New York Newsday
bob.herzog@newsday.com
11:35 AM EDT, August 14, 2007
Yankees infielder Phil Rizzuto poses in this March, 1950 file photo. Rizzuto, the Hall of Fame shortstop during the Yankees' dynasty years and beloved by a generation of fans for exclaiming "Holy cow!" as a broadcaster, died Tuesday Aug. 14, 2007.
If Phil Rizzuto had never broadcast a single Yankees game, he would still be a beloved New York sports figure for his dazzling fielding, uncanny bunting and timely hitting as the greatest shortstop in Yankees' history.
If Phil Rizzuto had never played a single Yankees game, he would still be a beloved New York sports figure for his unabashed rooting, stream-of-consciousness descriptions of baseball and life, and comical interplay with numerous partners as a Yankees announcer for parts of five decades.
That's the unique legacy of The Scooter. He had two separate Yankee careers -- as a player and broadcaster -- that spanned 56 years, won him legions of fans of all ages and made him one of the most popular and well-recognized personalities in New York sports history.
"He's one of the most lovable characters I've ever met ... and one of the most underrated broadcast professionals that's probably ever been," Topps publicity director and former Yankees publicist Marty Appel told Dan Hirshberg in the book, "Phil Rizzuto: A Yankee Tradition."
"He is the greatest shortstop I have ever seen in my entire baseball career, and I have watched some beauties," Casey Stengel, who managed Rizzuto for eight seasons, once said. "Honus Wagner was a better hitter, sure, but I've seen this kid make plays Wagner never did."
Rizzuto, who played all 13 of his seasons in pinstripes and was MVP of the American League in 1950, died today at age 89. He was in declining health for years and living at a nursing home in West Orange, N.J., according to AP.
As well known for his bunts and double plays as he was for his exclamations of "Holy Cow!" or "that huckleberry," Rizzuto was the common bond that linked generations of Yankees players and fans beginning with his rookie season of 1941 and ending with his final year behind the microphone in 1996. No Yankee has ever had a longer day-to-day association with the club. "He is the Yankees," longtime friend and broadcast partner Bill White once said.
Phil Rizzuto, shortstop for the New York Yankees, is shown throwing the ball, in this October 2, 1950 photo.
This symbol of pinstripe pride was the heart and soul of Yankee teams that won nine pennants and seven World Series during his 13-year career (1941-56 with a three-year interruption for military service from 1943-45). That included the 1949-53 championship seasons, when Rizzuto was one of 12 Yankees to be a part of the only team in major-league history to win five consecutive World Series. Ted Williams, the Red Sox' Hall of Fame slugger, often said that the reason the Yankees bested Boston so many times for American League supremacy in the 1940s and 1950s was because of Rizzuto. "A lot of people said their shortstop, Rizzuto, was too small," Williams said in "The October Twelve" co-authored by Rizzuto and Tom Horton, "but, damn, knew how to beat you. Makes me sick to think about it."
Rizzuto batted .273 for his career and stole 149 bases, but those numbers only tell part of the story. He was an acrobatic fielder and artistic bunter whose contributions to the Yankees' dynasty were huge despite his 5-6, 150-pound stature. Teammate Tommy Henrich told Hirshberg that Rizzuto was, "poetry in motion. He just glided around. He was nimble ... He could twist his body around and get in position to make some great plays."
Infielder Johnny Pesky of the Red Sox told David Halberstam in the best-selling book "Summer of '49," that his arch-rival was "the best shotstop of the era -- he held that team together the way Pee Wee Reese held the Dodgers together."
His defense was so good that pitcher Vic Raschi once said, "My best pitch is anything the batter grounds, lines or pops in the direction of Rizzuto."
His offense was never more appreciated than in 1950, when he batted .324 with 200 hits, including 36 doubles, seven triples and seven homers. He scored 125 runs, drove in 66 and walked 91 times in leading the Yankees to a pennant and World Series sweep of the Phillies. Rizzuto's finest season was capped off when he was named the American League's MVP and was voted the major league's player of the year by The Sporting News.
Phillip Francis Rizzuto was born in Brooklyn on Sept. 25, 1917. He excelled at baseball and football on the streets and in the sandlots, where his speed, quickness and smarts helped him overcome a perceived height disadvantage. His coach at Richmond Hill High School, Al Kunitz, shifted Rizzuot from the outfield to the infield, where he starred at third base as a sophomore and shortstop as a junior, earning all-city honors both years. Kunitz was also the man who taught Rizzuto how to bunt and steal bases. Rizzuto left high school to work and concentrate on sandlot ball in the spring of 1936, optimistic he would be signed by a major-league club.
His first two tryouts, however, with the Giants and Dodgers, ended in failure and disheartening comments about his lack of height. However, veteran Yankees scout Paul Krichell -- who had signed Lou Gehrig and Tony Lazzeri among others -- spotted Rizzuto in a sandlot game at Floral Park and was impressed enough to invite him to a week-long tryout at Yankee Stadium.
Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto and Whitey Ford read Joe DiMaggio's plaque in Monument Park at Yankee Stadium.
Rizzuto did well and Krichell signed him just ahead of the also-eager Red Sox. Rizzuto was sent to the Yankees' minor-league team in Bassett, Va., where he was paid $75 a month. Rizzuto overcame a serious leg injury to eventually star in the minors at Norfolk, Va., and Kansas City, where manager Billy Hitchcock nicknamed him "Scooter" because of his range and speed in the field. He and his minor-league double-play partner, second baseman Gerry Priddy, both made the Yankees' roster for the 1941 season.
Rizzuto was an instant success as a replacement for long-time Yankees shortstop Frank Crosetti. He batted .307 as a rookie and became an infield fixture. He was the team's starting shortstop from 1941-54, except for the war years of 1943-45, playing in five All-Star games. He played a reserve role in his final two seasons of 1955 and '56.
The signature play of Rizzuto's career occurred on Sept. 17, 1951. Cleveland came to Yankee Stadium tied for first place with New York. A pitcher's duel was tied at 1 entering the bottom of the ninth. With one out, the Yankees loaded the bases against the Indians' superb righthander, Bob Lemon. Rizzuto came to bat with a sellout crowd and the opposition expecting a suicide squeeze play. Sure enough, on a 1-0 pitch Joe DiMaggio broke towards home from third base. Lemon threw a pitch over Rizzuto's head, thinking it was impossible to bunt. But the Scooter managed to drop down a perfect bunt scoring DiMaggio and putting the Yankees in first place to stay.
A frustrated Lemon tossed his glove into the netting behind home plate before stalking off the field in disgust. "That squeeze play ... really hurt," Lemon said in "Phil Rizzuto: a Yankee Tradition." "I knew it was coming. DiMaggio gave it away. He broke too soon. I threw a ball right behind Phil's head and he still laid down a perfect bunt. I tried to pitch it where he couldn't bunt it, but he laid down a blueprint and the game was over. It felt just like when you throw a good pitch and somebody hits a home run to beat you."
Rizzuto's pragmatic reaction? "If I didn't bunt, it would have hit me in the head."
Getting plunked by a fastball would not have jolted Rizzuto any more than the way his playing career ended. In August of 1956, he was called to general manager George Weiss' office, where Stengel was already there. The two bosses asked for Rizzuto's opinion about Yankees who might be cut to make room for veteran outfielder Enos Slaughter, a late-season acquisition. At first, Rizzuto was flattered that he was being asked. But soon, as Stengel and Weiss nixed each suggestion, it became clear what the meeting was really about: the 38-year-old Rizzuto was the player who would be cut.
Phil Rizzuto and Billy Martin celebrate another Yankee championship.
The Scooter was shocked and, at the time, quite bitter, as he assumed if would be kept for the remainder of the season and allowed to retire in the offseason. "I was crushed and even more devastated to learn the player they'd picked up to replace me was even older than I was," Rizzuto said in "The October Twelve." Slaughter was 40 in 1956.
Rizzuto was fuming, and might've gone to reporters and blasted his team had he not run into ex-Yankee teammate Snuffy Stirnweiss in the hallway. Stirnweiss, at The Stadium for the first Oldtimers Day that afternoon, calmed Rizzuto down, told him to avoid reporters and sent him to the Catskills for a few days with his wife, Cora.
"He was an angel," Rizzuto wrote. "After several days I cooled off. The hurt was still hurting, but my mind was in control. If I had popped off to the press about the way I felt, a whole lot of things that happened to me after 1956 might never have fallen into place."
What happened was that in December of 1956, the Yankees announced that Rizzuto would join broadcasting legends Mel Allen and Red Barber on the Yankees' announcing team beginning with the 1957 season. Rizzuto's unpolished enthusiasm, naivety and pro-Yankee feelings -- cynics called him the Yankee Rooter -- were in sharp contrast to the professional approach of 'pure' broadcasters like Allen and Barber. Yet he flourished because fans identified with him. These were Yankees' games afterall. "It's hard to be impartial when the Yankees have been my life," Rizzuto once told a reporter.
The formula worked. Rizzuto the announcer became more popular than Rizzuto the player ever was. He read fan mail and gave birthday greetings on the air. He digressed when the games were boring, often talking about non-baseball topics in a hilarious manner.
Former National League president Bill White, Rizzuto's broadcaster partner and friend for years, loved to tell of the time Rizzuto introduced them on the air as "Phil White and Bill Rizzuto." Or the time White asked to look at Rizzuto's scoreboard and saw the notation WW. "I asked him what does that mean and he said, 'Wasn't watching.'"
Rizzuto wasn't always smooth, but he was the perfect partner. "If you think about it, people always say, gee, that White and Rizzuto, what a great team; that Healy and Rizzuto, what a great team; gee, that Murcer and Rizzuto, what a great team," Appel told Hirshberg. "And all of a sudden you see a recurring pattern there ... He just brings out the best in virtually everyone he has worked with. It's a very rare gift and really it makes him an unsung braodcast talent."
For too long, Rizzuto was also an unsung baseball talent, as far as the Hall of Fame voting went. But on July 31, 1994, after an earlier vote of the Veterans Committee, Rizzuto joyously accepted his plaque and induction in baseball's shrine at Cooperstown. His rambling, long-winded (38 minutes) and heart-felt acceptance speech drew cheers and tears from the thousands who flocked to the tiny upstate village. Ralph Kiner, the Pittsburgh slugger and long-time Mets broadcaster who as a Hall of Famer has attended many induction ceremonies, called Rizzuto's speech "the best. I don't recall anyone every giving a better one in Cooperstown.
Several days later, the Yankees staged Phil Rizzuto Day at The Stadium, and a crowd of 50,700 showered more affection on their favorite shortstop. Rizzuto was touched, not expecting such a turnout so soon after his Hall of Fame induction. He told friends, "Tonight was even more emotion-packed than Cooperstown. This is where I spent the 13 years that made Cooperstown happen. Holy Cow! This is where I spent much of my life."
Which is why Bobby Murcer's comment in "Phil Rizzuto: A Yankee Tradition" seems like a perfect epitaph: "He's a legend," Murcer said. "When you think of the Yankees, you think of DiMaggio, Mantle, and Phil Rizzuto."
No comments:
Post a Comment