Sun.com Customer Experience and Stuff: Notes from the Sun.com customer experience team.

I'm really not a Yankee fan per se, but I love listening to the Yankees Radio Network broadcasts because of longtime play-by-play master and commentator Charlie Steiner.  Steiner is a gifted and witty commentator, and more than that an unabashed and reverent fan of the Yankees ball club tradition. Before that, you might have known him from ESPN boxing and hockey coverage, and, of course SportsCenter. But before all those things, long ago, Charlie Steiner helped me get started on my favorite college project.

Back then, Steiner was a serious (well, kindof serious) news guy, having been a buttoned down news director in Cleveland, Hartford, and finally New York City. I met him at FM hit factory '99x WXLO' where he was working on the morning show with disc jockey Jay Thomas (later the bartender on Mork and Mindy and some other memorable roles), and I was starting a serious (yeah, actually pretty serious) documentary profile of 12 radio news departments in New York City during the peak of the disco era.

It was arguably the last golden era of radio news, when music stations were still required to run news programming, and all-news stations were in highly competitive full force.

The really nice thing about Steiner was that he took a couple of mornings to shepherd me, a clueless college student, through the entire process of news production. And he introduced me to folks at other radio stations and wire services all around town, which led to some long-lasting friendships to this day.  A couple of years ago, I turned the documentary project into a web site with pictures (nyradionews.com), interviews, and audio clips from all the stations, including Steiner's WXLO.

So, that's why I listen to the Yankees whenever I'm in New York.