Charley Steiner is watching this World Series at home in Los Angeles, counting the days until next season, when he plans to resume his craft.
A Dodgers broadcaster since 2005, after working three seasons with John Sterling on Yankees radio, Steiner was diagnosed last winter with multiple myeloma blood cancer that forced him to miss almost all of this season.
Now in remission, the 75-year-old Steiner is channeling his Brooklyn Dodgers boyhood rooting interest.
“It’s wait until next year,” Steiner said Monday by phone.
Steiner said he worked three or four Dodgers radio broadcasts this season and was limited to only a few innings in each because of severe lower back pain that was a manifestation of the cancer.
Steiner still undergoes regular physical therapy on his back.
“I could talk and do all the things one does for a living, but the difficulty was remaining upright for an extended period of time, so after only three or four innings I was toast,” Steiner said.
Steiner admitted it’s been difficult watching the Yankees and Dodgers play in the World Series without a microphone in front of him.
“I was a Brooklyn Dodger fan on Long Island and then they moved and I became a Yankee fan because there was nobody else,” Steiner said. “And as the years go on I end up doing the Yankees and the Dodgers and to have them play each other and there is nothing I can do, except to watch — it’s infuriating. I keep reaching out for the brass ring, but I can’t quite grasp it.”
Follow The Post’s coverage of the Yankees in the postseason:
- Vaccaro: Yankees may need to go spiritual to save Aaron Judge this World Series
- Sherman: Yankees remain defiant, even as the Dodgers expose all their flaws
- Heyman: Dodgers’ Yoshinobu Yamamoto flipped Yankees’ greatest World Series edge
- Juan Soto gives Yankees rallying cry after latest offensive one-man show
Steiner’s trips to Dodger Stadium in recent weeks, first during the NLCS and then for Game 1 of the World Series, have been therapeutic.
Steiner spent time catching up with Mets radio voice Howie Rose during the NLCS and with Sterling and Suzyn Waldman last weekend.
“One of the great misnomers over all these years is that John and Suzyn and I aren’t friends,” Steiner said. “We have been friends and we talk a fair amount, so to see them was great. To see Howie was great because we all grew up together. Howie and John and I in the late ‘70s, there we were: Howie had the dopey tape recorder over his shoulder as I did mine, and John was John. We have known one another for over 40 years, so it was great to see them.”
Steiner said he has been assured by Dodgers brass that he is wanted back in the booth.
“In many ways it’s kind of healthy for me,” Steiner said. “There is a target I can throw darts at. Yeah, I’m coming back and one of the things I have found is how much I miss it.”