While I have a lot of writing forthcoming on my recent travels, I would be remiss if I did not pause to acknowledge the great John Sterling, the New York Yankees’ radio play-by-play man for the past 36 years, who sailed into retirement this past week. His abrupt departure is the end of an era. His voice was the background to countless childhood summer nights, his easy cadence and soothing baritone carrying a Yankee fan kid through the ups and downs, a nightly retreat from any school drama or other weighty affairs. After my parents and perhaps Garrison Keillor, no one was heard more in my childhood home.

Sterling was bombastic, a welcome burst of scattershot energy in a franchise that, especially in the Hal Steinbrenner era, has tended toward corporate PR-speak in all other aspects of its managed public image. His personalized home run calls and lengthy “Theeeeeeeee Yankees win” exclamations were both delightful and nutty, sometimes bringing forth an eye roll but always a grin, and the best of them became associated with players long after they left the Yankees. In Sterling’s telling it started with a spontaneous “Bern baby Bern” for Bernie Williams, and it simply took on a life of its own from there. Whether it was an A-Bomb from A-Rod or Jorgie juicing one, a thrilla by Godzilla or Shane Spencer the home run dispenser, the Grandyman showing he can or whatever it was he sang in Italian when Giancarlo Stanton launched one, Sterling calls were an essential part of the Yankee experience.

Sterling brought a relentless exuberance to the job. Blessed with a sterling silver voice box, he seemed ageless, smoothly bringing us the action night after night, including a Gehrig-esque iron man streak of 5,060 games without missing one over a 20-year stretch. He was a professional, and while he clearly wanted the Yankees to win, he had no reservations in calling out failures, and he would give other teams their due when they deserved it. Not once did I ever get the impression he was not enjoying himself immensely. He found the job he was meant to do, and he did it with panache. There was a hint of pretense, as he dressed himself up in fancy suits for the radio and took the Yankee tradition he loved very seriously. But always did his job with the respect and the humility to recognize, even after all those years, what a fortunate man he was to be able to do what he did for so long.

Yes, details were never his strong suit. When I spent chunks of my free time in online Yankee fan spaces back in high school and college, I created a statistic, the FSHRC (Fake Sterling Home Run Call), to track the number of times he drove us all insane by launching into his home run call before ultimately being wrong. (“It is high! It is far! It is…caught at the wall.”) He had little patience for modern analytics, and his pop culture references were, charmingly, stuck on 1950s Broadway. Sterling was a true original, doing it his way and no one else’s, and that was that.

Over the past two decades Sterling developed a brilliant rapport with Suzyn Waldman, the groundbreaking color commentator who shared many of Sterling’s loves and frustrations, able to insert her insights and gently needle him while still maintaining the ethos of the broadcast. They became an indelible pair, to the point where I just sort of assumed that, 30 years from now, if I were to dial up a Yankee broadcast I would hear the two of them, either sighing and philosophizing their way through a tough game or brimming with pride if the team were to win. His sudden departure a few weeks into this season was a surprise, especially since he looked and sounded the same he always had, even a couple months short of 86. But 64 years of broadcasting and 36 years of Yankee baseball meant Sterling knew that nothing was ever predictable, always ready with his line to explain the absurdities before him: “That’s baseball, Suzyn. You just can’t predict baseball.” Nor, indeed, life.

A marathon baseball season carries on, and after the requisite Yankee Stadium pomp and celebration, Sterling will fade into the background. But some people are not replaceable, or at least not with the same style, the same delight, the same firm, confident voice. As I read various homages to Sterling came out this week, a line from The Grand Budapest Hotel came to mind: “His world was gone long before he entered it. But he sustained the illusion with a marvelous grace.”