For at least seven years, YES Network analyst Jack Curry has opened every pregame show with a song title that encapsulates the state of the Yankees.
On Aug. 1, Curry chose Sting’s “Brand New Day” in reference to the Yankees’ revamped roster after a busy trade deadline.
Five days later, Curry went with Michael Jackson’s “Man in the Mirror” to reflect the Yankees’ need for self-evaluation following a fifth consecutive loss.
The selections serve as a subtle way for Curry to infuse his lifelong love of music with his daily baseball coverage.
But that marriage of passions dates back even further for Curry, who would connect with players over music when he was a Yankees beat reporter and national baseball writer for The New York Times.
“I was always looking for ways to incorporate baseball and music,” Curry told the Daily News.
“Bernie Williams was a great player to cover because he was a musician and a center fielder. Paul O’Neill was a drummer. David Cone, fanatical music fan, so I had a lot of conversations with him. I even remember talking to [Derek] Jeter one day about Jay-Z by his locker.”
That relationship building helped Curry become one of the foremost experts on the Yankees during his tenure at The Times from 1987-2009, and he’s remained as plugged-in as anyone since joining YES in 2010.
His present-day nods to music represent only a small portion of his coverage, but they’ve resonated with Yankees fans nonetheless.
Social media users frequently engage with Curry when he tweets a song suggestion right before the YES pregame show. If the song is four minutes long, he’ll post the suggestion four minutes before the show begins, giving viewers “just enough time to listen.”
He’ll similarly share “get-me-home” songs when he goes for a run, with “God Only Knows” by the Beach Boys; “Amber” by 311; and “Rain in the Summertime” by The Alarm among the recent examples.
And Curry estimates he’s used around 1,000 song titles for his opening comments on the YES pregame shows over the years.
“I obviously go into the show thinking about the baseball perspective. ‘The Yankees have played well recently, but they want to be playing better than this.’ I’ll have my thoughts ready, and then after that I’ll come up with the song title,” said Curry, a nine-time Emmy winner.
“I don’t go into a game saying, ‘OK, here’s my song title. What’s my baseball viewpoint?’ I have the viewpoint first.”
Curry’s love of music started during his New Jersey childhood, with a father who sang and played guitar and an older brother, Rob, whom he describes as a “music savant.” Curry’s dad adored Johnny Cash, while his sibling introduced him to bands such as Devo and Violent Femmes.
As a student at Fordham University, Curry, then an aspiring sportswriter, would also contribute album reviews to the campus newspaper, The Ram.
Curry’s most memorable interview at The Ram was not an athlete, but rather British punk rocker Billy Idol, whom he spoke with ahead of a concert on the university’s Rose Hill campus in the Bronx in 1983. Curry managed to project the interview over a speaker so others in his dorm room could listen.
“Billy Idol was as cool as you could possibly imagine,” Curry recalled. “He didn’t rush me off the phone. I’m sure he was doing a tour of who knows how many concerts, but he was willing to stay on the phone for an hour with a college kid who was just smitten with that style of music.”
Curry lists Cash, Bob Marley and Joe Strummer of The Clash as the late artists he wishes he could have interviewed, and he names Bruce Springsteen as his dream musician to speak with.
Still, sports journalism was always Curry’s goal, and it’s worked out for him.
In addition to his decades with The Times and YES, Curry authored or co-authored four New York Times best-sellers, including “The 1998 Yankees” and books he co-wrote with Cone, O’Neill and Jeter.
“I definitely had [music journalism] in the back of my mind, but honestly, it would have always been a secondary gig, a part-time gig,” Curry said. “I knew I wanted to be a sports journalist. The music was more of a hobby and more of a love, and that’s what it has stayed with until this day.”
