It’s always good to have a friend in a town as tough as New York City. When Yankees radio play-by-play announcer John Sterling found himself in a tricky situation amid the pounding rain of Hurricane Ida on Wednesday night, he found that friend in a familiar face from the broadcast booth.
The 83-year-old Sterling’s car flooded and left him stranded in Edgewater, N.J., after he wrapped up a remote call of the Yankees’ road game against the Angels from Yankee Stadium in the Bronx. Rickie Ricardo, the Yankees’ Spanish radio announcer, received a call from Sterling’s longtime partner Suzyn Waldman, alerting him that Sterling was in trouble. Ricardo was making his way through the rain to the George Washington Bridge to cross over to New Jersey when he got Waldman’s call.
"Suzyn asked me, 'Where are you?'” Ricardo recalled to WFAN Sports Radio on Thursday. “I said, 'I'm working my way across upper Manhattan to get to the [George Washington] Bridge to get to New Jersey.' She says, 'John is stuck on River Road in Edgewater.'
“Now, I know for years, I've seen how bad it gets flooded on River Road in Edgewater, and with the kind of rain we had, I can only imagine. So I said, 'Suzyn, I'm on my way. I more or less know where he lives. I'll figure out where he's at and see what I can do.'"
Ricardo was able to make contact with Sterling via cell phone and found the longtime voice of the Yankees stranded alongside roughly 25 other cars. Ricardo said water was entering the cabin of Sterling’s car before he was able to help Sterling out and load him into Ricardo’s SUV. It took roughly an hour, Ricardo said, just to drive the roughly half-mile between Sterling’s car and his home to drop him off because of multiple road closures.