Bob Sheppard

After completing the rough draft of his Hall of Fame acceptance speech during the summer of 1993, Reggie Jackson asked legendary New York Yankees public address announcer Bob Sheppard to critique it.

“Now, I want you to be honest with me,” the verbose slugger known as Mr. October told the man he had dubbed “The Voice of God.”1 

Sheppard’s first piece of advice was brutally honest. The longtime St. John’s University speech professor suggested Jackson slice his 40-minute oratory in half.

“I reminded Reggie that brevity was the soul of wit,” Sheppard recalled, enunciating his words in the same distinctive, eloquent manner he used to announce lineups at Yankee Stadium for 56 years. “Brevity, when it comes to public speaking, especially on a hot summer’s day, also is a way of making friends.”2

It can be argued that when it came to endearing oneself to audiences, few did it better than Sheppard, who preached and practiced what he called the three C’s – “Be clear, correct, concise.” Through the decades, the Queens, New York, native wound up working more than 4,500 Yankees games, as well as hundreds of New York Giants National Football League contests, at Yankee Stadium.

“He added to the aura of old Yankee Stadium; to the experience of being there,” said longtime Yankees public relations director, historian, and author Marty Appel. “This was sacred baseball acreage, hallowed grounds, and Bob lent a divine voice.”3

Over time, that dignified voice became as much a part of the House That Ruth Built as the scalloped copper frieze, the center-field monuments, and the scores of famous players whose names he announced.

It was a voice that Mickey Mantle, Derek Jeter, and numerous other ballplayers said sent shivers up their spines. A voice that from 1951 through 2007 greeted tens of millions of visitors with the words, “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Yankee Stadium.”

Even visiting players couldn’t wait to hear him boom their names.

“You’re not in the big leagues,” said Boston Red Sox great Carl Yastrzemski, “until Bob Sheppard announces your name.”4   

Following the famed public-address announcer’s death at age 99 in 2010, an Associated Press obituary noted that “Babe Ruth gave Yankee Stadium its nickname, but Sheppard gave the place its sound.”5

On May 7, 2000 – in commemoration of his 50th year in the booth – the Yankees unveiled a plaque of him in Monument Park, just beyond the center-field wall. During  pregame ceremonies that afternoon, New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani proclaimed it Bob Sheppard Day in the Big Apple, and legendary CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite read the plaque’s inscription, as past and present Yankee stars Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, Mariano Rivera, Jeter, and Jackson looked on.6 Roughly two months later, on July 23, Sheppard donated the microphone he had used for decades to the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum in Cooperstown, where it was put on display in a third-floor exhibit devoted to baseball parks.7

Sheppard’s Yankee Stadium debut on April 17, 1951, coincided with Mantle’s, and that was somewhat fitting because they shared the same October 20 birthday, though Sheppard was born in 1910 and Mantle 21 years later. That day’s announcements featured nine future Hall of Famers: Joe DiMaggio, Johnny Mize, Casey Stengel, Rizzuto, Berra, and Mantle from the Yankees, and Ted Williams, Bobby Doerr, and Lou Boudreau from the Boston Red Sox. For the record, the first baseball name he announced at the Stadium was Red Sox leadoff hitter Dom DiMaggio.8

Sheppard’s auspicious debut was a harbinger. Over the next 5½ decades, he introduced more than 70 Hall of Famers, and he had a voice in numerous historic games. All told, he was the public-address announcer for 22 American League pennant winners and 13 World Series championship teams. He worked a record 121 consecutive postseason games, and a total of 62 games in 22 different Fall Classics – two records that likely will never be broken.9 Sheppard was on hand for six no-hitters at the Stadium, including one of his all-time favorite sports moments – Don Larsen’s perfect game against the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1956 World Series. He also did the announcing for David Wells’ perfecto in 1998 and David Cone’s 27-up, 27-down gem a year later.10

Sheppard manned the microphone for football’s Giants for 18 years (1956-73) at the Stadium, and another 33 seasons after they left the Bronx. That means he was there for the Giants’ 1956 NFL championship season as well as the 1958 overtime title contest between them and the Baltimore Colts – a game many pro football historians regard as the greatest ever played and a game that helped launch the NFL’s popularity on television.11

Sheppard’s work at North American Soccer League games involving the Pelé-led Cosmos, and football games between historically Black colleges Grambling and Morgan State, further cemented his reputation as the Voice of Yankee Stadium.

Although his memorable and often imitated intonations landed him recognition in both Cooperstown and Monument Park, he was prouder of the lesser-known but more influential work he did as a teacher at the high-school and college levels.

“I think teaching was more important in my life than public address because teaching had a greater impact on society,” said Sheppard, who continued his work as a professor at St. John’s into the 1990s. “I’ve heard from hundreds of students I taught. The number of ballplayers I’ve heard from you can count on one hand.”12

Part of that was by design because he purposely avoided interacting with players.

“I’m not into hero worship,” Sheppard said. “I usually keep my distance from players and managers, and that’s as it should be. I have a job to do at the ballpark, and so do they.”13 

He may not have heard directly from many players through the years, but that doesn’t mean he didn’t make a lasting impact on them. Mantle told Sheppard he experienced goose bumps every time the announcer said his name. Sheppard, who delivered a stirring tribute at the ballpark the day Mantle died in 1995, told the Mick he had a similar reaction each time he introduced the Yankee slugger.14

In fact, of the thousands of names he announced through the decades, Mantle’s was his favorite.

“It just rolled wonderfully off the tongue,” Sheppard said. “There was, of course, the alliteration. But it also had to do with the emphasis on the first syllable of his last name. Mickey MAN-tle. So euphonious. What a name and what a ballplayer.”15

Jeter may have paid Sheppard the greatest compliment of all. After illness, injury, and age forced Sheppard to the sidelines for good following the 2007 season, Jeter asked the announcer to record the Yankee shortstop’s intro, which was played each time he came to bat at home games for the rest of his career.

“That’s the only voice I had heard [at Yankee Stadium] growing up,” Jeter said. “And that’s the only voice I wanted to hear when I was announced at home games. He’s as important as any player that’s been here. He’s part of the experience, you know. Part of the experience of Yankee Stadium is Bob Sheppard’s voice.”16

***

Though he was secretive about his age for most of his life, voter records showed that Robert Leo Sheppard was born in Richmond Hill, Queens, on October 20, 1910. He developed a love of language at an early age, thanks to his parents.

“My father, Charles, and my mother, Eileen, each enjoyed poetry and music and public speaking,” Sheppard told Maury Allen in Baseball: The Lives Behind the Seams. “They were very precise in how they spoke. They measured words, pronounced everything carefully and instilled a love of language in me by how they respected proper pronunciation.”17

While attending St. John’s Preparatory School in Queens, Sheppard had two Vincentian priests as teachers who, by example and counsel, steered him toward his future career as a teacher and announcer.

“One was Father McKellen, who was so precise in his speech that every word seemed to be a diamond,” he said. “And grammatically he was without flaw. He taught English. … Another priest taught religion. But he also preached on Sunday in my parish. And he was inspirational in language. From the emotional point of view, he made words seem colorful. So between the purist who taught English and the priest who taught religion, language appreciation in me grew and grew and grew. And I think it was, maybe in high school, that I dreamed of making speech my career … along with sports.”18  

Long before he began announcing games, Sheppard enjoyed playing them. A left-handed-throwing first baseman and quarterback, he excelled at both positions in high school and earned an athletic scholarship to St. John’s University, where he earned three varsity letters in baseball and four in football. Popular among his peers, Sheppard was elected president of his senior class.19

After graduating with a degree in English and speech, Sheppard played semipro football in the New York City area for $25 a game, but that was as far as his playing career went. His true passion was the spoken word, and at the urging of St. John’s professor Walter Robinson – “a stickler for phonetic pronunciation” – he enrolled at Columbia University, where he earned a master’s degree in speech education in 1933.20

Graduate degree in hand, he took an exam to become a speech teacher in New York City, landing a job at Grover Cleveland High School in the Ridgewood section of Queens.21

After World War II broke out, Sheppard joined the Navy as a gunnery officer aboard cargo ships in the Pacific theater and the Caribbean.  Following his discharge, he became a teacher and chair of the speech department at John Adams, one of the finer high schools in the city, and stayed there for 25 years. During that time, he taught night courses at St. John’s University and the Bankers’ Institute of America.22 

Sheppard also managed to find time to do the P.A. at Ebbets Field for Brooklyn Dodgers games in the old All-American Football Conference (AAFC) in 1946. When the Dodgers folded before the 1949 season, Sheppard was hired to do public address for New York Yankees football games at Yankee Stadium. (The Yankees also were members of the AAFC.)

Sheppard was so good at his job that officials from baseball’s New York Yankees asked him to do their games as well, but he balked initially because early-season weekday games would interfere with his teaching. It wasn’t until the Yankees allowed him to find an understudy to pinch-hit for him in the booth when there were scheduling conflicts that Sheppard agreed to become the baseball voice of Yankee Stadium, too.

“I never had a plan to make a career of it because you couldn’t possibly make a living on $15 a game, which is what the Yankees were paying me – $15 a game and $17 for a doubleheader,” he said. “I viewed it as something temporary, but that temporary job has wound up lasting half a century.”23

For the longest time, Sheppard’s duties were quite limited. He would announce the starting lineups and introduce the batter when he came to the plate for the first time. After that, there would be mostly silence, unless there was a pitching change or a pinch-hitter. To kill time, Sheppard would sit in his booth, reading books.

“It’s hard to believe, in today’s sports world, where P.A. announcers never seem to stop talking and screaming, but it wasn’t until 1967 that the Yankees actually started having Bob introduce the batter each time he came to the plate, and do commercial announcements between innings,” Appel said. “Ballparks, with the exception of the cheers and jeers of fans and organ music, once were much quieter places.”24

Appel remembers Sheppard as “professorial and dignified, a true gentleman, who was a good listener.” He also remembers him as a perfectionist, a stickler for correct pronunciations of names.

In addition to Mantle, he listed Shigetoshi Hasegawa, Salome Barojas, José Valdivielso, and Álvaro Espinoza among his favorite names to pronounce and announce. Sheppard expressed a special fondness for the natural resonance of Latino players’ names.25

“Anglo-Saxon names are not very euphonious,” he said. “What can I do with Steve Sax? What can I do with Mickey Klutts?”26

Sheppard always worried that he might trip over the announcement of former Washington Senator infielder Wayne Terwilliger’s name. “I was concerned I would say ‘Ter-wigg-ler,’” he said. “But I never did.”27

One name he did mess up was that of Jorge Posada. The five-time Yankees All-Star made his major-league debut as a pinch-runner for Wade Boggs in Game Two of the 1995 American League Division Series. Sheppard wound up putting an “o” instead of an “a” at the end of Posada’s name when he first announced it. Jeter picked up on the error, and started calling Posada “Sodo” – a nickname that stuck for the remainder of the catcher’s career.28

Another rare and funny faux pas occurred in 1976 when Sheppard worked his first game at the then-new Giants Stadium and greeted spectators by saying, “Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen, and welcome to Yankee Stadium.”29

Early on, Sheppard developed a distinctive cadence that allowed his words to echo majestically throughout cavernous Yankee Stadium. His announcement of a player coming to bat followed a simple pattern. He would communicate the player’s position, uniform number and name, then repeat the number. For example: “Now batting … the shortstop … number two … Derek Jeter … number two.” He imbued each name and number with a gravitas more in keeping with a coronation than a ballpark outing. “Mr. Sheppard could read [rap star] Eminem lyrics and make them sound like the Magna Carta,” Clyde Haberman wrote in a 2005 New York Times feature story.30

As sports evolved, and games became events, public-address announcers became more of the show, raising their voices in hopes of firing up the crowd. Sheppard deplored the showmanship, and remained true to his old school, understated approach right till his last game. As he once said: “A P.A. announcer is not a cheerleader, or a circus barker, or a hometown screecher. He’s a reporter.”31

Although few recognized Sheppard in person, his voice was unmistakable. Once, while ordering a scotch and soda at a bar, he watched heads turn his way. A devout Catholic, Sheppard served as a lector at the Church of St. Christopher near his home in Baldwin, Long Island, and often was greeted by parish newcomers who would tell him, “You sound like that announcer at Yankee Stadium.” Sheppard would smile mischievously and respond: “That’s because I am that announcer.”32

Besides reading scripture during Mass, Sheppard also worked with his parish priests on their sermons. “I electrified the seminary by saying seven minutes is long enough on a Sunday morning, but I don’t think they listened to me,” he told the Associated Press in 2006. “The best-known speech in American history is the Gettysburg Address, and it’s about four minutes long. Isn’t that something?”33

In addition to Larsen’s perfect game and the Giants-Colts’ NFL championship game, Sheppard’s favorite Yankee Stadium moments included Roger Maris’s record-breaking 61st home run in 1961, Chris Chambliss’s walk-off homer against the Kansas City Royals in the final game of the 1976 American League Championship  Series, and Jackson’s three-homers-on-three-pitches explosion in Game Six of the 1977 World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers.34

Chambliss’s memorable blast was preceded by a stoppage in play because fans had thrown debris onto the field. Sheppard made an announcement telling the unruly spectators to refrain from such behavior. They stopped – and the game resumed. When Chambliss homered – ending the game and the 12-year Yankees World Series drought – thousands of spectators rushed onto the field. This time, Sheppard’s microphone remained silent.

“The game was over, the Yankees had won, 10,000 people, as if they were shot out of a cannon, ran out onto the field, and I just folded my arms and let them do it,” Sheppard recalled in a 2000 interview with USA Today. “I could never have stopped them. The Marines couldn’t have stopped them. Nobody could have stopped them. It had to happen. I never saw anything like it before, and I’ve never seen anything like it since.”35

Sheppard battled deteriorating health in his later years. In 2006 a hip injury forced him to miss his first home opener since his 1951 debut, and a bronchial infection the following year prevented him from working postseason games. Neither he nor anyone else knew it at the time, but a 10-2 Yankees win against Seattle on September 5, 2007, wound up being his final game, though Sheppard did record the starting lineups that were announced before the last game at the old stadium on September 21, 2008. His longtime understudy, Jim Hall, pinch-hit for him that season, and Paul Olden took over the duties when the team moved across the street to the new ballpark in 2009.36

Sheppard died on July 11, 2010 – three months shy of his 100th birthday and two days before the death of Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. Tributes poured in from far and wide. In a press release, Steinbrenner called him “a good friend and fine man whose voice set the gold standard for America’s sports announcers. … his death leaves a lasting silence.”37 New York Giants President John Mara called Sheppard “the most distinguished and dignified voice in all of professional sports.”38 Jeter noted that “players changed year in and year out, but he was the one constant. Every time you heard him say your name, you got chills.”39

Sheppard was predeceased by his first wife, Margaret, who died of cancer in 1959. His survivors included his second wife, Mary, whom he met at his parish and married in 1961, and the four children he had with Margaret – sons Paul and Chris, and daughters Barbara and Mary.40

In memory of Sheppard, the Yankees wore an embroidered patch depicting a microphone, the Stadium scalloped frieze, and a baseball diamond on their sleeves for the remainder of the 2010 season. The day after his father’s death, Paul Sheppard told the New York Times: “The Yankees and Bob Sheppard were a marriage made in heaven. I know St. Peter will now recruit him. If you’re lucky enough to go to heaven, you’ll be greeted by a voice, saying, ‘Good afternoon, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to heaven!’”41

Recordings of Sheppard’s voice continue to be played before Yankee telecasts on the YES network, and often evoke nostalgic feelings among longtime fans.

“Any time you hear his voice it’s like the key to a time machine and you’re immediately transported back to the original Yankee Stadium,” Appel said. “You feel the excitement you felt when you were a kid going through those turnstiles and hearing that unmistakable voice. It sounded like it was booming down from the clouds. Bob’s impeccable intonations and that ballpark were synonymous. Reggie was right. It was like hearing the Voice of God.”42

Sources

In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author consulted the following:

Appel, Marty. Pinstripe Empire: The New York Yankees From Before the Babe to After the Boss, (New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2020).

Additionally, the author used first-source material from a 25-minute in-person, interview he conducted with Bob Sheppard on July 7, 2007, and a 30-minute phone interview with Appel on October 7, 2022.

Notes

1 Author interview with Reggie Jackson, July 7, 2007.

2 Scott Pitoniak, Memories of Yankee Stadium (Chicago: Triumph Books, 2008), 62.

3 Author interview with Marty Appel, October 7, 2022.

4 “Bob Sheppard Quotes,” baseball-almanac.com, https://www.baseball-almanac.com/quotes/Bob-Sheppard-Quotes.shtml, accessed September 17, 2022.

5 “Bob Sheppard Obituary,” Associated Press, https://obits.syracuse.com, July 11, 2010.

6 Bill Madden, “Bob Sheppard, New York Yankees Legend and Voice of the Bronx Bombers, Has Died at 99,” New York Daily News, July 11, 2010.

7 Memories of Yankee Stadium, 65.

8 Memories of Yankee Stadium, 65.

9 New York Yankees 2011 Media Guide.

10 Memories of Yankee Stadium, 67.

11 Memories of Yankee Stadium, 65.

12 Author interview with Sheppard.

13 Author interview with Sheppard.

14 Memories of Yankee Stadium, 66.

15 Author interview with Sheppard.

16 Melissa Block, “Bob Sheppard Led Jeter to the Plate One Last Time,” NPR.org, September 26, 2014. https://www.npr.org/2014/09/26/351811935/bob-sheppard-led-jeter-to-the-plate-one-last-time.

17 Richard Goldstein, “Bob Sheppard, Voice of the Yankees, Dies at 99,” New York Times, July 11, 2010.  https://www.proquest.com/usnews/docview/2218461499/39942373521140FDPQ/5?accountid=69.

18 Jerome Preisler, “An Interview with Bob Sheppard,” YES Network, July 12, 2010. https://www.myyesnetwork.com/12493/blog/2010/07/11/an_interview_with_bob_sheppard:_pt._1.

19 Preisler.

20 Preisler.

21 Preisler.

22 Preisler.

23 Author interview with Sheppard.

24 Author interview with Appel.

25 Author interview with Sheppard.

26 “Bob Sheppard Quotes.”

27 Author interview with Sheppard.

28 Greg Kristan, “Bob Sheppard: The Voice of the New York Yankees,” The Stadium Reviews, https://thestadiumreviews.com/blogs/info/bob-sheppard/, May 27, 2020.

29 Kristan.

30 Clyde Haberman, “For the Yankees, as Constant as Pinstripes,” New York Times, February 22, 2005. https://www.proquest.com/usnews/docview/2227729209/B3AD50F0925E4A29PQ/1?accountid=69.

31 “Bob Sheppard Quotes.”

32 Author interview with Sheppard.

33 ESPN wire services, “Bob Sheppard, Longtime Yankee Stadium Announcer, dies at 99,”, July 11, 2010. https://www.espn.com/new-york/mlb/news/story?id=5371001.

34 Memories of Yankee Stadium, 67.

35 Memories of Yankee Stadium, 67.

36 ESPN wire services, “Bob Sheppard, Longtime Yankee Stadium Announcer, Dies at 99.”

37 “Bob Sheppard, Longtime Yankee Stadium Announcer, Dies at 99.”

38 “Bob Sheppard, Longtime Yankee Stadium Announcer, Dies at 99.”

39 “Bob Sheppard, Longtime Yankee Stadium Announcer, Dies at 99.”

40 Goldstein, “Bob Sheppard, Voice of the Yankees, Dies at 99.”

41 Goldstein.

42 Author interview with Appel.