Murray Chass: Rizzuto’s Secret of Youth Lasted for Years

Phil Rizzuto bunting against the Indians in 1951

The New York Times
Published: August 19, 2007

The obituaries said Phil Rizzuto was 89 when he died last week. That’s because the baseball encyclopedias said that Rizzuto was 89. And the encyclopedias said Rizzuto was 89 because that’s what Rizzuto said. That is, they listed his birth date as Sept. 25, 1917, because that’s when Rizzuto reported he was born.

But that wasn’t necessarily so. Or was it?

Sorry, Scooter, but I have to do it. I have kept your secret to myself for nearly 30 years, but now that you have sadly left us, I don’t think you would mind if I told the tale from the Yankees’ spring training camp in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in the late 1970s.

Rizzuto was then a Yankees broadcaster, but he was also a bunting instructor in spring training. One day, he stood at the net as players bunted in the batting cage under the stands along the right-field line at Fort Lauderdale Stadium. Scooter knew better, but he absent-mindedly held on to the net behind home plate, putting his hand through an opening between the cords.



Rizzuto, DiMaggio, Berra and Coleman at the 1950 All-Star game.

A foul ball came off the bat and smashed Rizzuto’s finger. It hurt. It was bloody. It was a mess. Rizzuto was told to go to a nearby hospital and have the finger treated there. But he couldn’t drive with his finger in that condition, so I offered to take him.

When we arrived at the hospital, the nurse at the outpatient desk asked Rizzuto for the usual information. Date of birth was one of her questions.

“Sept. 25, 1916,” Rizzuto replied without hesitation. With “16” hardly out of his mouth, he turned to me and said sternly, “Don’t you tell anybody.”

And I didn’t, not then, not ever. Until now. But what could have been more Scooterlike than continuing to make himself a year younger decades after he retired? On the other hand, the department of health said Rizzuto’s birth certificate listed his year of birth as 1917, but leave it to Scooter to disagree with the officials.



Pee Wee Reese and Phil Rizzuto at the 1997 Baseball Hall of Fame Induction ceremony.

Then there is the Pee Wee Reese connection. Because Rizzuto was the Yankees’ shortstop and Reese the Brooklyn Dodgers’ shortstop, they were always linked and compared. From the time Reese was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1984, Rizzuto fans said he, too, should be in the Hall of Fame. They said it for 10 years until Rizzuto was inducted in 1994.

But now, as in life, Reese and Rizzuto are linked in death. Reese died Aug. 14, 1999. Some news reports said Rizzuto died last Monday night; others said Tuesday. The New Jersey nursing home where Rizzuto died declined to say what time he died, but the Yankees and his sister said they believed the time of death was 11 p.m., about an hour away from Aug. 14.