Yankees, Giants announcer Sheppard dies at 99

When Bob Sheppard said, "Your attention please, ladies and gentlemen," people paid attention, and they did so for 56 years. His dignified intonations at Yankees games were so distinctively clear, concise and correct that Reggie Jackson called him "the voice of God."

Sheppard became one of the major figures in Yankees history without ever having come to bat or thrown a pitch. He died Sunday morning at his home in Baldwin. He was 99.

His wife, Mary, was with him, as was his son Christopher of La Jolla, Calif. He died peacefully at 6:28 a.m., Christopher said. Sheppard had spent most of his time at home after complications from a throat infection prevented him from appearing at Yankees games after 2007.

So he never did get to read the lineups in his unmistakable fashion at the new Yankee Stadium. But his voice is played on a recording every time Derek Jeter comes to the plate, at Jeter's request. That is an enduring tribute to the timelessness of the public-address announcer who began his career April 17, 1951 - Joe DiMaggio's final Opening Day and Mickey Mantle's first.

"He was the one constant at Yankee Stadium," Jeter said Sunday. "He was part of the experience."

Sheppard also worked Giants football games for 50 years, moving with them from Yankee Stadium to the Meadowlands. "Bob Sheppard was the most distinguished and dignified voice in all of sports," Giants president John Mara said Sunday.

Robert Leo Sheppard also announced sporting events at St. John's University, his alma mater and later his employer through many years as a speech professor.

Yankees games, however, were the source of his greatest identity. The team enshrined him with a plaque in Monument Park on May 7, 2000. "He used to say, 'I'm out there with Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and two popes. Not bad,' " his son recalled.

George Steinbrenner, in a statement released by the club, called Sheppard "a good friend and fine man whose voice set the gold standard for America's sports announcers."

The statement went on to say: "For over a half-century, fans were thrilled to hear his unforgettable voice and players were thrilled to hear his majestic enunciation of their names. Bob Sheppard was a great member of the Yankees family and his death leaves a lasting silence."

Sheppard worked in 22 World Series, which is more than any team other than the Yankees participated in. He never varied from the style he employed the day he first announced Dom DiMaggio, Boston's leadoff batter in the 1951 game.

Generations of ballplayers said it was a distinction and a rite of passage to hear their names announced by Sheppard. "Every time you hear it," Jeter said, "you sort of get chills."

Jackson, who does one of the better Sheppard imitations, is widely quoted as calling him "the voice of God," although Sheppard himself once said he heard that former Met Rusty Staub used the phrase earlier.

"Clear, concise, correct," Sheppard always said when he was asked to describe his approach. In a 1999 Newsday interview, he said: "I'm not a cheerleader; I don't think a public-address announcer should be one. I'm not a circus barker who strings out the announcement of a home-team player. That curdles my spirit when I hear it. But then again, that's their style.''

Sheppard came to the job by accident, and by just trying to help. The native of Ridgewood, Queens, received an athletic scholarship from St. John's, where he played baseball and football. He studied for his master's degree at Columbia, taught in public schools, served in the Navy during World War II and made $25 a game as a semipro quarterback.

When he heard the New York Yankees football team was playing an exhibition against the Chicago Rockets at Freeport Stadium in the late 1940s, Sheppard volunteered to announce it. Branch Rickey, who owned the Brooklyn Dodgers football team, was at the game and offered Sheppard a job.

The Dodgers folded - "Branch Rickey took a bath on that," Sheppard said in 1996 - but the football Yankees hired him to be their public-address announcer. "Then the baseball people heard me doing football and they asked me to do baseball," he said.

Sheppard became part of American culture. With his older son, Paul, of Washington, D.C., serving as his agent, his voice appeared in movies and television series, including "61*," "Seinfeld," "Mad About You," "Anger Management" and "It Could Happen to You."

He and Mary (Sheppard's first wife died when Chris was a youngster) were longtime lectors at St. Christopher's Roman Catholic Church in Baldwin, reading scripture at mass. On Sundays during baseball season, Sheppard was the lector during Mass attended by employees, players, executives and media people at the Stadium.

Along with his wife and sons, he is survived by daughters Barbara Derenowski of Surprise, Ariz., and Sister Mary Sheppard, a nun in Newburgh, N.Y., five grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

There will be private viewing Tuesday and Wednesday at Fullerton Funeral Home, Baldwin. Funeral Mass will be at St. Christopher's Church at 10:45 a.m. Thursday.