Suzyn Waldman Makes Her Pitch on the Air

It was 2-1/2 hours before the first pitch at Yankee Stadium. Then-Yankees manager Joe Torre was in the dugout holding a pre-game press conference encircled by a rainbow coalition of three-dozen journalists, including Asians chronicling the exploits of Japanese left fielder Hideki Matsui, Latinos, blacks and whites.

Among those holding microphones, notepads and cameras were half a dozen women, including Suzyn Waldman, seated to Torre’s immediate right.

Two decades ago, Waldman would have been the only woman in such a crowd. But it is largely because of her success that other women have gained opportunities and acceptance in the male-dominated world of sports broadcasting.

“I didn’t know I wasn’t supposed to be part of this,” said Waldman, who debuted on sports-talk radio station WFAN in 1987 after a career in musical theatre, including a two-year run on Broadway in “Man of La Mancha.”

Since making her segue from theatre, Waldman has achieved many significant firsts for women sportscasters, but none more significant than her current role: She’s in her fifth season as a color commentator on Yankees’ radio broadcasts on WCBS (880-AM), something no woman had ever done for a Major League Baseball team.

Waldman’s ascension is at once a tribute to her ability and perseverance and an indictment of the broadcasting industry, considering that baseball was first heard on the radio August 5, 1921 on station KDKA in Pittsburgh, according to The Storytellers, a 1995 book on baseball broadcasters by Curt Smith.

“There is an understanding that women have been discriminated against in employment opportunities,” said Neal Pilson, a CBS Sports president for 14 years from the 1970s to the ‘90s. “There has certainly been a desire among women and those in decision-making positions to raise the glass ceiling.”

Waldman, 62, has done her best to shatter it.

While at WFAN, she created the position of Yankees’ radio beat reporter, allowing listeners to hear post-game quotes from players, managers, coaches and Yankees owner George Steinbrenner that they used to not get until the next day’s newspaper.

For this, she incurred the wrath of many sportswriters.

“I didn’t know the sportswriters weren’t talking to me,” Waldman said in a studio adjacent to the Yankees’ clubhouse.

“When I got into this business in middle age and found out that some people didn’t want me I got really angry. I spent a lot of years with people saying, ‘How does she know that? She never played.’ People have been picking me apart for 20 years, but I’m still here ‘cause I just had this feeling that no little girl should think there’s something she can’t do ‘cause she’s a girl.”

Waldman, a cancer survivor, is the recipient of numerous honors, including an International Radio Award for her reporting of the 1989 San Francisco earthquake during the World Series and the 1996 New York Sportscaster of the Year award.

Women for whom she has blazed a trail in sportscasting revere her.

Tina Cervasio, a sports reporter for Madison Square Garden Network, admitted to being too awed to approach Waldman during a chance meeting in midtown Manhattan.

“Instead of acting like a peer of hers I looked at Suzyn as a heroine,” said Cervasio, a Clifton, N.J., resident who has displayed Waldman-like persistence after out-of-town media outlets told her she sounded “too New York.”

Cervasio, 34, has made steady progress since graduating from the University of Maryland, working at cable stations on Long Island, Staten Island and Philadelphia and hosting an NFL studio show on Direct TV for two seasons.

She also did play-by-play of gymnastics and field reporting for Westwood One Radio at the 2004 Athens Olympics.

Sports has been Cervasio's passion since attending the 1986 Rose Bowl. Her father, Joe Cervasio, played varsity football at Cornell.

“I still have a long way to go to get to where I want to be,” said Cervasio, who once did daily drive-time reports for Shadow Traffic.

Where Cervasio would like to be is where ESPN’s Pam Ward is now: doing play-by-play of college football and basketball on a regular basis for a major network. No other woman currently holds such a position.

Ward could not be reached for this article.

“Most of the time women are competing for sports jobs against other women, whether it’s to work with a male anchor or as a sideline reporter,” said Deb Placey, an anchor for MSG Network.

Still, that’s far better than not being allowed to compete at all.

In addition to Cervasio and Kaufman, the list of women sportscasters includes Reischea Canidate of ESPN News, Pam Oliver of Fox, Erin Andrews, Lisa Salters and Heather Cox of ESPN, Tracy Wolfson of CBS, Andrea Kremer of NBC, Erica Herskowitz of WFAN and Kimberly Jones of the YES Network, who replaced Waldman on Yankees’ cable telecasts this season.

Monica Pellegrini did sports on WWOR-Channel 9 in New York for 9-1/2 years before switching to news in 2003.

Among ESPN’s roster of studio anchors and reporters are Linda Cohn, Cindy Brunson and Dana Jacobson. Women such as Cheryl Miller (basketball), Judy Rankin (golf) and Carol Lewis (track and field) have become analysts after their playing careers.

“I think women’s role in sports broadcasting and athletics has grown as a result of Title IX,” Pilson said, referring to the landmark federal legislation in 1972 that mandated increased opportunities for women.

“As women have achieved more experience in sports, they’ve attained more credibility and a greater acceptance from the public. People are accustomed now to hearing women experts on women’s sports events and seeing women as sideline reporters and on panel shows.”

Pilson, who hired Visser and Tafoya while at CBS, considers play-by-play—the describing of action as it happens, whether it’s painting word pictures on radio or providing captions on television—the last male bastion.

It could take “another 10 to 15 years,” he said, for any woman to attain the play-by-play stardom of Marv Albert, Dick Enberg or Al Michaels.

“It probably will take longer in a sport like pro football,” Pilson said, “where women don’t play the game and the audience is 75 percent men.”

Coincidentally, Edward Placey, ESPN’s coordinating producer of college football and the man who assigned Ward to play-by-play, is married to the thirty-something Deb Placey of MSG.

Not long ago, audiences were not used to hearing a woman report the news. But now, particularly on local TV, anchorwomen are commonplace. While women sportscasters expect to see a similar evolution, their critics have hardly gone away.

“I’ve had plenty of guys come up to me and quiz me on sports,” said Pellegrini, 42, a petite blonde who lives in Hoboken, N.J.

“But I find that women viewers are more critical of women. I don’t know why. I once got a letter from a woman that said, ‘We don’t watch you on sports because we hate your hair. Don’t you own a comb?’”

Cervasio agreed that women are often the harshest critics.

“The female viewer may not know football,” she said, “but if you mispronounce a word or if they don’t like your voice or if you interrupt your broadcast partner, that’s what a woman may criticize you for.

“Viewers have to learn to accept us. Even with Suzyn doing the Yankees, a lot of people aren’t going to want to hear her talk about Mariano Rivera throwing his cutter.”

Apparently, some sports fans don’t want to hear Waldman say anything. Her nasally voice bears the accent of her hometown, Boston. It is not a typical broadcaster’s voice.

A poster identified as Sue once wrote on the Yankees fans' Web site Bronx Banter, “One thing I don’t want is Suzyn in the booth. What a joke!”

Waldman has endured criticism of her voice and allegiance to the New York teams she covers.

She first rooted for the Red Sox at Fenway Park and the Celtics at Boston Garden in the 1950s. But she has hosted Knicks’ pre- and post-game radio shows—the first woman ever to do so—and has become so synonymous with the Yankees that some call her “a homer.”

Yet it is Waldman’s radio partner, John Sterling, who punctuates every New York victory with “Yankees win! Th-uh-uh-uh Yan-kees win!”

Waldman has never taken her allegiance to that extreme. But when it comes to taking initiative, she may have no peer.

After then-Red Sox broadcaster Ken Coleman told her a New York station would soon become America’s first with an all-sports format, she made an audition tape, drove it to Queens, N.Y., and got the job despite having no broadcasting experience.

Waldman became WFAN’s first on-air voice July 1, 1987.

“I knew I had to leave theatre because the music was changing,” she said. “Sports was the only other thing that I had a passion about.”

The passion still burned in 1996 while she underwent treatment for breast cancer.

Doctors told her she’d have to forego broadcasting for six months. Instead, she worked virtually every game of the Yankees’ world championship season.

The Yankees made sure Waldman had a refrigerator in her hotel room to store medication.

“I had a wig on, I didn’t have any hair and I never felt well,” she said. “I’d never go to lunch. I’d stay in the hotel and do my shots. My favorite story from that time involved [former Yankees coach] Willie Randolph.

“I interviewed him in the dugout and I just felt this…I didn’t know if I was going to pass out or throw up or whatever. I sat down and Willie sat down with me and just kept talking, like it was the most natural thing in the world. The night the Yankees won the World Series, [pitcher] Jimmy Key said, ‘Suzyn, this is for you too. You’re part of this.’”

Waldman, who lives in the Westchester County town of Croton-on-Hudson, joined the Yankees Entertainment and Sports Network in 2002. But what should have been a dream job became nightmarish.

YES hired her to do pre- and post-game reporting all season and play-by-play of 30 games. But YES yanked her off play-by-play after just six games.

“It was publicly humiliating; every time I’d go to another city people would talk about it,” she said. “The people at YES felt that only former players should do analysis, so if I wanted to work I had to do play-by-play. I knew I wasn’t good.”

About her current role on radio, Waldman said, “This job is as comfortable as I’ve ever been. I can bring the reporting element to the broadcast. I can say, ‘This is what [Derek] Jeter was trying to do because he told me before the game…’”

A sampling of fans at Yankee Stadium had overwhelmingly positive reviews for Waldman.

“It’s a difficult thing that she’s doing because that’s a male occupation, but she knows her stuff,” said Guy Paul, 54, of Bud Lake.

“She’s excellent,” said Reymundo Diaz, 44, of Manchester, Conn. “When the Yanks are bad, she says it. When they’re good, she says it. There’s no crap from her.”

But Pilson, the former CBS Sports president, is more critical.

“If I were her producer, I’d say, ‘Suzyn, tell us what you think is going to happen. Tell us why that just happened,’” he said. “I’m just looking for more analysis. It’s more of a production issue to get her to grow her commentary.”

“That’s probably a valid point,” Waldman said with a nod.

Then, sounding like a woman immune to criticism, she added with a high-pitched laugh, “What are critics going to do to me? I went through a whole baseball season with cancer. If somebody doesn’t like me, what do I care?”