By Adam Bernstein
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, August 15, 2007
Phil Rizzuto, 89, a New York Yankees Hall of Fame shortstop who had a four-decade career as the team's beloved broadcaster and was long known for his exclamation, "Holy cow!" died Aug. 13 at Green Hill nursing home in West Orange, N.J. He had pneumonia.
Mr. Rizzuto bolstered the Yankees lineup during a golden era that included teammates Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra. He was not a consistently powerful hitter but was revered as a defensive shortstop, base runner and bunter. Small and quick, he earned the nickname "the Scooter."
Starting in 1941, Mr. Rizzuto played with the Yankees for 13 seasons, with the exception of a three-year absence for wartime service in the Navy. He participated in nine World Series -- seven times on the winning side. He was voted the American League's most valuable player in 1950. The previous year he was runner-up to Ted Williams of the rival Boston Red Sox.
Mr. Rizzuto's statistics overall were not exceptional. During his MVP year, he earned a batting average of .324 with 200 hits and 125 runs. He had a .273 lifetime batting average, 38 home runs and 562 RBI. "My stats don't shout," he said. "They kind of whisper."
Mr. Rizzuto thrived as a media personality, working as a Yankees broadcaster from 1957 to 1996.
As an announcer, he was known for unpredictable, sometimes stream-of-consciousness commentary that might include news of his wife or a terrific cannoli he had eaten, or greetings to friends celebrating a birthday or pals laid up in the hospital.
He also talked about his phobias of snakes, rodents, lightning and traffic. It was fear of traffic, he said, that led to one recurring gag -- leaving a game in the seventh inning to beat other cars out of the stadium and over the George Washington Bridge to his longtime home in Hillside, N.J.
Mr. Rizzuto's announcer's booth digressions became as much a signature as his bellow of "Holy cow!" Many were collected in a 1993 book of free verse, "O Holy Cow!," edited by humor writers Tom Peyer and Hart Seely. One poem, "The Bridge," referred to a one-sided discussion Mr. Rizzuto had with Bill White, his partner in the broadcast booth:
Two balls and a strike.
You know what they had on TV today, White?
"Bridge on the River Kwai."
Everybody should have gotten an Academy Award for that movie.
I don't know how many times I've seen it.
About forty times.
Alec Guinness!
William Holden!
Three and one the count.
I just heard somebody whistle.
You know that song?
That's what they whistle.
Nobody out.
And he pops it up.
Mr. Rizzuto also created a special vocabulary. Anyone who bungled a play was dubbed a "huckleberry." Most people, except his wife, earned this designation at one time or another.
He was announcing the day that Yankee Roger Maris surpassed Babe Ruth's single-season home run record with the team -- one of the landmark "Holy cow!" moments he saw firsthand.
But in his Yankee boosterism, Mr. Rizzuto could also be embarrassingly inarticulate. He received some critical drubbing for his remark during one game in 1978 that breaking news of the death of Pope Paul VI "kind of puts a damper on even a Yankee win."
Mr. Rizzuto was asked to appear on panel shows from their earliest days. He was the first mystery guest on the CBS quiz show "What's My Line?" in 1950. Later, he spent about 20 years as a TV commercial pitchman for the Money Store, a lending company.
Mr. Rizzuto figured in a memorable plot point of the sitcom "Seinfeld" because of a key chain that shouts, "Holy cow!" He also contributed a mock play-by-play of a make-out session on pop star Meat Loaf's hit 1977 recording, "Paradise by the Dashboard Light."
Fiero Francis Rizzuto -- he later legally changed his first name -- was born in Brooklyn, N.Y., on Sept. 25, 1916. His parents were Italian immigrants, and his father worked as a streetcar conductor.
Mr. Rizzuto grew up in Queens, where he became a star athlete at Richmond Hill High School. He turned down athletic scholarships at Columbia and Fordham universities to play baseball, but he was rejected by Brooklyn Dodgers manager Casey Stengel during a tryout.
Mr. Rizzuto spoke of this crushing encounter with Stengel, who later became the Yankees manager: "He took one look at me, and I will never forget this -- I would never let him forget this, either -- he said, 'Listen, kid, you better go and get yourself a shoeshine box. That is the only way you'll make a living.' "
But Mr. Rizzuto succeeded in impressing the Yankees, who sent him to several farm teams in Virginia. While playing for a minor league team in Kansas City, the 5-foot-6-inch Mr. Rizzuto received his lifelong nickname from fellow infielder Billy Hitchcock.
Hitchcock looked at Mr. Rizzuto's short legs during one game and told him, "You ain't runnin,' you're scootin.' " In his first year with the Yankees -- as a replacement for longtime shortstop Frank Crosetti -- Mr. Rizzuto played in 133 games and batted .307. He grew close to DiMaggio, for, among other things, fielding their share of anti-Italian epithets spewed by fellow athletes.
By 1954, Mr. Rizzuto's game play was slumping noticeably. That year, his hitting average was .195, and Willie Miranda and Jerry Coleman often substituted for him at shortstop. Mr. Rizzuto's last game for the team was in 1956, when he was replaced on the roster by outfielder Enos Slaughter.
The next year, Rizzuto joined Mel Allen and Red Barber in the Yankees broadcast booth. Mr. Rizzuto reportedly felt Allen and Barber, both veterans of their craft, resented his broadcast inexperience and unusual manner -- a concern also expressed by sports broadcaster Howard Cosell.
"You'll never last," he told Mr. Rizzuto. "You look like George Burns and sound like Groucho Marx."
Fans seemed to adore the ingratiating Mr. Rizzuto from the start. He went on to share the booth with Frank Messer and Bill White, and later Tom Seaver, the longtime New York Mets and Cincinnati Reds pitcher.
Mr. Rizzuto joked with Seaver that the pitcher had upstaged him when Mr. Rizzuto's No. 10 Yankees uniform was retired Aug. 4, 1985. Seaver, then with the Chicago White Sox, pitched his 300th career victory that day and dominated sports coverage.
Mr. Rizzuto was elected in 1994 to the Baseball Hall of Fame after years of being overlooked by the writers and veteran athletes who decide induction.
Williams was often credited with having made a difference. He had come to Mr. Rizzuto's defense with the argument, "If we'd had Rizzuto in Boston, we'd have won all those pennants instead of New York." Furthermore, Berra, White and other friends sat on the veteran athlete's committee.
At his induction ceremony in Cooperstown, N.Y., Mr. Rizzuto was characteristically rambling in his remarks -- something the audience had expected and eventually applauded.
That day, he discussed his first experience seeing grits at a breakfast table while playing on a farm team in Virginia ("I didn't know what to do with 'em, so I put 'em in my pocket"). He went on to describe his seasickness during World War II and of landing at New Guinea in the South Pacific where, he said, "I thought I'd see a lot of Italians there."
As he repeated himself and linked anecdotes, he told the crowd, "Any time you want to leave, just leave. This is absolutely going nowhere."
Survivors include his wife, Cora Esselborn Rizzuto, whom he married in 1943; four children; and two granddaughters.