A Philological Analysis of John Sterling’s Home Run Calls

When Yankees radio broadcaster John Sterling announced his retirement from the booth back in April, I began to ponder the question, What makes a John Sterling home run call? With his return to the booth for the final few games of the season and the playoffs, I set out to answer the question in the only way I know how: philology.

For those who dont now, during the day I am a Latin/History teacher and a graduate student studying the Classics.

A large part of what Classicists do involves philology, the study of language (the word, which has its origins in Greek, literally means love of words).

On a practical level, this involves looking not just at etymology, but at rhetorical devices such as alliteration, sentence structure, and most importantly, puns.

And so, using as my data set the list of all Sterlings home run calls that Andrew Mearns compiled earlier this year, I looked for the following rhetorical devices: When we tally up Sterlings 153 calls (yes, I know Andrews article has 142, but unlike him, I split up the alternates), here are the numbers we get: The numbers make clear what we already intuitively knew: puns define John Sterling home run calls.

Sometimes theyre not so obvious Anthony Volpes The fox socks one is only recognizable as a pun if you know that Volpe derives from volpes , the Latin word for fox but theyre always present in some capacity.

What this does show, though, is that Sterling did not really have a preference when it came to which part of the name to build the pun around.

Having a separate category for Austin Powers puns is admittedly a little bit of a joke 1990s spy satires do not exactly match the rest of Sterlings pop culture references.

It does, though, highlight a trend: Sterling was more than happy to return to the well if something worked.

Austin Powers served as the reference for Austin Kearns, Tyler Austin, and Austin Romine.

Tino Martinez, Jason Giambi, and Gary Sanchez all received Bambino-based puns.

Before Gio Urshela was the most happy fella, Jose Pirela was.

Coming up with 153 different calls wasnt easy; just like the oral poets of Homer, Sterling leaned on the classics.

Rhyme and alliteration are also commonly found within the calls, with almost every call having at least one of the two and of the handful with neither, most were in a foreign language or involved song lyrics.

And so, to return to our original question, What makes a John Sterling home run call? Based on this data, it must involve a pun, it should involve a rhyme or alliteration, and if possible, reference a musical or throw in some Italian, Spanish, or French for good measure.

Of course, at the end of the day, the data isnt quite enough the John Sterling personal touch is a key component to the success of these calls but it does nonetheless give us a bit of insight into the radio voice of the Yankees..

This article has been shared from the original article on pinstripealley, here is the link to the original article.