Growing up, my bedtime was 7 p.m. In theory, this would have been acceptable to me, except for the fact that the New York Yankees’ games often started at 7:05.

As a result, there were multiple nights when my brother and I would huddle around his nightstand listening to his vintage-looking white radio. We would set the volume to the lowest possible notch to ensure our parents could not hear Yankees’ radio announcer John Sterling’s dramatic play-by-play from downstairs.

After all, we had to get our fix. 

Every time I turned on the radio as a child, Sterling’s voice would fill the room. His calls became all too familiar. If the Yankees hit a home run: “It is high…It is far…It is gone!” If they won: “Ballgame over, Yankees win, the Yankees win!” Sterling even had his own way of calling a routine groundout: “Grounded to short. Scooped by Jeter. IN time.” 

These calls started making their way to my dinner table, car rides and shower monologues. It did not surprise me to learn that Sterling was widely regarded as the voice of the Yankees among baseball fans; his broadcasting style was iconic, after all.

Still, when Sterling announced his abrupt retirement last week, not much changed in my daily life. Though he never stopped broadcasting games in New York, it has been years since he was truly the voice of the Yankees — at least to me. 

As our worldview has become interchangeable with our screens, I have simply forgotten to turn on the radio. I have brushed aside the rhythmic satisfaction of listening to Sterling’s calls, forgoing his predictable exclamations in favor of something I could watch or poke or click on or swipe.

To me, the voice of the Yankees has become dictated by convenience. 

If I am too busy to do anything but sneak my phone out of my pocket every once in a while, the voice of the Yankees is the Major League Baseball (MLB) app’s live notifications, which update me when the score changes. Except recently, my notifications have stopped working, leaving me feeling somehow more untethered than the mornings when my alarm clock forgets to make noise. 

If I am in class but have my laptop in front of me, the voice of the Yankees is ESPN’s Gamecast feature, complete with the sudden rush of anxiety when the screen refreshes to a blue line captioned, “in play.” I have to wait about ten seconds before it tells me whether it was a two-run home run or an inning-ending double play. 

On the rare occasion that I have three uninterrupted hours to spend, the voice of the Yankees becomes the team’s television play-by-play announcer Michael Kay, who punctuates Yankees’ home runs with a crescendoing, “There it goes…See ya!” 

And of course, if I’m lucky, there is no voice of the Yankees; instead, I’m watching the game in real time at Yankee Stadium, destroying my own eardrums with the Bleacher Creatures, the rabid Yankees fans that occupy the right field bleachers.

Missing from this equation is the radio. The only time I turn it on is when I’m in the car, sitting in the passenger seat as my dad grumbles about traffic on the way to upstate New York. He demands that I entertain him; I let John Sterling do it instead.

That is the only time it is convenient for me.

I hate that I let convenience dictate the way I consume baseball. I hate that I did not appreciate John Sterling enough until the moment he retired. I hate that I can no longer change that.

I can go back to listening to baseball on the radio, but I’ll never again hear remnants of my childhood escapades through a car speaker. 

But maybe I will turn the radio on anyway — and grow to love Sterling’s replacement. 

Some people make New Year’s Resolutions; I make — slightly delayed — Opening Day resolutions. And this year, my Opening Day resolution is to rediscover the magic of baseball on the radio.