Updated: August 14, 2007
Baseball Hall of Famers (from l.) Willie Mays, Whitey Ford, Berra, Reggie Jackson, Hank Aaron, Rizzuto and Ernie Banks gather for a dedication ceremony for a plaque in honor of Jackson before the Old Timers' Game at the Stadium, Saturday, July 6, 2002.
Phil Rizzuto played in his first game with the Yankees on April 14, 1941, made his final appearance as a regular broadcaster in 1996, and attended Old-Timers' Games in the 21st century -- a lifetime of touching lives.
Like that of Derek Jeter, who became the Yankees' regular shortstop in Rizzuto's final year as a broadcaster. "He was always real good to me," Jeter recalled Tuesday afternoon. "He went out of his way to be nice to me."
Rizzuto, who died Monday night, had the power to shape the opinions of listeners from the broadcast booth. Friends and family told Jeter how the Scooter had gushed about him repeatedly. And Rizzuto would reinforce those accounts when he approached Jeter in person, encouraging him, asking: "How do you make that play?"
"He was always positive, always said how good he thought I was doing," Jeter said. "He always mentioned how tall I was."
When the 6-foot-3 Jeter first met Rizzuto, he couldn't believe how small the former shortstop was. Rizzuto, who was the American League's Most Valuable Player in 1950 in a league of DiMaggio and Williams and other enormous stars, was 5-foot-6.
"We'd talk about it, when Yogi [Berra] came in, or when Mr. Rizzuto [came], how small they are," Jeter said. "[Rizzuto] was tiny. But he really got the most out of his ability. It goes to show you that it's not about how big you are."
Rizzuto in 1999 with Yankees shortstop Derek Jeter.
Jeter, of course, knew all about the man he called "Mr. Rizzuto." He had wanted to be the Yankees' shortstop since he was a boy. He spent summers in the New York area watching WPIX and Rizzuto, the only shortstop in Yankees' history with his number retired -- No. 10.
Jeter had kept the Yankees alive in the 2001 playoffs by flipping a relay to catcher Jorge Posada, and before the Yankees began their next postseason game at home, Rizzuto came out to throw out the ceremonial first ball. He moved toward the foul line, mimicking Jeter's play, all the way to when he flipped the ball sideways to catcher Yogi Berra. "I didn't know he was going to do it -- it was pretty funny," Jeter said.
A couple of years before, Rizzuto had thrown out a first pitch before a playoff game, and the two shortstops, their playing days separated by almost 40 years, walked off the field together. Jeter got a picture of the moment and asked Rizzuto sign it -- "Mr. Rizzuto," to Jeter -- and the shot rests on a wall in Jeter's home now.
Rizzuto touched the life of Jerry Coleman, his former double-play and broadcast partner, for more than 60 years. "We had nothing but fun together," Coleman said, from his San Diego home. "It was a pleasure to be with him."
Rizzuto played 13 seasons in the majors, but by the '90s, his persona was largely defined through the prism of his broadcast work -- and this has obscured just how good of a player Rizzuto was, Coleman believes. "I used to tease him," Coleman said with a chuckle. "DiMaggio and (Mickey) Mantle got all of the credit, but we were carrying the club, and nobody talked about us."
Then Coleman got serious: "(Rizzuto) never missed a damn ball. He didn't have a great arm, but he was always on the top of the game, in what was happening. He was the MVP, for heaven's sake, among the DiMaggios and Mantles and Williams. When you get to that level, you're not just lucking your way through.
"He was the captain. He was in charge. He knew what to look for. … He and Pee Wee Reese, they dominated the sport at that position, and look who was in the World Series every year -- the Yankees and the Dodgers. Their teams."
Berra (l.) and Rizzuto throw out the first pitch before Game 5 of the 2001 ALDS against the Oakland A's at the Stadium.
Coleman called Rizzuto "the greatest right-handed bunter I ever saw," and witnessed a notable play; with DiMaggio coming down the line from third base on a squeeze play, Rizzuto got a fastball aimed for his head. As Coleman recalled the moment, Rizzuto lifted his bat high, in front of his face, and got the bunt down. Coleman agreed with Casey Stengel's assessment that it was the best play he had ever seen. "If it had been me up there," said Coleman, "I would have been flat on my back."
Coleman and other Yankees were aware of Rizzuto's fears, including that of small creatures, and while Coleman said he didn't play practical jokes on the shortstop -- "I was nice to him," said Coleman -- he would wait in anticipation when somebody did. One time, another player placed a dead mouse in Rizzuto's glove. The instant Rizzuto felt the mouse, Coleman recalled through laughter, "The glove went straight up in the air."
But the bitterness that goes on today did not often appear in those days, believes Coleman, the Padres' play-by-play announcer; he watched the near-brawls between the Blue Jays and Yankees last week, over something that Alex Rodriguez did or did not say, and recalled an incident involving Rizzuto.
"We were playing the Red Sox once, and somebody on Boston took out Rizzuto," Coleman said. "A bad slide. DiMaggio came up and hit a single to right field, and he never stopped at first -- he ran right to second, and knocked (Bobby Doerr) into left field. Nobody ever said anything." The Red Sox understood, Coleman believed.
Rizzuto and Coleman were broadcasters together for years, and Coleman found it "wonderful" to work alongside the former captain, enormous fun. There was a day in Cleveland when Coleman went down to the Indians' clubhouse and was told that Sam McDowell -- an erratic, hard-throwing pitcher -- was going to start that day. Rizzuto and Coleman were amazed, as the game progressed, by McDowell's suddenly excellent command. In the fourth inning, a message was relayed to them from the home office at WPIX -- the Cleveland pitcher was Jack Kralick, and not Sam McDowell.
Rizzuto looks at some of his personal baseball memorabilia at Mickey Mantle's Restaurant on Central Park South in this February, 2006 photo.
"It must be a Guinness world record, not having the right starting pitcher for four innings," Coleman said, chuckling again. "He was something else."
Rizzuto touched Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. There was a perception in recent years that Steinbrenner would bring in Rizzuto and/or Berra to throw out a first pitch if the game was particularly important, and the Yankees needed some good luck. "I don't know if [Steinbrenner] wanted him for good luck," recalled general manager Brian Cashman. "I think he did because he was such an important member of the Yankee family."
Across decades, and across generations.
Buster Olney is a senior writer for ESPN The Magazine. He updates his Insider blog each morning on ESPN.com.
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