Yankees announcer Dave Sims fires back at Boomer Esiason over games he ‘blew off’

Yankees radio announcer Dave Sims has no regrets about taking time off in May to see his son, despite his WFAN colleague’s dismay.

Sims, in his first year in the Yankees booth after taking over for the retired John Sterling, addressed Boomer Esiason criticizing him for taking the Yankees-A’s series off just more than a month into his first season calling Bombers games.

“People in our business — in this line of business — take time off,” Sims, who was the Mariners’ TV play-by-play voice for the previous 18 years, said on the Awful Announcing podcast. “I have a son in Seattle. And the three games I blew off were in Sacramento. If you look at the schedules of just about every broadcaster in the major leagues, they take time off. It’s not like I took time off Labor Day in the middle of a pennant race. It was May — almost middle May — and I wanted to see my son. And it was the only time we were going to be going out west, and we had some things we had to take to him, yada, yada, yada. I wasn’t going to make my wife do that.

Yankees radio announcer Dave Sims (r.) talks to manager Aaron Boone (l.) Getty Images

“The radio station said, ‘Fine, you have X amount of days off. If those are the days you want to take off, hey, you’re good. We got you covered for it. Safe travels.’”

Esiason was in disbelief that Sims, 72, would take a series off at the time.

“I’ve worked with Dave, great guy,” Esiason said on the “Boomer and Gio” show on May 12. “We love Dave Sims, but I’m gonna call it out as I see it. You just got started as the Yankee announcer, and he’s 40 games into his career as the Yankee announcer, and he decided to take off.”

There is “plenty of time in the offseason” to be with family and friends, Esiason went on.

Boomer Esiason Getty Images

“What are you doing? You just took the Yankee job! It’s supposed to be the job of your life,” Esiason said. “If he had been here as long as John Sterling had been here — if John wanted to take a weekend off later on in his career, totally acceptable.”

Esiason and his radio partner, Gregg Giannotti, were out last week on vacation.