Phil Rizzuto

Philip Francis Rizzuto was baptized Fiero, chose Phil because "it sounded more American," stood five feet six in spikes, and played shortstop for the New York Yankees across 13 seasons with a precision that Casey Stengel, who once rejected him at a Dodgers tryout because of his size, later called "the greatest shortstop I have ever seen in my entire baseball career." Rizzuto batted .273 with 1,588 hits, won the 1950 AL MVP, earned seven World Series championships, missed three full seasons to Navy service in the Second World War, and then spent 40 years broadcasting Yankees games with a stream-of-consciousness style that produced the catchphrase "Holy Cow!", a role in Meat Loaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," and a poetry collection transcribed from his on-air commentary. "My stats don't shout," Rizzuto said. "They kind of whisper." The Veterans Committee elected him to the Hall of Fame in 1994 after a 32-year wait that began when the writers first considered him in 1962.

Brooklyn

Rizzuto was born on September 25, 1917, in Brooklyn, to Fiore and Rose Rizzuto, an Italian-American family with roots in Calabria. His father worked as a streetcar motorman. As a teenager Rizzuto attended open tryouts with both the Dodgers and the Giants and was dismissed because of his size. The tryout rejection has been attributed variously to Casey Stengel, a Giants coach named Pancho Snyder, or others who reportedly told him to "go get a shoeshine box." Rizzuto never told the story consistently, but the irony sharpened with every passing year because Stengel managed him through five consecutive championships from 1949 through 1953 and later said, "He can't hit with Honus Wagner, but I've seen him make plays that old Dutchman couldn't."

The Yankees signed him and sent him through the minors, where he hit .347 with 201 hits at Kansas City in 1940 and won American Association MVP. Rizzuto debuted on April 14, 1941, hit .307 as a rookie behind Joe DiMaggio's .357, and won the first of seven World Series rings that October. He served in the Navy from 1943 through 1945, stationed initially in Norfolk alongside Pee Wee Reese on a team managed by Bill Dickey, then assigned to lead a gun crew on a ship in New Guinea, where he contracted malaria and suffered chronic seasickness.

The Scooter

Rizzuto returned from the war and peaked in 1950, hitting .324 with 200 hits, 125 runs scored, and a league-leading 238 consecutive chances without an error at shortstop. He won the AL MVP with 16 of 23 first-place votes and the Hickok Belt as the top professional athlete of the year. On September 17, 1951, with the score tied 1-1 in the bottom of the ninth against Cleveland and DiMaggio on third, Rizzuto laid down a squeeze bunt while both feet were off the ground because the pitch was coming at his head. "If I didn't bunt, the pitch would've hit me right in the head," Rizzuto said. DiMaggio scored. Stengel called it "the greatest play I ever saw."

Rizzuto played in 52 World Series games, more than any player at the time, and won seven championships. Ted Williams claimed the Red Sox would have won most of the Yankees' pennants if they'd had Rizzuto at shortstop. Vic Raschi, who pitched behind him for years, offered a simpler evaluation. "My best pitch is anything the batter grounds, lines or pops in the direction of Rizzuto."

On August 25, 1956, the Yankees needed a roster spot for Enos Slaughter. GM George Weiss asked Rizzuto to suggest which players should be cut, then gently revealed that Rizzuto himself was the one being released. "I couldn't believe it," Rizzuto said. "The pinstripes meant so much then. It was something to live up to and live for."

Holy Cow

Rizzuto joined the Yankees broadcast booth in 1957 and stayed for 40 years, partnering with Mel Allen, Red Barber, Frank Messer, and Bill White across four decades of Yankees radio and television. His style was rambling, digressive, openly partisan, and completely unlike anything else on the air. He wished listeners happy birthdays, sent get-well wishes to people in hospitals, invented the scorecard notation "WW" (for "wasn't watching"), and left games early enough that "I'll be home soon, Cora!" became a running joke. He called Roger Maris's 61st home run on October 1, 1961, shouting, "Holy cow, he did it! Sixty-one for Maris!" In 1977, he provided play-by-play commentary for the extended metaphor in Meat Loaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," initially claiming ignorance of the song's sexual content, though Meat Loaf later said Rizzuto "knew exactly what was going on."

At his number 10 retirement ceremony at Yankee Stadium on August 4, 1985, a live cow wearing a halo was brought onto the field and stepped on his shoe, knocking him backward. "That big thing stepped right on my shoe and pushed me backwards," Rizzuto said, "like a karate move." His Hall of Fame induction speech in 1994 was famously discursive. He complained about flies buzzing around him, reminisced about eating Southern fried chicken for the first time in Bassett, Virginia, and asked broadcast partner Bill White about something in front of him "that looks like oatmeal." White called back, "Grits."

Rizzuto died in his sleep on August 13, 2007, in West Orange, New Jersey, at 89. "I've had the most wonderful lifetime that one man could possibly have," he said at Cooperstown.