They called him the Voice of the Yankees, the Voice of Baseball — even the Voice of God.
But Bob Sheppard, who died Sunday at 99 after nearly six decades as the public-address man at Yankee Stadium, always dismissed those compliments.
“I’m just a second-rate crooner,” he told The Post’s Steve Serby in 2008.
He wasn’t, of course. He was the touchstone of PA announcers, the voice everyone else in the business tried to copy.
Sheppard insisted that he would “rather be known as a competent, warm, capable teacher of speech than as the best PA announcer in baseball.”
In fact, he was both.
He was so much an integral part of the Yankee Stadium experience that when ill health forced him to step down after the 2007 season, team captain Derek Jeter insisted that Sheppard’s recorded voice continue to introduce him at the plate.
And why he has rightly been enshrined with all of the other Yankee legends in the stadium’s Monument Park.
Besides his 57 years behind the mike for the Bronx Bombers — hearkening back to the days of Joe DiMaggio — Sheppard also served as the voice of the football Giants for decades and for St. John’s University, where he taught speech.
“A public-address announcer,” he was fond of saying, “should be clear, concise, correct — [not] colorful, cute or comic.”
Too few today follow Sheppard’s golden rules. Which is why he’ll be sorely missed — but never forgotten.