KA AY: I’M STILL SCARED
Kay 'scared' Yanks return won't last after vocal cord surgery
FOR THE past six weeks, Michael Kay has been trapped in his own mind, fighting his thoughts.
Silenced following surgery, the TV voice of the Yankees and the host of his own afternoon radio show was filled with anxiety, fear and thinking the worst.
After returning from vocal cord surgery to call two games on YES this weekend, he is frightened as his voice didn’t respond as well as he had hoped.
“Quite frankly, I’m scared,” Kay told The Post.
Kay, 58, said this via a text interview, as he is limiting the use of his voice as he gears up for doing five games in a row in Oakland and Los Angeles this week. He is concerned.
“Awful,” Kay said of what the past six weeks have been like for him. “Filled with anxiety and fear. Not being able to speak for all that time. You’re trapped in your own mind and you’re thinking the worst. It’s been very scary, and at no point do I think I’m all good now. It took a long time to get back, and I didn’t rush because I want it to be right and I want it to last.”
He said he felt “really nervous” on Saturday — and then on Sunday, he believes, he caught a cold and his voice “didn’t have much.”
“Let’s just say I’m glad today is an off day and I won’t do much talking,” Kay said.
On the Yankees’ charter to Oakland on Sunday, Kay barely spoke, instead prep
ping for the upcoming games and watching the latest season of “Comedians in Cars Getting Coffee.” He will work the three games with the A’s, then two in Los Angeles before Ryan Ruocco takes the Seattle series.
Kay is scheduled to return to his radio show Monday. He is expected to do a full week of radio and then double up Aug. 30, for the Yankees-A’s game.
Kay said he knows there are more tragic events people deal with, but his career and his life is centered around his voice.
“The worst point was the initial diagnosis three weeks after surgery and the plan was for me to do the Red Sox series at the Stadium,” Kay said. “When I went to the doctor in Boston and he looked at the cords and said they were still not healed, I was devastated. Just crushed. He made me stay silent for two more weeks, and those were nerve-wracking.”
While he trusts in his renowned specialist, Dr. Steven Zeitels, Kay feels his case is different because of the workload on his voice. When Kay is doing both his show and a game, he is talking for essentially seven or eight hours straight per day.
In an interview with his colleague, Jack Curry, on YES prior to his first telecast, Kay raised the question of having to one day make a choice between YES or the talk show on ESPN New York.
“My big question is do they hold up under that strain,” Kay said. “We will see. I’m just 58 years old and I want to do this for a long time. I almost feel every word I say is a test.
“He said I would build up, but he also said, ‘ You have to see if you can handle the same workload as before.’ If you can’t, then you have to possibly make hard decisions on what you can do. He also said it might be a good idea somewhere down the line to get a vocal coach to learn how to use the voice a bit differently. He also said it’s shocking that I didn’t break down for 28 years of this sort of work.
“I love both jobs and want to keep both jobs. That’s my intent.”
Kay has had support from his bosses, John Filippelli at YES and Tim McCarthy at ESPN New York, as well as family and friends. He called his longtime buddy, Mike Breen, a rock throughout the entire struggle. He also found solace in social media.
“Amazingly, another thing that kept my spirits up through this whole thing came from an unlikely source — Twitter,” Kay said. “It’s never known as positive real estate, but an overwhelming majority of people were so kind that I was caught off guard. I was amazed, and when I was getting down, I would scroll through and saw the nice things people said and how much they missed me on the air and that made me more determined to get back.”