death
08/14/2007
Phil Rizzuto, R.I.P.
You don't have to be a baseball fan to know who Phil Rizzuto was -- you just have to be from New York. The diminutive shortstop-turned-broadcaster passed away this morning at the rip old age of 89, and with his passing we've lost one of baseball's, and New York's, all-time characters.
Rizzuto wasn't an especially talented player, and as a play-by-play man for the Yankees, he was anything but polished. ("He's out! No, he's safe! Holy cow!") What distinguished The Scooter was his personality, and his perseverance. Born and raised in Brooklyn, he got rejected by the Dodgers' Casey Stengel, who told him he was so small he should become a shoeshine boy. Then he made the Yankees, and proceeded to help anchor one of the the greatest dynasties in pro sports, picking up an MVP (1950) and five all-star appearances along the way. When he started out calling games, Howard Cosell told him he looked like George Burns and sounded like Grouch Marx, and that he wouldn't last long. The result: Rizzuto was a fixture in the booth for 40 years.
So here's Rizzuto's hilarious acceptance speech at Cooperstown in 1994. It took 14 years of eligibility, but he finally got in. So here's to you, Scooter. As Big George said today, "Heaven must have needed a shortstop."
(Click here for one of Rizzuto's classic Money Store commercials.)
