Major Sports Broadcaster Considers Retirement: ‘Not Sure I Want to Go Forever’

As if New York Yankees fans don’t have enough to fear right now, it seems their longtime TV announcer has his eye on an eventual retirement (or at least a scaling back of duties).

Amidst the Bronx Bombers’ terrible losing period, longtime YES Network play-by-play announcer Michael Kay recently opened up about possibly putting down the microphone.

As Awful Announcing spotted, Kay, 64, appeared on the June 25 episode of The Main Event with Andrew Marchand, where he discussed his future in the booth at Yankee Stadium.

“I’m not sure I want to go forever,” Kay said. “I mean, I want to live forever, but I’m not sure I want to go [forever]. I mean, I don’t know. I see the value in what Al Michaels is doing. I see the value in John Sterling staying around until he was 86.”

He went on to note that he doesn’t want out of the game now because he’s “gotta pay the bills.” But waiting until his young kids are out of college might not be ideal, either. He then expressed being open to scaling back his time with YES, as opposed to retiring.

“Let’s put it this way: I do 135-140 Yankees games on YES, and if they want me around, I could see myself staying around awhile. But, I’m not going to go at that pace,” Kay said. “If somebody says, ‘OK, you want to do 100 games?’ That would be much more palatable, but we’ll see. Again, never say never because that’s stupid, and I never want to have somebody say, ‘Oh, you said this,’ and I never want to go back on something.

Kay, who also hosts an ESPN-affiliated radio show, noted that a full retirement worries him a bit because he doesn’t have many outside hobbies or passions: “I would probably be boring as hell. I’m not sure what I’d do.”

For now, Yankees fans can enjoy Kay’s presence during most baseball games on YES. Hopefully, Kay will be able to call another winning game soon, because this five-game losing streak isn’t exciting anyone.