Michael Kay will be mute for three weeks after vocal cord surgery
Michael Kay talks for a living, but after his surgery Tuesday he will have to be silent for three straight weeks.
He will be in triple-mute position — no speaking, no clearing his throat and he is not even supposed to burp.
After that, Kay hopes to be back to work as the TV voice of the Yankees and the host of his ESPN New York afternoon talk show a month from now, he told The Post via text. Whether he will go back to full-time work right away is still to be determined.
Last week, Kay announced he will be out for a month because of his vocal cord issue. On Tuesday, he will have a nodule removed from his vocal cord by Dr. Steven Zeitels, the founder and director of the Massachusetts General Hospital’s Center for Laryngeal Surgery and Voice Rehabilitation.
The problem is just caused by years and years of use.
“It finally reached a tipping point,” Kay texted.
Though the success rate is very high, it is a scary procedure for someone whose livelihood is based on his voice. Zeitels has performed the same surgery on Adele, which earned him a shoutout from the singer during the 2011 Grammys.
Among his other marquee clients, Zeitels has restored the voices of Joe Buck and Dick Vitale. Both reached out to Kay to encourage him. Kay has yet to hear from Adele.
— With Phil Mushnick
JUST STERLING: John Sterling is scheduled to return to the Yankees’ radio broadcast booth after the All-Star break. Last week, he took his first game off in three decades. Sterling has been “under the weather,” and the hope is the respite will allow him to feel better for the second half.
Ryan Ruocco performed well in Sterling’s place in Tampa last weekend, creating a nice flow with analyst Suzyn Waldman on WFAN. Ruocco had only done two baseball games professionally on radio before the four games, though he had called around 10 when he was in college at Fordham. He sounded very comfortable and informative in the booth.
Sterling, 81, will one day be replaced. Ruocco, 32, is a lifelong Yankee fan, and would figure to be a candidate for what could be a dream job.
However, with his ESPN, YES and DAZN work — and with radio usually paying less than TV — it would be an interesting decision on whether to take it or not, if it were one day to be offered.
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TEDY BALLGAME: ESPN’s Tedy Buschi had a second stroke last week, but is doing well. Bruschi is off this entire month, and he is expected to return to the air shortly after. The Post reported months ago that Bruschi has been promoted to “Sunday NFL Countdown.” ESPN has not announced the move yet.
RUN OF PLAY: ESPN has a deal with the NWSL, the women’s soccer league that features many of the World Cup stars. While MLS has grown in the United States, the women’s league has not yet taken off. MLS does not do big TV ratings, but the MLS stadium experience is very enjoyable and helped by national exposure on ESPN and FS1.
For the NWSL, having games on ESPN2 and ESPNews should create awareness. The presentation and the treatment of the players around the league needs to be at the level of the players’ performance. But having ESPN involved is a necessary step, but a lot more needs to follow.
CLICKER BOOKS: “Ballpark: Baseball in the American City” by Paul Goldberger examines the evolution of the MLB stadiums over the past 150 years and their impact on the surrounding areas. This is a book for those who love baseball history and architecture. Goldberger won a Pulitzer Prize in 1984 for his architecture criticism in the New York Times. Now, more than three decades later, he is rewarded with an even highest honor, a very solid 4.2/5 rating from our resident critic, my dad, Papa Clicker.
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