He has been in pain for so long, but this pain is slowly easing.
He has been silenced for almost a year, but he finally wants to scream.
A day after Los Angeles rejoiced in arrival of the World Seriesa voice from the city celebrated two different words.
Cancer remission.
Monday after The Dodgers won the National League Championship Series against the New York Mets to set up a World Series game with the New York YankeesLongtime radio announcer Charley Steiner received news worthy of an even bigger champagne party.
He learned that his blood cancer, multiple myeloma, was in remission.
“Remission is a beautiful word,” he said this week. “Monday was one of those days where we were like, OK, everything’s fine.”
For almost a year, for the 20-year-old announcer who has become a fixture on Southland radio stations, things have been going badly.
Learn more: Shaikin: Charley Steiner and Rick Monday still on the call (on the radio) after all these years
The illness, which Steiner had not publicly revealed until now, kept him off the airwaves for the entire season while quietly ravaging his world.
He constantly suffered from debilitating lower back pain. He lost 50 pounds. He was confined to a wheelchair. He first moved his bed from the second floor of his Westside home to the family room because he couldn’t climb the stairs. He enlisted the help of full-time nurses. It wasn’t pretty.
“He’s been through hell,” said his longtime radio partner, Rick Monday.
An extremely private person, Steiner lived through the nightmare without fanfare, without telling anyone outside his inner circle, the talkative storyteller keeping his most important words to himself.
“He didn’t want to make history,” Monday said. “I can’t imagine how difficult this was for him.”
This challenge became even more unbearable once The World Series game has been set between the Dodgers and the New York Yankees.
Steiner and the legendary Red Barber are the only two announcers to have worked for both teams, as Steiner was the Yankees’ broadcaster for three years before joining the Dodgers in 2005.
Steiner is the man in the middle of this game but, aside from a short planned visit to Dodger Stadium for Game 1, he won’t be close.
“It’s been really weird and difficult watching the Dodgers and the Yankees,” Steiner said. “I’ve streamed them both, but I can’t do either one.”
Weird and difficult describes the past year for Steiner, 75, who began suffering from back pain in November. After two months of tests, in January he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma cancer and began treatment at City of Hope.
Initially, he thought he could continue working. Even when the back pain became unbearable and it was clear he would miss the start of the season, he believed his condition would improve enough to eventually return. In fact, in the spring he released a statement through the team that he would miss time recovering from three back fractures, but that he hoped to be back “later this season.”
“But it hurts,” he said. “It hurt a lot.”
The pain eventually landed him in the hospital for 10 days, and he spent the summer watching games from his family room bed while trying to keep the faith.
“I had incredibly mixed emotions, I should be there, I want to be there, I’ve been there 20 years, but these are the cards I was dealt,” he said. “This year was supposed to be so great, I turned 75, this is my 20th with the Dodgers… but it’s been boring.”
Learn more: Vin Scully’s favorite call? The Dodgers. The Yankees. World Series.
The Dodgers visited, called and supported Steiner during his secret illness, and have no plans to replace him.
“He’s part of our family, we care about him, we’ve been through this journey with him, we’re here to support him,” said Lon Rosen, Dodgers vice president and chief marketing officer. “And yes, we are expecting it next year.”
Steiner was initially seen as an outsider when he arrived the winter before the 2005 season, a New Yorker who was best known for his wonderfully deadpan role in ESPN SportsCenter commercials. He delivered this series’ most famous line when he showed up in a tie-up headband and makeup during a Y2K meltdown and shouted, “Follow me, follow me to the freedom !
Soon, however, his smooth, lyrical words sold him to most Dodgers fans as an old-school baseball guy with a poetic bent. He’s become such a reliable voice that it’s a recording of Steiner officially welcoming fans to Dodger Stadium.
“It’s very difficult to do, to make it seem like a friend is talking to you, but that’s what he’s doing,” Monday said. “He makes it look easy, but it’s not.”
Steiner never had to replace Scully Wine – this task fell to Joe Davis – so he was able to work out the kinks and establish himself without much fanfare and today he and Monday have become the venerable cornerstones of the Dodger broadcast team.
It was Steiner who was the voice of back-to-back home runs, the voice of Clayton Kershaw’s no-hitter, the distant voice of championship 2020. During the Covid year, you’ll recall, Steiner broadcast the games from his living room.
Learn more: Charley Steiner joins the house built by Vin Scully
“It’s so funny, I was streaming Brooklyn Dodger games from my living room when I was 7 years old…and 60 years later I was doing it again,” the Long Island native said.
He loved the Dodgers as a kid until they moved to Los Angeles, then he loved the Yankees so much that he left ESPN and accepted their play-by-play invitation so his ailing father, Howard, could listen to his work. After Howard’s death, Steiner received an exploratory phone call from Dodger manager Steve Brener, wondering if he would be interested in making a move.
“It probably wasn’t the best negotiation tactic, but I said, ‘Yeah, Bubba!’ said Steiner. “When someone offers you your childhood dream, how can you not accept it?”
After accepting the Dodgers’ offer, he brought his mother Gertrude to Los Angeles so that she could listen to his work, baseball being for him above all a family, a family which he missed dearly, especially now.
Learn more: Nine concerns the Dodgers should have facing the Yankees in the World Series
The Dodgers and the Yankees and no Charley Steiner? Talk about feeling left out.
“It’s hard, really hard,” Steiner said. “The World Series happens to be the Yankees, and they’re playing the Dodgers, who happen to be my last two employers.”
He attended three games this year and aired a few innings, but the pain always got the better of him and he left early.
He will be at Chavez Ravine for the first innings of Friday’s opener, so he thinks it will be good for him to see old friends from both sides of the country.
“When I went there before, I was touched that people still remember who I am and what I do,” he said.
But this time he is there strictly as a visitor, he will not interfere with the radio microphone which will be held by Monday and Stephen Nelson during the series.
“It’s the World Series, I have to be at my best,” he said. “I can’t parallel park in this thing.”
He hopes that in the coming months he can step hard on the gas again. It still doesn’t work, but he says he will. He’s still in pain, but he says it’s manageable. He can now take the stairs back to his room, one step at a time.
“I’m making wonderful progress,” he said. “I’m not ready to dance, but it feels better.”
He referenced a saying immortalized by his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers, which he will cling to over these next two empty but hopeful weeks.
“Remember when Dodgers fans always said, ‘Wait until next year?’ » said Steiner. “It’s me. It will be my turn. Next year.”
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This story was originally published in Los Angeles Times.
