New York Yankees: Who Remembers The “Scooter” Phil Rizzuto?
A Hall Of Fame shortstop with the Yankees and numerous Championships under his belt, Phil Rizzuto went on to what some would say was an even better career as a broadcaster.
Phil Rizutto did not work at becoming a caricature of himself. Unlike, say a Bob Uecker, who parlayed his ineptitude as a ballplayer into a long and successful career as a broadcaster for the Milwaukee Brewers, it all came naturally to Rizzuto.
His idea of using his status as a means of receiving “freebies” was not to cajole the local Chevy dealership into letting him drive a new Corvette for a year in exchange for a signed photo that would hang on the wall in the owner’s office. Instead, Rizzuto would be overwhelmed when a local bakery delivered four cannolis to the broadcast booth. After that, he would munch on one between innings and then box up the rest to bring home to his wife, Cora in New Jersey.
He even managed to steal the thunder, unwittingly, from himself on the day he was honored at Yankee Stadium. As a parody on his signature “Holy Cow” phrase, he was presented with a dairy cow as a gift. Gracious and laughing, Rizzuto walked up to the cow to pet him. The cow proceeded to step on his foot and Rizzuto ended up on the ground flat on his butt.
On the day his number 10 was retired, all he could say was, “Holy Cow!”
Not to be overlooked, however, is the fact that Rizzuto is a member of the Baseball Hall Of Fame having played on Yankees teams that won seven World Championships and nine pennants during his 12-year career.
Other than that, it’s because his story remains so remarkably unremarkable that his persona and character will always have a special place in the lore of baseball.
Rizzuto was born in Brooklyn to parents of Italian descent in 1917. True to the nature of immigrants of these times, his dad was a laborer who lived for the welfare of his family and fretted about his son’s desire to play professional baseball rather than taking a respectable job with a secure future.
At 5’5″ and 160 pounds, Rizzuto somehow managed to prove those who doubted him wrong, including that of Casey Stengel, who told him he was too small and too short, adding that he would make a better living shining shoes, per SABR.org.
Later, Casey would say that Rizzuto was the best shortstop he ever saw in the league. Rizzuto himself never saw the need to overestimate his talent knowing that he was simply the glue that kept the middle of the infield and the top of the order intact while others drove him in for scores.
That’s not to say that he had an easy time as a Yankee finding himself as the replacement for the popular Frank Crosetti. Players tried to keep him out of the batting cage until Joe DiMaggio intervened and told them to let the kid hit. “I had a rough time,” Rizzuto recalled. “Crosetti was one of their big favorites and a great guy, and here I was a fresh rookie trying to take his job.”
At the end of his career, Rizzuto would meet the business end of baseball himself when the Yankees unceremoniously released him on Old Timers Day. Rizzuto was shocked and took it hard. But another career opportunity presented itself almost immediately as a broadcaster when WPIX signed him to team with Mel Allen and Red Barber. As the third wheel, he stumbled a bit, but he learned a lot.
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He hit his stride when he found himself teamed with Bill White who was also developing a second career for himself. The fact that White was black and Rizzuto insisted on calling him White raised a few eyebrows at first, but it quickly became apparent this was a marriage made in heaven. White played the straight man and Rizzuto played himself. Often, the game on the field became second to the banter between them, much to the chagrin of the baseball purists.
But Rizzuto had leeway because it wasn’t an act nor his “shtick.” For forty years, it worked. On many occasions, Rizzuto would start to worry about the traffic on the George Washington Bridge in the middle of a game. Like clockwork, he would be gone before the end of the game leaving his partners to hold down the fort. And if a thunderstorm arose, he’d be halfway up the Major Deegan before the first bolt of lightning even struck towards the facade at Yankee Stadium.
He was, as they say, one of a kind. There was not a pretentious bone in his body. Even when he tried his hand at hawking for companies like The Money Store, it was a natural because he was natural. Rizzuto died from pneumonia in August of 2007 but not before the Yankees could make up for how they handled his release. The organization retired his Number10 and placed a plaque in his name in the vaunted Monument Park.
All Rizzuto could say that day…was “Holy Cow”.
Quotes provided by: Baseball Hall Of Fame