Phil "Scooter" Rizzuto, 1916-2007

Former Yankees shortstop and long-time announcer for the team Phil Rizzuto died this morning at the age of 89. Rizzuto played his entire professional baseball career with the New York Yankees after being selected by the team as an amateur free agent in 1937. He wouldn't play his first major league game with the Yanks until 1941, but then served as shortstop for 13 seasons, during which the Bronx Bombers won 10 Pennants and 8 World Series Championships.

Rizzuto was cut rather abruptly from the team in 1956, after a professional career that secured him a spot in the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown. The very next year he was back in the Bronx, however, at the insistence of broadcast sponsor Ballantine Beer, who wanted Scooter in the announcers booth. Rizzuto would spend 40 years calling Yankees games, along with men like Mel Allen, Joe Garagiola, Bobby Murcer, Billy Martin, Frank Messer, and Tom Seaver. For generations of Yankees fans, Phil Rizzuto wasn't just an eventual Hall of Famer and former player, he was the voice of the New York Yankees.

Scooter was a native of Brooklyn, NY, whose father was a streetcar motorman. The first time he ever left home was after he signed with the Yankees and the organization sent him to rural Virginia to play minor league ball. His career was briefly interrupted as he served in the Navy during WWII, although he claimed he would get seasick while just taking the ferry in New York. Beginning his career as an announcer, Howard Cosell told him he would never last and that "You look like George Burns and you sound like Groucho Marx." During his 1994 induction address at Cooperstown, Rizzuto exclaimed "Thank God for baseball!" He didn't know what he'd have done with his life without it. Video of that address can be viewed in its entirety here.

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By Dave Hogarty on August 14, 2007 1:06 PM

Comments [rss]

guest

R.I.P. "Scooter", He lived a long life filled with joys, & good times ! To bad the Yankees treated him so badly towards the end of his Broadcasting for them . Posted by; "Still Not Amused"

guest

Late in his life, Ted Williams was sitting around one day at Fenway Park speaking of players he had played with and against.

He said of Phil Rizzuto, "Pound for pound, one of the best players I ever played against."

scoboco

I hadn't thought of this book of Rizzuto's "poetry" in years, but since you reminded me...

http://www.brothersjudd.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/reviews.detail/book_id/122/

guest

and don't forget he's also featured in the Meatloaf classic Paradise by the Dashboard Light!

guest

True HOF players do not need the Veterans Committee aka Cronies Committee to get voted in.

guest

Definitely not HOF material. Average player on a great team made him look better than he really was.

guest

He was born in September of 1917 - not 1916 as you have in the title.

Aristocrat

Baseball statheads are probably the most annoying barnacles of all sports fans. Let them circlejerk over their logbooks in the corner somewhere.

RIP Scooter

Tim N.

#14... not to belabor this, but Ted Williams would disagree with you. Stat-heads, oy.

Toby von Meistersinger

Phil Rizzuto is worthy of the Hall of Fame and compared to the people who have gotten in recently, like Bruce Sutter, he looks like Babe Ruth.

JMH

There's a time and a place for that discussion, [14], and this isn't it.

guest

Requiscat in Pace. Sniff! May there be no lightning where you are (he was so afraid of that).

guest

RIP, Phil! You had more character and charm than all the current Yankees combined.

guest

Great guy but doesn't deserve to be in HOF. The numbers speak for themselves.

guest

I met Phil Rizzuto at a Police Athletic League dinner in 1978. He spoke to everyone, posed for pictures, signed autographs...a total gentleman. He will be missed.

(Lifelong Mets Fan)

guest

RIP Scooter

You were one of a kind

From a RedSox fan in NY

JMH

(Mets fan writing, by the way)

Rizzuto always struck me as a good guy, a throwback to an era when baseball players really were a part of the community. (Rose Fox's story is a good example.) There are too few guys like that left, and he'll be missed.

Rose Fox

I went to elementary school with his granddaughter. He came in every year for Grandparents' Day to talk to us about his life and career. I remember him as an extremely kind and gentlemanly fellow, always smiling, always speaking gently to us little kids.

May his loved ones find comfort in a great many happy memories of a wonderful man. Rest well, Mr. Rizzuto.

guest

in memory of the scooter, i'm blasting paradise by the dashboard light.

Steven

RIP. I will always remember calling the Yankees games in the 80s and 80s while I was growing up. A personality and a voice like Scooter is hard to come by these days.

Rocknrope

"Holy Cow! Are you as confused as I am about these new tax laws? RRRRRghrrrrr." *pushes papers off desk*

RIP Scooter. You'll live on in Youtube posterity.

guest

holy cow! i'm a mets fan but i always loved rizzuto. he was a real champ and a great guy!

RIP phil

S.D.

Not me. Him saying "Holy Cow!" every time something happened in a game is what I'll remember.

My Grandparents couldn't stand him as an announcer, but listening to him announcing games was fun.

Rest In Peace.

Reality Czech

Holy Cow!

He was a funny guy.

Tim N.

Phil was great, he'll be missed. If you grew up a Yankee fan in the 70s and 80s, he was like a part of the household.

Here's my Phil story: At our wedding we took a picture of me, the best man, and the ushers holding up my wife "Woman-of-the-Year"-style, and all of us (wife included) are wearing Yankee hats. So we sent the picture and a note to Phil, and lo and behold he said on the air "I want to wish a happy anniversary to Tim and Susannah, they were married a year ago, and look, they sent along this picture of the groom and the ushers passing the bride around." At which point the announcer with him (I forget who) said, "I should clarify that the groom and his men are holding the bride aloft, not, you know…" And Phil said, "Oh, gees, what did I say, oh, gees…I shouldn't have said that..."

We'll miss you Scooter.

Toby von Meistersinger

I hate to say it, but many of us will always think of Phil have the words "I'm Phil Rizzuto for The Money Store" pop in our heads before anything else.

guest

Along with Yogi (who had the good sense to distance himself for a bit) the Scooter was one of the only lovable things about the despicable, loathsome, fascist Yankees. RIP