He has been in pain for so long, but that pain is slowly subsiding.
He has been silenced for nearly a year, but he finally feels like shouting.
A day after Los Angeles was rejoicing over the arrival of the World Series, a voice of the city was celebrating two different words.
Cancer remission.
On Monday after the Dodgers won the National League Championship Series against the New York Mets to set up a World Series matchup with the New York Yankees, longtime radio announcer Charley Steiner received news worthy of an even bigger champagne celebration.
He learned that his multiple myeloma blood cancer was in remission.
“Remission is a beautiful word,” he said this week. “Monday was one of those days where it was like, OK, we’re good.”
For nearly a year, for the 20-year announcer who has become a fixture on Southland radios, it has been bad.
Read more: Shaikin: Charley Steiner, Rick Monday still on (radio) call after all these years
The disease, which Steiner had not publicly revealed until now, kept him off the air for the entire season while quietly ravaging his world.
He endured constant debilitating lower back pain. He lost 50 pounds. He was confined to a wheelchair. He initially moved his bed from the second floor of his Westside home down to the family room because he couldn’t climb the stairs. He enlisted the full-time help of nurses. It wasn’t pretty.
“He’s gone through hell,” said his longtime radio partner Rick Monday
An extremely private person, Steiner lived the nightmare without fanfare, without telling anyone outside of his inner-circle, the loquacious storyteller keeping his most important words to himself.
“He did not want to be the story,” said Monday. “I can’t imagine how challenging it has been for him.”
That challenge became even more unbearable once the World Series matchup was set between the Dodgers and the New York Yankees.
Steiner and the legendary Red Barber are the only two announcers who 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 matchup but, aside from a scheduled short visit to Dodger Stadium for Game 1, he won’t be anywhere near it.
“It’s been really weird and tough watching the Dodgers and the Yankees,” Steiner said. “I broadcast both of them, yet I can’t do either of them.”
Weird and tough describes the last year for Steiner, 75, who began suffering back pains in November. After two months of testing, in January he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma cancer and began treatment at City of Hope.
Initially he thought he could keep working. Even when the back pain became unbearable and it was clear he would miss the start of the season, he thought he would improve enough to eventually return. In fact, in the spring he issued a statement through the team that he would miss some time while recovering from three back fractures, but expected to be back, “later this season.”
“But it hurt,” he said. “It hurt bad.”
The pain ultimately 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’ve had incredibly mixed emotions, I should be there, I wanna be there, I’ve been there 20 years, but these are the cards I’ve been dealt,” he said. “This year was supposed to be so great, I turned 75, it’s my 20th with the Dodgers … but it’s been a pain in the ass.”
Read more: Vin Scully’s favorite call? Dodgers. Yankees. World Series.
The Dodgers have visited and called and been supportive of Steiner through 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, Dodger vice president and chief marketing officer. “And yes, we expect him back next year.”
Steiner was initially viewed as an outsider when he arrived in the winter before the 2005 season, a New Yorker who was best known for his wonderfully deadpan acting on ESPN SportsCenter commercials. He delivered the most famous line in that series when he showed up wearing a tie headband and face paint during a Y2K meltdown and shouted, “Follow me, follow me to freedom!”
Soon, though, his smooth and lyrical patter sold him on most Dodger fans, an old-school baseball guy with a poetic bent. He became such a trusted voice, it is a recording of Steiner that officially welcomes fans to Dodger Stadium.
”It is very difficult to do, to make it sound like a friend is talking to you, but that’s what he does,” said Monday. “He makes it sound easy but it’s not.”
Steiner never had to replace Vin Scully — that 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 the back-to-back-to-back-to-back home runs, the voice of Clayton Kershaw’s no-hitter, the distant voice of the 2020 championship. During the Covid year, you’ll remember, Steiner broadcast the games from his living room.
Read more: Charley Steiner joins the house that Vin Scully built
“It’s so funny, I would broadcast Brooklyn Dodger games from my living room when I was 7 … and 60 years later I was doing it again,” said the Long Island native.
As a child loved the Dodgers 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 ill father Howard could listen to his work. After Howard died, Steiner received an exploratory phone call from Dodger official Steve Brener, wondering if he would be interested in making a move.
“It probably wasn’t the best negotiating tactic, but I said, ‘Yeah Bubba!” said Steiner. “When somebody offers you your childhood dream, how do you not take it?”
After accepting the Dodgers offer, he brought his mother Gertrude to Los Angeles so she could listen to his work, baseball being all about family for him, a family that he has sorely missed, especially now.
Read more: Nine concerns the Dodgers should have about facing the Yankees in the World Series
The Dodgers and Yankees and no Charley Steiner? Talk about feeling left out.
“It’s hard, really hard,” said Steiner. “The World Series happens to be the Yankees, and they happen to be playing the Dodgers, who happen to be my last two employers.”
He has attended three games this year and actually broadcast a couple of innings, but the pain has always gotten the best of him, and he’s left early.
He’ll be at Chavez Ravine for the first few innings in Friday’s Game 1, he figures it will be good for him to see old friends from both sides of the country.
“When I went before, I was touched that people still remember who I am and what I do,” he said.
But this time he’s there strictly as a visitor, he won’t intrude on the radio microphone that will be manned by Monday and Stephen Nelson during the Series.
Read more: Plaschke: Welcome back, World Series! Dodgers return to Fall Classic for monumental duel with Yankees
“It’s the World Series, I have to be at my best,” he said. “I can’t parallel park into this thing.”
He hopes in the next few months he can once again press hard on the gas. He’s still not walking, but he says he will be. He’s still in pain, but he says it’s manageable. He can actually climb back up the stairs to his bedroom now, one step at a time.
“I’m making wonderful progress,” he said. “I’m not ready to dance, but it’s getting better.”
He referred to a saying immortalized by his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers, one that he will cling to during these next two hollow but hopeful weeks.
“Remember when the Dodger fans would always say, ‘Wait till next year?” Steiner said. “That’s me. That’s going to be my time. Next year.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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