeter in the clutch.
“It is high, it is far, it is gone! Theeeee Yankees win! Theeeee Yankees wiiiiiiiin!”
Nate was such a big hit that he was invited back a month later to a live "Mike & The Mad Dog" show (featuring Francesa and Christopher “Mad Dog” Russo) at The Museum of Radio and Television in New York City. There, seated in the audience to hear Nate’s encore performance, was a delighted and tickled Sterling.
Amazed at the thought of a 2-year-old bellowing his own calls, Sterling autographed a commemorative newspaper to “Nate The Great,” which is among the family keepsakes the D’Amicos still have, along with a videotaped recording of their appearance.
Over the past month, as the family continued to reminisce about all their wonderful memories throughout the years, one thought kept running through Nate’s mind.
“How can you not be romantic about baseball?” he said, echoing the line Brad Pitt made famous in the movie “Moneyball.”
“It’s just such a part of our lives,” said Nate, a former Naval officer now living in Alexandria, Va. “And when John passed, it was one of those times when we just went back and forth in the family group chat.”
While the physical technology has changed over the years, the D’Amicos still find their love of baseball on the radio appealing. Nate tunes in to the radio broadcast when he goes to Nationals games in nearby Washington, D.C.
Joe and his wife are retired and living in South Carolina. When they hit the road to visit the kids or grandkids, Joe still prefers listening to a ballgame while driving.
“There’s still nothing better than having a baseball game on,” Joe said. “Two hours go by in the blink of an eye.”
How can you not be romantic about baseball, indeed.