A shopping trip and A-Rod's offer: Yankees announcer recounts Edgewater fire

John Sterling, the longtime Yankees radio play-by-play announcer, was inundated with phone calls and text messages after a fire razed his apartment building in Edgewater. Watch video

EDGEWATER -- John Sterling, the longtime Yankees radio play-by-play announcer, was inundated with phone calls and text messages after a fire razed his apartment building in Edgewater.

Mike Breen, the play-by-play announcer for the New York Knicks and ESPN, sent the first message, writing "John, if there's anything I can do. ANYTHING."

Alex Rodriguez offered Sterling the use of his apartment. Buck Showalter said Sterling could stay in his place in Baltimore.

"You can't believe the amount of people," Sterling said. "Everyone you know in the business. It was so heartwarming."

Sterling lost everything on Jan. 21, 2015, when a fire destroyed hundreds of apartments at the Avalon at Edgewater apartment complex.

"Important documents, unimportant documents, books and music," he said.

He remembers opening a hallway door at about 4 p.m. that day and being met with a wall of heavy smoke.

"I said to myself John, you better get the hell out of here," he said.

Sterling got a room at the Teaneck Marriott at Glenpointe. Only when he turned on the news that night did he realize how big the fire was.

"This was the real thing," he said. "Holy cow, what a fire. So many people in New York said, 'John, we could see it from across the way.'"

While Sterling lost everything in the fire, his immediate need was for clothes. The fire was on a Wednesday. Sterling had been hired as the announcer for the Kitten Bowl, and the taping was Saturday.

So he went on the mother of all shopping trips at the Shops at Riverside in Hackensack.

"I bought everything," he said. "Underwear, socks, handkerchiefs and belts, two suits and a blazer and slacks and shirts and ties."

Sterling didn't stay long in the hotel. In March he traveled to Tampa Bay for Yankees spring training, and in late May he moved into another apartment in Edgewater.

Before that, Sterling organized a fundraiser in New City, N.Y., for his hundreds of neighbors displaced in the blaze, raising more than $10,000 for a disaster relief fund for fire victims.

"When you look back on it, the best thing is that no one was hurt," Sterling said. "That was a towering inferno."