Bob Sheppard is feeling better and plans to return to the Yankees' p.a. booth sometime this season, but not in time for the opener.
I spoke to him Tuesday. He sounded upbeat and strong. Sheppard said his voice is fully recovered from the bronchial infection that knocked him out of the ALDS, but apparently the rest of him still is not quite ready to make the trip from his Baldwin home to the Bronx.
Barring some sort of setback, he should be back sometime this summer and if all goes well help send off the old stadium this fall.
Sheppard, who served for 50 years as the Giants' p.a. announcer, said he watched Super Bowl XLII and enjoyed it very much.
As a journalist, obviously I should have mentioned Mr. Sheppard's presumed age in the newspaper article about him. But he is famously reluctant to discuss that subject and I have tried to avoid it since I speculated about it in an article in the early 1990s and he got quite upset with me.
Let's just say he is older than Yankee Stadium and leave it at that.
(UPDATE: I forgot that Newsday's venerable baseball scribe, Ken Davidoff, wrote about a month ago that Mr. Sheppard recently signed a two-year extension with the team. Not bad for a guy older than, um, Ebbets Field.)
Comments (11)
So much for the vacation, Neil!
Technically it's comp time, not a vacation. So it's a little more flexible than a normal vacation. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.
Well, we the readers are the beneficiaries of your blogging this week.
According to wikipedia, Mr. Sheppard turned 97 this past October, which makes him just younger than "Take Me Out to the Ball Game", which turns 100 this year -- CBS' Sunday Morning is doing a feature on it this weekend.
Even as a Met fan, I can't imagine having anyone else close one Stadium and open another.
Didn't the Cubs have a PA announcer named Pat Piper who started his job in 1906 and lasted until the mid 70s? Pat Piper might have been his name. In any case Bob Shepherd IS Yankee Stadium.
Yankee Stadium without Bob Sheppard is like NFL Films without John Facenda.
by the looks of the picture he needs to stay at home.
He looks pretty damn fine to me.
We should all be lucky enough to look that good that at his age.
GOD BLESS HIM.
Jeez at 97 years old he's extremely active. I've never experienced a Yankees' season without him in my life, and I know that is coming. I just hope they replace him with the guy that backs him up and sounds somewhat like him instead of some screaming mimi. It's bad enough the sound system blasts the eardrums with the "music" they play and everything else they put through it and it's not even a modern system. The new place will probably have to have a sound system that can be heard clearly in Westchester, I suppose.
BTW, I have an Irish sweater similar to the one Bob is wearing in that picture.
Bob Shepard wears his better.
Wheres our Imus story Neil?