With Yogi by Rizzuto's side, teammate was never alone
New York Daily News
Wednesday, August 15th 2007, 11:12 AM
During Phil Rizzuto's last months, Yogi Berra would visit his former roommate at the Green Hill retirement home in West Orange and they would talk and laugh about sticking a mouse in a player's glove or switching teammates' shoes inside the old clubhouse. There was a TV in the room, and a Yankee game might be on. Rizzuto would be eating chicken francaise, or a lobster tail pastry, or a cannoli.
He really did love those cannolis, just as the Scooter always said on the air, when instead he might have been dissecting yet another boring splitter.
"He was still eating them right before he passed away," Yogi said.
Ed Lucas, a reporter and friend who was struck blind more than 40 years ago, had visited Rizzuto too, just a few weeks ago. Rizzuto was sleeping in his room. Lucas sat and waited. He figured he owed the Scooter that much, because Rizzuto once agreed to get on a plane with him, when Lucas was just a teenager and before he knew that Rizzuto was terrified of flying.
"Is that you, Lucas?" Rizzuto said when he awakened, because the Scooter always called everyone by his last name. "Holy Cow!"
His wife, Cora, would be there with him, or his daughters would come up from Florida, or maybe Yogi was there. Somebody was visiting Rizzuto all the time. Eventually, Scooter would grow tired and doze off in a chair or on his bed.
"He was getting weaker," Berra said last night, at the Stadium. "He would fall asleep and then it was time to go."
Phil Rizzuto and Yogi Berra at Old Timers Day 2005
Yogi would leave the place, and then yesterday morning he got the call from Patricia, Phil's daughter. Her father had died quietly and peacefully, but that still didn't make Yogi feel very good about this. A big piece of the past was gone. Rizzuto was more than a shortstop. He was a shrieking soprano voice, and he was nonstop fun.
It hit the Yankees hard yesterday, especially the ones with connections to the former shortstop. There were a lot of those. And when they talked about Rizzuto, the first thing they all did was smile.
Ron Guidry smiled and talked about how it was Rizzuto who cursed him with the inconvenient nickname, "Louisiana Lightning," that was 18 letters long and became a far more tortuous autograph than "Gator."
Don Mattingly smiled and said that Rizzuto tried to teach him to bunt in spring training, just as he tried to teach everybody. It was not a craft that Mattingly was likely to use often, but he listened nonetheless.
Then there was Derek Jeter, who smiled and said he has an autographed photo at his home of himself and Rizzuto, walking toward the dugout together.
Jeter was Rizzuto's favorite modern Yankee right to the end. Four years ago, the Scooter was told by this columnist he'd won a Daily News poll naming him the all-time greatest Yankee shortstop. He was horrified.
"Holy cow!" he said. "How could you do that with Derek Jeter? People are going to be mad. Can't you make it a tie?"
That was impossible. He was No. 1, and Jeter was No. 2. Rizzuto became reconciled to the honor, but he never gave up admiring Jeter. Rizzuto would come to an Old-Timers' Day and look for Jeter first. It was quite a sight, those two together. "Scooter was half his height," Joe Torre said.
Rizzuto was a little guy, 5-6 and 160. He also didn't have much of an arm, either. "The first basemen were ready to kill me waiting for that throw to reach them," he once said.
But he was the glue. The Scooter learned little-man ball from his coach, Al Kunitz, at Richmond Hill High in Queens. He'd bunt or he'd fake the bunt. He choked up on the bat. He got rid of the ball very quickly on the relay, before he was wrecked by some lug sliding into second. Only Eddie Stanky, his archrival, ever seemed to slide too fast.
Rizzuto won seven World Series, beat out Yogi for the 1950 MVP and was finally elected to the Hall by the Veterans Committee in 1994. For 40 years around here, he screamed about cannolis, lightning and traffic on the bridge.
Then he was in a nursing home, watching games and falling asleep. The Yankees lowered the flags last night and laid a wreath in Monument Park. The Bleacher Creatures chanted his name. The Yanks lost to the Orioles, 12-0. If there was a cow in the joint, it was most certainly sanctified.
fjbondy@netscape.net
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