Yankees great 'Scooter' dies

Popular as a player and beloved as a broadcaster, the shortstop during the New York Yankees' dynasty years of the 1940s and 1950s passes away

Phil Rizzuto, the sure-handed Hall of Fame New York Yankees shortstop nicknamed "The Scooter" who extended his Yankees life as a popular, even beloved, broadcaster, punctuating his game calls with birthday wishes to fans and exclamations of "Holy cow!" died Monday night. He was 89.

The cause was pneumonia, his daughter Patricia said Tuesday. Rizzuto, who had been in declining health for several years, died at a residential facility in West Orange, N.J. He had lived in Hillside, N.J.

Rizzuto joined the Yankees in 1941 and played 13 seasons (he missed three while in the Navy during World War II) until 1956. His departure was abrupt. No longer willing to carry an aging, seldom-used infielder, the Yankees cut him on Old Timers' Day. Soon after, he began calling Yankees games for WPIX-TV and remained in that job until 1996.

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 eight World Series championships, including five in a row from 1949 to 1953. Rizzuto was one of 12 Yankees to play on all five teams.

He was a 5-foot-6, 150-pound sparkplug 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 Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, 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 RBIs. 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 AL's most valuable player award.

After many years of failing to get into the Hall of Fame, Rizzuto was elected in 1994 by the Hall's veterans committee, which reconsiders candidates rejected by sportswriters.

New York native

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 Queens when he was 12.

A major league career was not foreordained. While attending Richmond Hill High School, he tried out for the Dodgers, but the manager, Casey Stengel, told him he was too small. The New York Giants also told him to get lost, but Stengel's rejection -- "Go get a shoeshine box," the manager told him -- was the most vivid.

"When he became the Yankee manager in 1949, I reminded him of that, but he pretended he didn't remember," Rizzuto said of Stengel. "By '49, I didn't need a shoebox, anyway. The clubhouse boy at the Stadium shined my Yankee spikes every day."

The Yankees signed him in 1937 and sent him to their Class D minor league team in Bassett, Va. But attending spring training with the Yankees in 1941, he soon established himself, replacing veteran Frank Crosetti, and hit .307 in his rookie year.

After serving in the South Pacific, Rizzuto resumed his role as a bulwark of the Yankees infield, forming superior double-play combinations with second basemen Joe Gordon and Jerry Coleman (who in the 1960s would join Rizzuto in the broadcast booth). He also developed into an eccentric -- funny, superstitious, afraid of thunder and the target of teammates' pranks.

Move to the booth

Rizzuto was shocked when the Yankees released him in 1956 to sign outfielder Enos Slaughter. But he soon accepted a job in the Yankees 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."