“I’m an I-95 guy, born and raised in Philly, and proud of it. Eagles fan, and if the Phillies are good, I front run with them,” he says. “But I’ve been up here in New York since ’75 when I got out of college. I always wanted to be in New York. My mother was a New Yorker–phile, loved everything in terms of Broadway, all the great TV shows that came out of here, music, yadda yadda yadda.”
Sims takes the mic from John Sterling, a ubiquitous figure in the New York sports scene, who held down Yankee radio from 1989 until his retirement in 2024. There is a respectful sense of reverence for Sterling, and the job itself, but Sims isn’t going to be as intimidated by it all as some wet-behind-the-ears newbie. “I’ve had so many people say, ‘Well, it must really be daunting to follow John Sterling,’” Sims says. “I say, ‘Well, I’ve known John forever—great guy, legend, no question about it—but I’ve already done this. I’ve done it twice actually.’”
The first instance he’s referring to was in March 1986 (Sims has a real knack for remembering the exact month when something happened), when he got a job at WNBC. In that chair, he replaced Jack Spector, the man largely associated with introducing New York radio listeners to the Beatles, and who, years later, would literally die while on the air. At the time, the station was trying to merge sports and music—a move that ultimately proved too far ahead of its time. Sims remembers the production strategy like this: “We’re going to talk more about the Yankees, but first, here’s Billy Joel with ‘My Life.’ That didn’t work.”
The second time was when he moved west in 2007, taking over for Dave Niehaus, a man who had been calling Mariners games since the franchise was born in 1977. The two overlapped for a few years before Niehaus’s death, and Sims fondly recalls the moments when they would pass each other in the hallway between innings. “There were a couple times in some bad years and we’d just look at each other and go, ‘Can you believe this?’ He’d say something funny as heck, we’re down 9-0, and I’m walking in the booth laughing my ass off. Following Niehaus was a big deal. I mean, as you know, he made an unbelievable lifelong connection to the fans in the Pacific Northwest.”
This long and winding journey—which includes interviews with some of the 20th century’s greatest sportsmen, including Wilt Chamberlain and Willie Mays—has shown him both sides of radio and TV, both sides of the team-owned and network-owned broadcast channels, and both sides of the country. His main takeaway from spending nearly two decades around Seattle sports fans? “They’re a hell of a lot more polite, I can tell you that. They’re passionate, but at a modest level. Whereas on the East Coast—Washington to Boston—it gets more fervent as you get to Baltimore. Then you get to Philly, then you get to New York and Boston, and it’s off the charts.”
