Drayer: The legacy Dave Sims leaves with Seattle Mariners

When “truck day” – the day MLB teams’ equipment trucks head for spring training facilities – hits in early 2025, the suitcase of Dave Sims will be sporting a new pinstriped tag, bound for a new destination.

The move that at times seemed inevitable, official. After 18 years of calling games on the west coast, the longtime Seattle Mariners broadcaster is going home.

Dave Sims leaving Mariners to become new voice of Yankees

We’re thrilled to welcome Dave Sims as the new play-by-play voice of the Yankees on @WFAN660 🎙️ pic.twitter.com/pCGuFyHXAJ

— New York Yankees (@Yankees) November 14, 2024

Raised in Philadelphia, Sims cut his teeth in the business in New York, first as a sportswriter and reporter for the New York Daily News before going on to work in radio hosting at WNBC and WFAN, the latter the Yankees flagship station. In play-by-play, he enjoyed great success eventually calling college basketball, college football and NFL games nationally before landing the Mariners television job in 2007.

Sims wraps up nearly two decades of bringing games to Mariners fans on both TV and radio, his “Giddy up, baby, giddy up!” and “Hey now” calls firmly cemented as sounds of Seattle summers. But while his summers were spent in Seattle, New York has always been home. It is where he raised his family, where he returned in the winter. He can tell you with joy where to get the best bagel (Ess-a-Bagel) and is always up to date on what’s playing on Broadway.

Make no mistake, Sims is passionate about the Mariners and represented them beautifully, but it was impossible not to see he was in his element each and every time the Mariners were at Yankee Stadium. For that reason, the news is bittersweet for many who worked with him, including longtime Mariners radio voice Rick Rizzs, who on a blustery November afternoon was making a pot of spaghetti sauce for a friend who was under the weather when he learned of the news.

“I’m going to miss him like crazy,” Rizzs said. “He’s been a great friend to me and to all of us in the broadcast booth and to the people in our community for what he did. And I think it’s a well deserved honor. So I wish him and Abby, his sons and his grandkids all the best on a very, very new part of his journey. And he’s gonna do a great job with the Yankees.”

Rizzs, who broadcast games with Sims when Aaron Goldsmith slid to the TV side, especially appreciated the shared experience of the game the two had.

“What it comes down to as far as Dave and I are concerned, a couple of old guys who grew up with the game of baseball, loving it as kids, watching it and joining it with our dads and our moms and our families,” he said. “(Sims) going out to the old ballpark in Philadelphia and me going out to Wrigley Field and Comiskey Park with my family, so we grew up with the game of baseball, loving it as kids, playing the game of baseball and Little League and high school. We fell in love with broadcasting the games on radio and television. He was so very good at. It. And not only just baseball. I mean, he was so good at broadcasting football and the NFL, college basketball as well. Just a talented, talented broadcaster. I’m going to miss him.”

An experience Rizzs would have rather not have shared with Sims was time on the injured list in 2018 after an ill-fated early April pickup basketball game put together for the traveling party in Minnesota, leaving Rizzs with a torn biceps and Sims a ruptured Achilles tendon. Safe to say that was the last such game played on the road.

Personally, I feel both fortunate and privileged have have worked with Dave. There is much to be learned from him and he has always been incredibly generous in sharing his expertise, which is vast. One didn’t have to dig too deep to understand the reporter hat has never been completely taken off. Reporting is close to his heart and often evident in his always direct questions and pursuit of information that could help his broadcast. Sims is a stranger to no clubhouse, no batting cage, no player, because that’s where the stories are found.

Sims is also incredibly encouraging, something that’s greatly appreciated in a field that at times presents unique challenges.

In the booth we are fortunate to keep our teammates for much longer than those on the field. Sims has been a great teammate. He will be missed, but I look forward to seeing him on the other side. Even if there are pinstripes.

Seattle Mariners coverage

• Salk: It’s time for the Mariners to trade a pitcher – but which one?
• Why All-Star Alec Bohm makes so much sense as Mariners trade target
• Two potential Seattle Mariners infield trade targets to watch
• Justin Turner proved Mariners need his veteran presence back
• Four Takes: Big Seattle Mariners questions about offseason and 2025

Follow @shannondrayer