Of course Phil Rizutto was front page news today.
Rizzutto must have helped Yogi Berra develop his famous "Berra-isms." Here's a Rizzutto line that could have come straight from The Yogi:
"Of course, when you're in the broadcast booth, you have to be partial... or is it impartial?"
Rizzuto played an integral role on the dynastic Yankees before and after World War II. He was a masterly bunter and defensive specialist for teams that steamrolled to 10 American League pennants and won 8 World Series championships, including 5 in a row from 1949 to 1953.
He was a 5-foot-6-inch, 150-pound spark plug who did the little things right, from turning a double play to laying down a sacrifice bunt. He left the slugging to powerful teammates like Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Tommy Henrich, Charlie Keller and Yogi Berra.
“I hustled and got on base and made the double play,” Rizzuto said. “That’s all the Yankees needed in those days.”
His career statistics were not spectacular: a batting average of .273, 38 home runs and 563 runs batted in. But he was named to five American League All-Star teams, and in his best season, 1950, he batted a career-high .324, drove in 66 runs and won the A.L.’s Most Valuable Player award.
Rizzuto was frequently compared to other shortstops of his era, like Pee Wee Reese of the Brooklyn Dodgers and Marty Marion of the St. Louis Cardinals. But to DiMaggio, his teammate for eight seasons, Rizzuto was the best.
“The little guy in front of me, he made my job easy,” said DiMaggio, one of the game’s great center fielders. “I didn’t have to pick up so many ground balls.”
One of five children of Rose and Fiore Rizzuto, a construction foreman and trolley motorman, Philip Francis Rizzuto grew up in Brooklyn and moved to Glendale, Queens, when he was 12.
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Rizzuto was shocked when the Yankees released him in 1956 to sign outfielder Enos Slaughter. But he soon accepted a job in the Yankee radio and TV booth alongside Mel Allen and Red Barber, two towering figures in sportscasting.
“You’ll never last,” Howard Cosell, then a radio sportscaster, told him. “You look like George Burns and you sound like Groucho Marx.”
Despite occasional threats to resign, Rizzuto lasted in the Yankee booth until 1996. To those who heard him exclaim “Holy cow!” for a play (or a cannoli) that excited him or chide a player as a “huckleberry” for committing an error, he was an endearing, idiosyncratic voice despite his lack of professional credentials.
Over four decades, he transformed himself from a conventional announcer with a distinctly New York voice into an often comic presence. And he became well known outside New York. The comedian Billy Crystal parodied him, and Meat Loaf used Rizzuto’s broadcast voice in his 1978 hit song “Paradise by the Dashboard Light.” Rizzuto also became a spokesman for The Money Store in its television commercials.
As for his trademark expression “Holy cow,” he said he adopted it in high school at his baseball coach’s suggestion, to replace profanity.
When the Yankees celebrated Rizzuto with a day in his honor in 1985, retiring his uniform No. 10, the team presented him with a cow wearing a halo, which promptly stepped on his foot and knocked him over.
Rizzuto often diverged from actual game-calling, pausing to extend birthday, anniversary and confirmation congratulations. He never used the first names of his partners at WPIX-TV — they were “Coleman,” “Murcer,” “White,” “Messer,” “Seaver” or “Cerone,” never Jerry, Bobby, Bill, Frank, Tom or Rick. Listeners heard about Rizzuto’s wife, Cora (he called her “my bride”), an employment appeal for their son, Philip Jr. (known as Scooter Jr.), reports of his golf game or exultations about a new Italian dish.
Rizzuto had met Cora Ellenborg at a communion breakfast in Newark in 1942; her father was a fire chief there. The Rizzutos were married 64 years, and Mrs. Rizzuto survives her husband. Besides their daughter Patricia, survivors also include Philip Jr.; two other daughters, Cynthia and Penny, and two granddaughters.
Rizzuto’s ramblings and pro-Yankee sentiments maddened detractors. But his fans adored him as they would a delightful uncle, and colleagues were fond of recalling his scorecard notation of W.W. — wasn’t watching.
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