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Trimble. JL

Phil Rizzuto.

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MOST VALUABLE PLAYER SERIES

PHIL RIZZUTO

cvf Biography of The Scooter

by
JOE TRIMBLE

A. S. BARNES and COMPANY

New York

COPYRIGHT, 1951, BY A. S. BARNES AND COMPANY, INCORPORATED

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in
any form, either wholly or in part, for any use whatsoever, in-
cluding radio presentation, without the written permission of the
copyright owner with the exception of a reviewer who may
quote brief passages in a review printed in a magazine or news-
paper. Manufactured in the United States of America.

PUBLISHED ON THE SAME DAY IN THE DOMINION OF CANADA
BY THE COPP CLARK COMPANY, LIMITED, TORONTO

Foreword

IF EVER a player was born to be a star, it was Phil
Rizzuto, the demitasse shortstop of the World Champion
Yankees and the Most Valuable Player in the American
League for 1950. Phil was handicapped at the outset of his
baseball career because of his pint-sized proportions but by
the time he had reached the semi-pro ranks, he was utilizing
his size as an asset.

Most of Phil's teammates believed he should have been
chosen the MVP by the Baseball Writers Association in
1949, which in itself is a tribute to Rizzuto for rarely do a
player's teammates concern themselves about such matters.
He and Joe Page finished second and third, respectively,
to Ted Williams but it was Phil's opinion that the Red Sox
slugger was entitled to the award. Page, Phil's teammate,
declared that if people hadn't split their first-place votes
between himself and Rizzuto the latter would have had a
good chance at the grand prize.

"We won the pennant and the World Series," said Phil,
"and that was enough for me." In that revealing sentence,
Rizzuto summed up his entire philosophy of baseball it is
the team achievements which satisfy him, not his own as
an individual.

^,,i-,j 511HG78

vl FOREWORD

Pennants are old stuff to Phil. He was on pennant win-
ners In such widely disparate leagues as the Bi-State, the
Piedmont, and the American Association before he rode
home first with the Yankees in the American League in
1941. Oddly enough, Rizzuto has an amazing record for
playing on pennant winners since becoming a Yank five
in the seven seasons he has played with the club.

Whether Rizzuto was the most valuable of the American
League players in 1949 * 1S water over the dam now, but
there is no doubt that he was the most valuable Yankee
both in 1949 and in 1950. When injuries were hamstringing
first one Yankee and then another, tiny Phil remained
marvelously intact.

"He was the one guy we couldn't afford to lose," said
Manager Casey Stengel, "and fortunately, we had him in
all but a couple of games in our two pennant-winning sea-
sons.'*

Joe Trimble has traced the career of Rizzuto with fine
reportorial accuracy. As long ago as 1940, when Phil was
with Kansas City, I visited with him to do a magazine arti-
cle and I thought I knew most of his background and that
of the Rizzuto family, but Trimble has mined deeper. And
come up with more gold, too. This book is one which will
make you feel as though you know Rizzuto personally.

Tom Meany

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

Foreword by TOM MEANY v

1 THE BUM'S RUSH i

2 THE LITTLEST BUM 6

3 "I'LL TAKE THE LITTLE ONE" 14

4 MINOR MATTERS 26

5 ROOKIE OF THE YEAR 40

6 THE WORLD SERIES 55

7 SCOOTER MEETS A LADY 65

8 BELL BOTTOM TROUSERS 77

9 LA CUCARACHA 94

10 MEXICAN HAYRIDE 108

1 1 COMEBACK 1 1 8

12 TAILSPIN 127

13 NEAR Miss 133

14 THE HEAVIER THE LOAD 146

15 A FOREGONE CONCLUSION 158
APPENDIX 165

The Most Valuable Player Award

American League 1950 165
American League Most Valuable Player

Awards 167

viii CONTENTS

Philip Francis Rizzuto Complete Record 168
The Most Valuable Player Award

National League 1950 169
National League Most Valuable Player

Awards 171

Casimir James Konstanty Complete Record 172
Baseball Writers Association

1950 Membership 173

INDEX i 80

CHAPTER ONE

The Bum's Rush

CASEY STENGEL is a lucky man, but not because
his petroleum leases and real-estate investments have made
him a millionaire. Those windfalls could be due to sound
judgment. He is lucky because he blew a chance to avail
himself of the talent of Phil Rizzuto back in 1936, and then
got another opportunity to ride to glory with the greatest
"little" baseball player in history after a lapse of thirteen
years. Few big-league managers, after muffing the oppor-
tunity to sign an outstanding prospect, get a second chance.
Stengel was manager of the Dodgers in 1936 when Rizzuto
was booted out of a tryout session and manager of the
Yankees in 1949 and 1950 when the mighty mite carried
the New York club to successive championships. He's like
the guy who does a bad job of drilling for water and strikes
oil.

Actually, Stengel didn't turn thumbs-down on the seven-
teen-year-old Rizzuto that summer afternoon many years
ago. But the manager was guilty of losing the youngster
by reason of his absence. Casey, at that time battling with
the owners of the Dodgers, didn't attend the session at
which about 150 kids were given token tryouts. Stengel

2 PHIL RIZZUTO

knew that he was going to be fired by the front office when
his two-year contract expired the following year, anyway.
He didn't bother to go to the morning gathering of sand-
lotters, and left the appraisals in the hands of others.

Coaches Otto Miller and Zach Taylor, the latter now
manager of the St. Louis Browns, supervised the tryouts.
They divided the kids into groups of twenty and lined
them up in left center field.

"On yer mark, set, go!" Miller barked.

Then the youngsters, ranging in age from sixteen to
eighteen and wearing baseball uniforms of varying fits,
qualities, and conditions of servitude, broke in a wild dash
toward the first-base stripe on the diamond.

The first five finishers in each heat were told to stay
around; the other fifteen were sent home immediately. The
theory was that if a kid couldn't run, then he wasn't a ball
player. This, in itself, is ridiculous. Had their major league
potentialities been decided upon fleetness of foot, scores
of great ball players would never have gotten a chance. Mel
Ott, Lou Gehrig, Ernie Lombardi, Gabby Hartnett, Lou
Boudreau, and even Babe Ruth were slow runners.

Of course, Rizzuto had no trouble winning his "heat"
for he could outrun any one of the youngsters on the field
that day.

After the footrace eliminations, the approximately forty
hopefuls who qualified were broken into two groups, some
told to go into the field and others to take turns at bat. Phil
was placed among the batters.

"A big right-handed kid was pitching," he remembers.
"I had been a good hitter in high school at Richmond Hill
amd eten managed to get my base hits in semi-pro competi-
tion <m Loag Island. I was nervous but I felt sure I would
at least hit the ball.

THE BUMS RUSH 3

"But I never did get much chance to. The first pitch hit
me squarely in the middle of the back and knocked me
down. It hurt like the devil and the wind was knocked
out of me. I probably should have gotten out of the bat-
ters' box and rested up until the pain left. But I didn't want
them to think I was afraid. So I stepped right in again.
Then I could hardly swing, and, after missing a couple of
pitches, heard Miller say, 'Okay, sonny. That's all. I don't
think you'll do, little fellow. Good thing you didn't get
hurt by that big guy.' "

Tears welled up in the eyes of the five-foot-high kid as
he blindly dropped the bat, found his glove and trudged
off the field. Dominick Angotti, Phil's uncle, had driven
him to Ebbets Field for the tryout and he waited for him
to change from spikes to street shoes.

"Don't feel too bad about it," his mother's brother told
Phil. "It wasn't much of a tryout and you really didn't fail.
What did they expect after that guy nearly knocked your
head off with the first pitch? No wonder the Dodgers are
in seventh place, they don't even know how to hold a try-
out!"

Perhaps things would have gone differently if Stengel
had been present, perhaps not. Casey, a sound judge of
talent, doubtless would have taken a look at the kid's field-
ing, anyway.

The incident caused Phil some embarrassment during the
1949 World Series when, one evening while the classic
between the Yanks and Dodgers was still on, he and
Brooklyn outfielder Gene Hermanski appeared on a televi-
sion program. During the interview, Phil was asked about
the trouble he had getting a big-league team to bother with
him.

Rizzuto, who had been passed over by both Cardinal and

4 PHIL RIZZUTO

Red Sox scouts because of his size and also tossed out of the
Polo Grounds by the Giants, admitted that he knew what
it felt like to be unwanted. He mentioned the Dodger try-
out.

Hermanski, aware that it would make a good yarn, in-
terjected, "Tell them who was managing the Dodgers
when they tossed you out because you were too small."

Goaded by his puckish pal, Phil admitted that it was
Stengel. The roar of the audience kept him from explain-
ing, in defense of the manager, that Casey hadn't seen him
that day.

Casey, whose life consists of gags and funny gyrations,
can take it, but that nettled him a bit. The next day, when
Phil came into the clubhouse to dress for the game, Stengel
minced up to him in his duck-waddle style of walking and
leered, "You think you're big enough for the big leagues
now, son?"

A couple of weeks after he was chased from Ebbets
Field, Phil received a letter from the Giants, inviting him
to a tryout at the Polo Grounds. Uncle Dom again drove
him up to the ball park and Rizzuto's eyes popped at the
size of the place and the thought of the many great players
who had played there.

Here, he felt, he would get a chance, not the brushoff the
Dodgers had given him. All the other kids there were
over fifty of them were allowed to hit, run, and throw.
But the eager little boy from Queens was summarily dis-
missed the moment he stepped out on the field for his turn*

Bill Terry was managing the Giants at that time and he,
like Stengel, has been branded in legend. Those who dis-
like the frosty-dispositioned Giant boss exult in passing
along the story that he turned down Rizzuto as well as
McCormick, a New Yorker who later starred with

THE BUM'S RUSH 5

Cincinnati. Terry was only as guilty as Stengel he also
was busy elsewhere when the tryout sessions were held.

It was Frank (Pancho) Snyder, one of Terry's coaches,
who gave Phil the gate without a second look. Pancho, a
huge man with the build of a wrestler, had been a catcher
in the National League for years a hard-boiled character
who measured ability in ratio to physical proportion.

Snyder, shooing the boy away, said gruffly, "You're too
small, kid. You'll never do. Go home and get yourself a
shoeshinebox!"

CHAPTER TWO

The Littlest Bum

THE CITY OF NEW YORK was remiss in its obli-
gations to growing boys back in the early thirties in that it
never did provide enough public parks and playgrounds,
ball diamonds and football fields. Indeed, it still is. Drive
through almost any neighborhood and see the kids playing
stickball or touch football in the streets, dodging autos and
ducking cops in patrol cars who gruffly order them to
"break it up." The cry "Cheezit, the cops!' 7 is still heard
these days, as it was when Phil Rizzuto was growing up
in the borough of Queens.

It didn't matter much where one lived in the five
boroughs they all were overcrowded, excepting maybe
Staten Island, and there was room there only because most
people who had to work in New York had no desire to
take the long ferry ride every day. In the late twenties and
early thirties, the "better" people were moving out of the
city either to Westchester or to more fashionable Long
Island communities. Those whose roots were too firmly
imbedded in the city or whose financial foundations were
not firm enough stayed. The Rizzutos stayed.

The only concession which Philip Rizzuto, Sr. and his

THE LITTLEST BUM 7

wife Rose were able to make was the removal of the family,
when Phil, Jr. was twelve, from a house in Ridgewood (a
community on the borderline between Brooklyn and
Queens) to Glendale, which is just inside the Queens
county line. And that move was made on behalf of the
girls in the family, not the boys.

It has been written that Mr. and Mrs. Rizzuto were im-
migrants, but that isn't so, unless you want to go along with
those who claim that Brooklyn is a foreign country. Philip
Rizzuto and Rose Angotti were both born in the down-
town section of the borough, not far from the Brooklyn
Bridge. They grew up in the same neighborhood and were
married there in 1 9 1 3 .

Mary, the first of their four children, was born a year
later and Rose, named after her mother, came along in 1916.
Papa Rizzuto, then a day-laborer, was not making much
money and, in 1917, he tried to increase his income and
improve the living standards of his growing family by
taking a steady job. He was hired by the Brooklyn Rapid
Transit Company as a trolley-car conductor. His route was
from Brooklyn to Queens, from Ridgewood to Richmond
Hill, and so he moved Mrs. Rizzuto and the girls to Ridge-
wood.

They settled in a frame house on a little street named
Dill Place. It wasn't much of a house one of six others
which were so constructed that the front entrance was on
an alley. Phil, Jr., was born there in 1918, on September
25th, and a second son, Alfred, arrived two years later. He
was the last of the four, each two years apart.

Theirs was the normal home life of a family of restricted
income. Poppa worked hard driving his trolley and Mom
labored from morning to night raising the four children.
There was no extra money for entertainment, except an

8 PHIL RIZZUTO

occasional movie, and the Rizzutos, like their thousands
of counterparts, got their fun out of the children. Occa-
sionally relatives or friends would come over and share a
bottle of wine and a spaghetti dinner and, of course, there
were the family get-togethers at holidays. Both Philip and
Rose had sisters and brothers who lived either in Brooklyn
or Queens. Aside from such occasions, the home life was
simple, circumscribed by the financial limitations and the
immobility of four growing children.

Little Phil's biggest thrill in those days was when he took
Pop's lunch to him.

"I used to wait on the street corner for his car to come
along," he recalls. "Then I'd hop aboard and ride a couple
of blocks with Pop while he opened the lunch box to see
what Mom had prepared."

The Rizzuto kids went to P.S. 68 five days a week, to
the movies if Mom had been able to save a few dimes out
of the "house" money on Saturday, and to church on Sun-
day. The girls skipped rope and played "potsie" & sort of
hopscotch game in which they jumped on one leg from
one numbered square to another on the sidewalk, the potsie
pattern being laid out with colored chalk. The boys played
ball, nearly all year round, either baseball, Softball, stick-
ball, or touch football in the streets. Even in the winter
Phil would go out with another baseball-crazy youngster
and have a "catch."

"They always were thinking of some kind of ball," Mrs.
Rizzuto recalls. "Phil was always the littlest fellow in the
games but he also was the fastest runner. I used to look out
the window and see them playing 'association* on the street
during the football season. That's touch football, with four
or five on a side. He could run away from the bigger boys
every time.

THE LITTLEST BUM 9

"In the spring and summer it was baseball, baseball all
the time. His father was a fan and my brother Dominick,
who lived near us, was, too. Pop and Dom and the boys
talked about the big leaguers mostly about the Dodgers,
of course. We didn't think much of the Yankees and Giants
in those days. They seemed so far away and the Dodg-
ers were Brooklyn, our team. Every night at supper time
the girls and I had to keep quiet while Phil and Al and Pop
listened to the scores on the radio."

Some of the public schools had baseball teams and played
in the Public Schools Athletic League (PSAL) but P.S. 68
didn't have a team. So Phil learned to play ball on the sand-
lots what few there were and in the streets. His dad had
given him a bat and glove when he was four barely out
of the toddling stage. He could hardly lift the toy bat then,
but as he grew older and stronger, though hardly ever
taller, he put it to good use.

Mrs. Rizzuto made Phil's first baseball uniform when he
was eight years old. One day he came home all scratched
up, with numerous rips in the suit.

"We couldn't find a place to play, so we cleaned up a
lot," he said. "Didn't get it very clean, though, and 1 guess
there were lots of rocks and pieces of glass around."

In 1927, the country was roaring along in its gayest,
most prosperous era. Everyone seemed to be making loads
of money and practically any business was a thriving one.
Mr. Rizzuto, squirming on the seat of his trolley car day
after day for the low wages paid by the traction company,
decided to make a change. He had a chance to go with a
construction company at much more money and couldn't
pass it up. There were so many things the kids needed,
dresses for the girls who were becoming young ladies, new
clothes for the boys, furniture for the house, a new radio.

10 PHIL RIZZUTO

So he quit his $40-a-week job on the trolley line and went
to work at house-building.

Out of his new income, the head of the family saved
enough to make a down-payment on a new house in Glen-
dale, a two-family stucco dwelling on a comer. The
Rizzutos moved in early in 1930, just a few months after
the Wall Street crash in 1929. They rented out the upstairs
apartment and renovated the cellar to provide a sleeping
room for little Phil and Alfred, The new house was Mrs,
Rizzuto's idea. Mary was sixteen and Rose was fourteen.
They'd soon be having boy friends and it wasn't nice to
have suitors calling for the girls at the old clapboard house
where they had to walk down an oft-littered community
alley to get to the front door.

Everyone was happy, but the new-found prosperity was
fleeting. The depression was rapidly hardening the financial
arteries of the country and Pop's new job didn't last. He
was laid off and the family income was cut off. Phil, Sr.
went back to the BRT and asked for his job on the trolley
once more. But he had forfeited his ten years of seniority
and so had to return as a new employee. That meant get-
ting only part-time work as a sub and the irregular salary
wasn't nearly enough to feed and house a family of six.
The Rizzutos, like many thousands of other proud Ameri-
can families, couldn't keep the wolf from the door. They
had to accept home relief. Phil was twelve at the time and
he heard about the home-relief checks and saw his mother's
look of gratitude when they arrived. He did his bit to help
by delivering papers after school and Mrs. Rizzuto took
in sewing.

Of course, Phil kept right on playing baseball. In fact,
he was so good that he was able to play in company with

THE LITTLEST BUM 11

boys three and four years older than he. He could hit and
field and, as always, outrun everyone eke. Rizzuto was an
outfielder then, and it was as a flychaser, at the age of
twelve, that he played his first game in a major-league ball
park.

The neighborhood team was known as the Ridgewood
Robins and Phil tried out for it. The coach was a man
named Willenbucher a real-estate agent who, inciden-
tally, had sold Mr. Rizzuto the new house. Phil was so small
that it seemed preposterous that he could make the club.
In fact, his size nearly cost him a chance that early in life.
Mr. Willenbucher joshed him when the tyke said he was
an outfielder. "I can see how you cover the outfield," he
said. "You're a cricket!"

Phil, always a shy kid, grinned his embarrassment. The
other kids, with the innate cruelty of children, called him
"Shrimp," "Midget," "Runt," and "Little Dago."

But he bravely smiled at their taunts, and, in the tryout,
showed them all that he was a ball player.

Willenbucher entered the Robins in a sandlot tourna-
ment sponsored by the Standard Union, a Brooklyn news-
paper which ceased publication shortly thereafter. The
Robins won in the eliminations and gained the final bracket,
meeting the Coney Island Athletics for the sandlot cham-
pionship of Brooklyn at Ebbets Field, home of the Brook-
lyn Dodgers. In those days the Dodgers were known as the
Robins, called that nickname after their famed manager,
Wilbert "Uncle Robbie" Robinson. The Brooks were a
first-division club at the time and were battling for the
National League pennant. Every one of "Dem Bums" was
a hero to the star-gazing youngsters from the sandlots of
the borough of homes and churches.

12 PHIL RIZZUTO

The Dodgers were Phil's team, of course. Although the
Giants were a great outfit under John McGraw and he had
been taken to Yankee Stadium to see Babe Ruth by his
uncle Dominick, the kid only had eyes for the Brooks. In
the light of his later affiliation, it might be a nice romantic
touch to say that Rizzuto was a great Yankee fan, a wor-
shipper of Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and that great Italian second
baseman, the late Tony Lazzeri. But it just wasn't so.

Out in Glendale everyone was a Dodger rooter. When
the kids got together, at the neighborhood candy store or
while playing pool in the cellar of the Rizzuto home, the
Dodgers were kings. Anyway, a guy as small as Phil didn't
dare take chances by having any ideas of his own about
rooting for another club it just wasn't healthy. Every-
body was a "Bum" and Phil was the littlest Bum of all.

It also would be story-book stuff to tell of how Rizzuto
won the big game with a base hit. But that would be a mile
from the truth. The Ridgewood Robins won the game, all
right, but the only ball the Scooter hit was a foul.

"I was only about four feet high," he recalls, "and I was
playing left field. I felt lost out there in that great big out-
field but I did catch a couple of flies and didn't make any
errors. But, at bat, I wasn't supposed to do anything. Mr.
Willenbucher wouldn't let me swing at all because he fig-
ured I'd get a walk every time up. I was so small that they
couldn't pitch to me.

"First I'd bat right-handed, then switch to the left side
of the plate. But I wasn't supposed to swing. I walked the
first four times up, but the fifth time the pitcher managed
to get two strikes on me. When he threw another one that
looked good, I had to swing.

"I fouled the ball and it was so low that it flew up under

THE LITTLEST BUM 13

the mask of the umpire behind the plate and hit him on the
Adam's apple. He nearly choked and he was roaring mad
at me!"

So, from almost the very beginning of his career, base-
ball's first switch-walker was a dangerous hitter!

CHAPTER THREE

T// Take the Little One"

THERE WAS no sport or athletic competition
among New York City's high-school youngsters in the fall
or winter of 1950-51 because the Board of Education,
which held the purse strings, refused to reimburse teachers
who coached and conducted extra-curricular activities for
the children.

It was fortunate for Phil Rizzuto that the schoolteachers
were not caught in such a financial squeeze in the early
thirties, for it was high-school competition and the intense
interest of a young coach who served without pay which
pushed the little fellow toward his successful career.

Rizzuto, upon graduation from P.S. 68, enrolled at
Richmond Hill High School. That was a few miles from
his home but it was the nearest high school he could go to.
If the city politicians were lax in providing playgrounds,
they were grossly negligent in building and staffing suffi-
cient schools. All the high schools were overcrowded and
there was no money to erect new ones.

Richmond Hill, a section of Queens, was at the far end
of pop's trolley route and farther out on Long Island than
Glendale. Occasionally Phil saved the nickel carfare by

14

"FIX TAKE THE LITTLE ONE" 15

waiting for the old man's car to come along. Every nickel
counted, back there in 1932, because those were the pre-
New Deal times when nearly every corner had a man
standing on it selling apples.

Except for the athletics, Phil didn't care too much for
school He and the books fought a draw, neither gaining
much from their association. Like most teen-agers, then
and now, he considered the classroom a necessary evil. A
fellow had to study so as to pass his grades in order to re-
main eligible for sports. The Scooter's affinity for learning
was bred solely from his desire to stay eligible.

"He never thought about anything but baseball when
he was in high school," his mother says. "He studied just
about enough to pass and no more. His father and I were
convinced that he wasn't going to become a well-educated
man. Like most parents, we hoped he might go on and get
the college education we had been unable to get. But he
just wasn't one for the books."

While his book-learning was only passively attended to,
Rizzuto's athletic development and education were rigor-
ously pursued, both by the lad himself and by the coach
of baseball at Richmond Hill, Al Kunitz.

Phil, timid and self-conscious about his size (he was
fourteen but barely five feet tall), didn't go out for the
baseball team in 1932, his first year in high school. He had
intended to take a whack at it but was so shy that he gave
up the idea when Johnny Ziminerlich, his best friend, be-
came ineligible. The mite didn't know anyone else on the
squad and was afraid to risk the ridicule of strange kids.

Zimmerlich got his studies in order the following spring
and the two boys answered Coach Kunitz's call for candi-
dates, Rizzuto nominating himself as a left fielder.

Kunitz commented on Phil's size, but more kindly than

16 PHIL RIZZUTO

others had. "You'll never make it as an outfielder," he said,
after watching the youngster in a workout. "But with a
pair of hands like you have and an arm like yours, what an
infielder you'll make! Rabbit Marranville was a midget but
he became a star."

Phil made the team as the third baseman. A boy named
Jimmy Castrataro was the shortstop and he was too good to
be dislodged. The second baseman, Ralph Benzenberg, was
the star of the club good enough to be signed by the
Giants to a farm-club contract after he graduated. He
never made the grade in organized baseball, however.

Kunitz, who had been a scrappy varsity catcher at Co-
lumbia though he weighed only 135 pounds, knew his base-
ball. He helped all the youngsters become better ball
players and Rizzuto credits the high-school coach with
helping him more than anyone he has ever met.

"He worked hard with me," says Phil, who will never
cease being grateful to the first man who believed in him.
"He taught me to bunt and explained 'inside baseball,' such
as the hit-and-run play. Al said I had better become an
expert bunter because it would help my batting average.
He pointed out that a ball player, in the average ball game,
must hit three balls good on the nose to get one base hit.
A smartly-placed bunt could make up for the bad breaks
you get when your hard-hit balls are caught. Since I
couldn't hit a long ball, I had to get my hits in other
ways."

After that first season at Richmond Hill, Kunitz was
sold on Rizzuto's ability to make the grade in professional
baseball despite the runty build of the little infielder, Al
had helped develop Marius Russo, a very fine left-handed
pitcher, a few years earlier and Russo, who had gone on to
college at Long Island University, eventually joined the

"I'LL TAKE THE LITTLE ONE" 17

Yankee farm-system. Marius and Phil were to become
teammates on the 1941 and 1942 American League pennant
winners.

Kunitz's opinion of Rizzuto was echoed by other coaches
and newspapermen who wrote up scholastic athletics. Phil
improved as he went along at Richmond Hill. He hit .354
in 1934, his second season on the team, was the captain,
and received the highest accolade a schoolboy athlete can
receive in New York City an All-Scholastic rating. The
Long Island Press, a Queens daily newspaper which is ac-
cepted as an authority on high school sports, named him as
the best third baseman in the city.

The little fellow was not yet sixteen, but Kunitz wasn't
wasting any time. No Hollywood mother, incessantly
hounding casting directors on behalf of her dimpled off-
spring, had anything on the young coach. Al was deter-
mined that Phil should get a chance to carry on his baseball
career, either in college or professional ranks.

Of course, high-school competition wasn't enough.
Kunitz insisted that Phil get all the experience possible and
this meant amateur sandlot and semi-pro ball in the sum-
mertime. During his first two years in high school, Phil
played each Saturday and Sunday with the Glendale
Browns, a neighborhood team, in a league known as the
Queens Alliance. The teams in it were composed of young-
sters between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one though
there was ho age limit and the kids played only for fun.
They even sold chance books to get the money to buy
uniforms.

In the summer of 1934 Phil moved up to better company,
catching on with a light semi-pro club representing the
town of Floral Park, which is in Nassau County and about
fifteen miles farther from New York City than Glendale.

18 PHIL R1ZZUTO

"That was the first team which paid me any money," the
Yankee shortstop remembers, "but not very much of it.
We charged admission but there were expenses and we had
to pay guarantees to the teams we met. We didn't get a
salary but it was arranged that we'd split up the profits at
the end of the season. We did and I got $120 for playing
in eighty games."

Phil played shortstop with Floral Park that year and
Kunitz switched him over to the most important infield
spot at Richmond Hill High the following spring 1935.
He had another fine season in PSAL ball and the Press
again picked him as an All-Scholastic.

Kunitz, meanwhile, was getting the word about Phil
around. He interested the St. Louis Cardinals sufficiently
for that club to send a scout out to see Richmond Hill and
its star shortstop. The Hilltoppers were meeting John
Adams, another Queens school, in a game at Dexter Park,
home of the famed Queens semi-pro team, the Bushwicks.
In those days, many a Dodger fan was saying that the Bush-
wicks could beat the Brooks and there was a good chance
they were right.

Phil had a great day. He made three hits and threw out
one runner while sitting down, following a diving stop. He
knew that the Cardinal "bird dog" was watching him, too.
After his performance, Phil expected to be invited to meet
Branch Rickey, then head bondsman of the St. Louis club's
famed "chain-gang" system of minor-league clubs. He was
disappointed.

"You had a pretty good day," the scout told him, "but,
to tell you the truth, kid, you're not built to be a ballplayer.
You're too small."

Phil felt a lot smaller than he actually was as the scout
turned and walked away. But Kunitz comforted him.

"I'LL TAKE THE LITTLE ONE" 19

"Don't worry, Phil," the ever-optimistic coach said.
"There'll be others."

There were. The next one was from the Boston Red
Sox, a chap named Egan. He looked Phil over in PSAL
competition and also in his games with Floral Park. Inci-
dentally, because the Scooter was still in school, he had to
use another name when playing with the semi-pros. He
adopted a fine old Italian name and, if you look it up, the
newspaper box scores of the games will show that a fellow
named Reilly played short for Floral Park!

Egan was much more interested than the Card scout had
been for a while, anyway. He offered Phil $250 to sign
with a Red Sox farm-team and Rizzuto went home to talk
it over with his parents. That kind of money was big dough
in those times and Mom and Pop told him to take it. He
wanted to be nothing else but a ball player and if somebody
was willing to pay him just for nothing but a signature, it
was wonderful.

Phil could hardly sleep that night and the next morning
he reported promptly at the designated spot to keep his
appointment with Egan. But the man never showed, and,
after waiting for a couple of hours, the dejected little guy
trudged home $250 poorer and no nearer getting a start in
organized baseball.

"I never heard of Egan again," Phil recalls. "At the time,
I was sore and I told myself that he probably forgot all
about me and went to a bar. But I guess he just decided that
I wasn't good enough to waste that kind of dough on."

Egan's decision, however he arrived at it, proved to be
a monumental mistake years later. Had Rizzuto been play-
ing shortstop for the Red Sox in 1949 and 1950, Boston
would have been participating in the World Series those
years, not New York.

20 PHIL RIZZUTO

George Mack, a Yankee scout, also had been interested
in Rizzuto by Kunitz. He had turned in a complimentary
report to Paul Krichell, head of the New York club's talent-
scout staff, and Krich had also watched Phil in action a
couple of times. Krichell did his spying quietly and Phil
never knew, until much later, that the Yankee executive
was assaying him.

Kunitz, never despairing, figured that Phil's path to the
majors might possibly have to be a devious one that addi-
tional experience in collegiate competition might serve to
spotlight his talent. That, after all, had been the course of
Russo and others such as Frank Frisch, Lou Gehrig even
Eddie Collins and Christy Mathewson.

Richmond Hill had a game booked with the Columbia
freshman team at Bakers Field in the spring of 1935. It was
a blustery day, the raw winds making the pitchers' plight
intolerable and blowing flies into base hits. It was a high-
scoring game and Benzenberg was the star that afternoon.

George Vecsey, then sports editor of the Long hlmd
fress and now on the New York staif of the Associated
Press, covered the game. When it was over, he huddled in
conversation with Ralph Furey, then the lion cubs' coach
and now athletic director of the University. Vecsey nomi-
nated Benzenberg as a possible player for Columbia but
Furey answered, C TU take the little runt at third base. He's
got the makings of a good player."

Furey, at the urging of Kunitz, did consider Phil for a
scholarship but the boy's grades at Richmond Hill were not
good enough for admission to the University.

Kunitz, with the persistence and endurance of an in-
surance salesman, tried to get Phil into Fordham, too. He
sent his prize up to the Ram campus for a workout, in

"FLL TAKE THE LITTLE ONE" 21

which Jack Coif ey, athletic boss and baseball coach, looked
him over.

"Fordham had a great team then," Phil says. <c Babe
Young, who later played with the Giants, was on first base
and Tony DePhillips, who was signed by the Yanks, was
the catcher. I worked out at short and took batting practice
and, when it was over, Coffey offered me a scholarship.
He insisted that I would have to come out for football,
too."

The Ram coach figured that Phil's great speed would
make him an asset to Jim Crowley's gridders a scat-back
who, lacking poundage, could run away from bigger men.
Such a type is Buddy Young, former Illinois and present
professional great with the New York Yanks of the Na-
tional Football League.

Phil told Coffey he would think it over. Coffey went to
Europe that summer and left the details to be worked out
by a subordinate. Phil decided to take the two-sport deal
but when he tried to get it arranged, no one in the Fordham
athletic office knew anything about Coffey's offer. The
Scooter gave up. Anyway, his high school marks would
have made admission to Fordham as difficult as to Columbia.

Rizzuto was back in school in 1936 but, as the gag goes,
he wasn't taking up anything but space, French and other
languages were throwing him and he was playing hookey
too often to keep up with his classmates. By mutual con-
sent, Rizzuto and Richmond Hill High severed their con-
nection in the spring of that year. Any education which
would benefit him in later life would have to come on the
diamond. He was determined to be a ball player and,
though his attitude was wrong, he felt that school was a
waste of time. Rizzuto did get a diploma, gratis, many years

22 PHIL RIZZUTO

later. In 1948 the school held its seventy-fifth anniversary
celebration and all students who had gone on to success in
life were awarded diplomas and certified as graduates.

Kunitz never relaxed in his crusade to find a place for
Phil. Even after the little guy quit school, they kept in
touch with each other. Phil, not wanting to be a dead-
weight at home, got himself a job through his reputation
as a ball player. S. Gumpert & Co., manufacturers of food-
stuff for hotels, had a ball team in the Brooklyn Industrial
League, which played twilight games at the Prospect Park
Parade Grounds. They needed a shortstop and Phil needed
work, so he became a pudding puddler. His task each day
was to help another man lift barrels of syrup and one hun-
dred-pound bags of sugar so that they could be emptied into
a huge vat to be made into butterscotch. Rizzuto could han-
dle the heavy work because he had such muscular shoulders
and arms.

The job and the ball games for the firm were a fill-in.
Phil never wavered in his belief that he could become a
major leaguer and Kunitz never stopped trying to find
someone who would take the little man seriously. Al ar-
ranged the abortive Dodger and Giant "tryouts" that sum-
mer, and, when Phil was given the double brushoff , turned
again to the Yanks.

Krichell had seen enough of Phil to realize that the boy
rated at least a tryout, despite the handicap of his size.
Krich, a smallish, cruller-legged guy himself, had been a
big-league catcher with the St. Louis Browns before the
first World War.

Paul, who is sixty-nine years of age now, is a unique
character. He is the finest judge of baseball talent there Is
im the world. He has worked for the Yankees for thirty
years and, more than any other man, is responsible for the

"I'LL TAKE THE LITTLE ONE" 23

unceasing flood of talent which has been funnelled into
Yankee Stadium. The Yankees don't get championship
players by accident. Krichell and his staff of gimlet-eyed
aides know how to sort the good prospects from the others.
Paul can spot a kid in a Sunday-school league and make a
pretty good guess as to whether the youngster will ever
merit a locker in the Yankee clubhouse.

Krichell was much smarter than the Dodger and Giant
officials in that he didn't believe in mass tryouts. "If you
try to look at too many kids, you really don't see any of
them," he says. "Give a good look to a few at a time and
you are more apt to come up with the good ones. At least,
you won't miss a kid because you didn't happen to pick
him out from among a hundred others."

Paul sent Phil a letter early in August of that year
(1936), inviting him to a tryout at Yankee Stadium. Phil
had no way of knowing that this one would be different
from the others and he was happily surprised when he got
there and discovered that the Yankees had asked only
twenty-five boys to come. There, in the largest of the three
New York parks, he found himself in the smallest group
he had seen.

"We were divided into two teams," he recalls. "We
played a regular game three innings every day for five
days. The Yankees were home at the time and we worked
out before they came onto the field at noon. I played sec-
ond base the first day and shortstop on the other four.

"It was wonderful. I saw Gehrig and Dickey and the
other great Yankees. And Tony Lazzeri actually spoke to
me. I guess I'd have gone home happy after it was over just
for the fact that I'd been so close to those guys."

KricheU supervised the games and Coach Art Fletcher,
manager Joe McCarthy's assistant, batted grounders in

24 PHIL RIZZUTO

infield practice. There were some pretty good ball players
in the group, including Tommy Holmes, who later starred
with the Braves, and Jim Prendergast, who went on to
pitch for the Cardinals and Phillies.

Krich sounded out Fletch on the youngsters and the
coach, who had been a star shortstop himself in the Na-
tional League, said quickly, "I'll take the little one out there
at short. He handles himself like a major leaguer right
now."

After the fifth workout, Fletcher approached Rizzuto
and asked, "Would you like to go away, kid? "

Phil nearly jumped out of his spikes at the question.
After stammering a quick "Yes, sir," he rushed to change
into his street clothes, dashed out to the nearest phone
booth, and called his mother. After giving her the glad
news, he dialed Kunitz to tell his faithful friend that the
crusade had ended successfully.

Under baseball law at the time, a major-league club could
not sign a sandlotter directly. He had to be taken on by
a minor-league affiliate. Krichell wanted to give him a con-
tract with a team in Butler, Pennsylvania, of the Pennsyl-
vania State League, at $75 per month. That was a Class D
league and the Yanks also had a D team at Bassett, Virginia.
Phil asked to be sent to the latter club instead, because the
Bassett season, due to the milder Virginia climate, started
a month earlier than Butler's, and he could make an extra
seventy-five bucks.

"I thought that was pretty good money," Phil says. "The
kids around home who had jobs were making about $12 a
week then."

Since Phil was a minor, one of his parents had to sign for
him. The Yankees sent the contract to his home and Mrs.
Rizzuto took charge.

"?LL TAKE THE LITTLE ONE" 25

"I went into New York to see Mr. Krichell," she relates.
"I wanted to know more about it. Phil was only seventeen
and had never been away from home. I didn't know any-
thing about baseball or its ways,

"Mr. Krichell assured me that Phil would be all right.
He said that he would see to it that he was placed in a good,
clean place to live and that he would be as safe in Bassett
as he would be at home. I signed the contract after he
promised me that nothing would happen to my boy."

There was, of course, no bonus for the signature. That
was before the days of the bonus-babies such as Curt Sim-
mons and Robin Roberts of the Phils, Dick Wakefield of
the Tigers, and Paul Pettit of the Pittsburgh Pirates. As
kids, those fellows received gifts of from $25,000 to $100,-
ooo for signing. Rizzuto got nothing but the chance to
become a Yankee.

Years later, Yank General Manager Ed Barrow said,
"Rizzuto cost me fifteen cents, ten for postage and five for
a cup of coffee we gave him the last day he worked out at
the Stadium."

Never, but never, has fifteen cents gone so far.

CHAPTER FOUR

Minor Matters

MRS. RIZZUTO liked to give a small party just
the family and some close friends and neighbors when
any of the children went away from home or when they
came back.

"It always was much better when they came back from
someplace/' she recalls. "Then I could enjoy myself. But I
didn't like the 'going away' parties because those always
meant that I'd be without one of the children for a while."

Mom didn't care at all for the party she gave when Phil
left for Bassett, in the spring of 1937. It meant Phil was
going away from home for the first time in his life and
Virginia seemed to be such a long way from Queens. Al-
though she had the maternal foresight to realize that the
youngster could take care of himself, she also was beset
with the worries that all mothers possess when a child
Phil was eighteen went out on his own for the first time.

"I wasn't sure that it was the best thing," she remembers.
"He was so small and he didn't look very much like a ball
player. Even though Mr. Krichell had assured me he would
be all right, I was not very happy. His dad and I both felt
that the Yankees were too big a team and that he was too
little ever to make the major leagues. This going to Bassett,

26

MINOR MATTERS 27

a place we had never heard of, didn't seem like the best
thing for him. I wished it had been somewhere closer to
home."

Phil, with fewer misgivings than his mother, reported
to Bassett and Ray White, former Columbia University-
pitcher who was the manager of that link in the Yankee
chain. White arranged for him to live at a comfortable
boarding house "with nice people," as Krichell had prom-
ised Mrs. Rizzuto. Herb Karpel, Phil's Richmond Hill
High buddie, was there too.

Bassett was as good a place as any to start a baseball ca-
reer no more. A small town of 3,500 people, approxi-
mately one-third of them Negroes, it was as much a part
of Jim-Crow land as Mobile, Alabama. The principal in-
dustry, and just about the only one, was the furniture fac-
tory founded by E. D. Bassett, after whom the town was
named. Bassett was one of eight small communities in the
Bi-State League, all eight of which were in either Virginia
or North Carolina. Each town or city was within a radius
of seventy-five miles and the entire schedule was played in
one-day or one-night stands.

"We never stayed overnight in another town it was
back on the bus to Bassett after every game/' Phil recalls.
"We never saw a hotel at all. Each of us got thirty-five
cents a day meal money. The League rules set a limit of
fifteen players on each squad. We had two catchers, six
pitchers, and the seven other players. If anyone was hurt or
a pinch-hitter was needed, a pitcher had to go into the game
in some other position, as an outfielder or infielder."

This personnel limit was to become the underlying cause
of near-tragedy for Rizzuto an injury which threatened
to cost him his left leg and end his career practically be-
fore it had begun.

28 PHIL RIZZUTO

Phil and the Bassett team started off the season in high
gear and were rolling along in first place. The little short-
stop was the most popular player on the team, both with
his teammates and with the fans of the town. He hit well,
fielded brilliantly, and was the subject of glowing reports
which White dispatched to Krichell in New York.

But, after less than a month of the season, Rizzuto de-
veloped a "charley horse" in his left thigh. That's the ath-
lete's expression for a sore muscle. It was difficult for him
to move around on the bum member, particularly to cover
ground and make the double-play pivot. But there was no
one else to put in, so White tried to keep Phil going. Ray
would spend an hour and a half each day before the game,
treating the injury, himself. He wound a big wad of ad-
hesive tape around the handle of a broken bat and kneaded
the sore muscle in the fashion of a massage. Then the man-
ager would tape it tightly, so that the shortstop could play
with a minimum of pain.

This amateur physiotherapy did enable Phil to keep on
playing. But, to the later dismay of both White and Phil,
the delay in getting professional care resulted in something
more serious. The treatment was a soporific but not a cure,
and the pain was more intense each tine the tape bandage
was removed. So, shortly before Memorial Day, White
took Phil to be examined by a Dr. Johnson, who had a
private practice in Bassett and also served as examining
physician for a railroad.

"What has happened," the doctor told them after look-
ing over the injury, "is that the muscle in your leg has
pulled apart. It's something that happens maybe once in a
million cases of strain."

Dr. Johnson said that an operation was necessary im-
mediately, because gangrene had set in. Any further delay

MINOR MATTERS 29

in cleaning out the infection would have been tragic for
the tiny ball player. "If this had continued for a few more
days, we would have had to take the leg off/' the medic
said grimly.

There was no time to get permission for the operation
from Rizzuto's family. White, shaken at the diagnosis, ac-
cepted responsibility for the operation and signed the nec-
essary papers. Dr. Johnson operated on Phil a few hours
later, and a total of thirty-seven stitches were required to
close the incision. Phil still carries a long red scar, from just
above his knee almost to the groin. The surgery was so
good that the leg never has bothered him again, aside from
an occasional simple charley horse. "Charley" hops onto al-
most every athlete's legs for a free ride at one time or an-
other.

Mrs. Rizzuto, unaware that her son was in a hospital, had
her brother Dominick drive her down from New York
with the intention of seeing Phil play ball over the holiday
weekend. Instead, she spent her afternoons in the hospital.

"I never thought he'd play ball again after that," she re-
calls. "Dominick and I drove home with the feeling that
Phil would be back with us after they let him out of the
hospital and that the Yankees would no longer be inter-
ested in him. Baseball, of course, was not as important as
his health and I was worried that he might be lame."

But the timely and successful intervention of the sur-
geon's scalpel had saved both the leg and PhiPs career.
After a couple of months' convalescence in Bassett, he was
able to return to the lineup. He finished out the season and
helped his team win the Bi-State pennant. Although he was
able to play in only sixty-seven games, Rizzuto's ability
was obvious. The inite hit an impressive .310, his eighty-
eight hits including seventeen doubles, five triples, and five

30 PHIL RIZZUTO

homers. He recaptured his speed on the bases and in the
field, too.

When Phil said good-bye to his friends at Bassett in late
September, he expected to be back in the little town the
following year. Although he had hit for a good average, his
half-season on the sidelines figured to preclude promotion
to a higher-class club in the New York minor-league setup.

White, however, had other ideas. George Weiss, Yankee
farm chief, was promoting him to Norfolk, Virginia, of
the Class B Piedmont League, as manager. This circuit,
comprising the cities of Norfolk, Charlotte, Richmond,
Winston-Salem, Asheville, Durham, Portsmouth, and
Rocky Mount, was two notches above the Class D Bi~
State. White, believing Rizzuto could make the jump, asked
that Phil be shifted along with him the following spring.

The Yankee chief demurred at first, then yielded. Nor-
folk already had a fine-looking shortstop from nearby Sun-
bury, North Carolina, by the name of Claude Corbitt. He
had been a star athlete at Duke University in nearby Dur-
ham, and so was a big local favorite. From the outset, the
two youngsters were pitted against each other for the reg-
ular job as shortstop.

Rizzuto didn't start very well but Corbitt pounded the
ball and Jed the club with a .320 average. The tall, slim
Claude was the prime favorite of the Tars' fans and Rizzuto
was resigned to a season on the bench or demotion to a
lower level in the farm system. After a while, the front of-
fice in New York sent word to White that he would have
to give up one of the two boys. Augusta, Georgia, Yankee
link in the Class A South Atlantic League (Sally League) ,
needed a shortstop. White decided to let Corbitt go. The
move represented an advancement for Phil's rival in that he
rose to a stronger league, a notch closer to the Yankees.

MINOR MATTERS 31

White, whose own reputation and future were involved,
didn't make the choice out of sentiment. It would have
been much easier and most pleasant for him to keep the
local boy and sidetrack Rizzuto. The manager was inter-
ested in winning the pennant and he believed Phil to be a
better man for the job than Corbitt. The subsequent major-
league careers of the two players proved him a wise judge
of talent. Corbitt, three years older than Phil, bumped
around the minors until 1942 and then served four years in
the uniform of Uncle Sam. When he returned from the
wars, he had a chance with the Dodgers and couldn't make
the grade. The Cincinnati Reds also found him wanting.
Claude, a fine fielder, lacked Rizzuto's ability to hit good
pitching.

The paying customers didn't take kindly to the dismissal
of Corbitt and they howled for White's scalp. It was then
up to Phil (Piedmont League newspapermen were then be-
ginning to call him "The Flea") to vindicate the manager's
decision. Rizzuto, who regarded White as his guardian an-
gel, came through.

Norfolk had many good ball players that year; at least
half a dozen of the others eventually made the grade in the
majors. Among them were Aaron Robinson, former Yan-
kee, Chicago White Sox, and Detroit Tigers' catcher; Jack
Graham, first baseman-outfielder, who saw extended serv-
ice in the National League with the Dodgers and Giants
and also put in a season with the St. Louis Browns; Billy
Johnson, fine Yankee third baseman; Milo Candini, a right-
handed pitcher who spent six American League summers as
a Washington Senator and then shifted over to the Phils in
time to be a member of the 1950 National League cham-
pions; and Bud Metheny, wartime outfielder who helped
the Yanks win the 1943 pennant.

32 PHIL R1ZZUTO

Another rookie at Norfolk in 1938 was Jerry Priddy, a
solidly built second baseman who was to become Rizzuto's
alter-ego. While Phil was being signed by Krichell in the
summer of 1936, Priddy also was being assimilated into the
New York club's incubator. Across the country, in a Los
Angeles suburb, Jerry's prowess was outstanding among
the sandlot players. Bill Essick, who retired as West Coast
scout for the Yankees only last year, signed him to a Yan-
kee farm contract. His was also a Class D pact, with Rog-
ers, Arkansas, of the Arkansas-Missouri League. Priddy, a
moon-faced, deep-chested youth, was just a year younger
than the little shortstop. He hit .336 at Rogers and so was
promoted to Norfolk for the 1938 season.

There began an association which was to make them the
most talked-of second-short combination in the minor
leagues for the next three years and ultimately bring them
to Yankee Stadium together.

Phil and Jerry became a Damon-and-Pythias duo, insepa-
rable on the field and off. Seldom, too, was one spoken of
without the other they just seemed to be twins. Around
second base they seemed to be fused into one super-human.
Baseball men all over the country scouts, owners, and
newspapermen passed the word that the Yankees had
come up with the greatest second-base pair in minor-league
history.

The superlatives were merited. By the end of the year,
the fans of Norfolk loved little Phil and big Jerry. A side-
light on the pair was the strong affection Priddy had for his
mitey partner. When an opposing player tried to give Phil
the "works" in a take-out play at second base, Priddy
stepped in and put the aggressor in his place.

"You have to settle with me when you do that/' he told

MINOR MATTERS 33

a runner who had deliberately slid into Phil with spikes
high.

"I'll do that if you want me to," the offender answered.

He did and took a whipping from Priddy. Rizzuto never
asked for such protection but the rest of the league knew
that it would be at hand and so, outside of the usual at-
tempts to break up double plays at second base routine
slides which are accepted as one of the hazards of being
pivot man on a twin kill there were few attempts to maim
li'lPhil.

The teen-agers were like a pair of matched jewels. The
Yankee farm-system, then at the height of its fertility, was
loaded with gems but none to compare with nineteen-year-
old Philip Francis Rizzuto and eighteen-year-old Gerald
Edward Priddy.

Priddy batted .323 in 132 games, with a league-leading
total of thirty-six doubles. He had six triples, nine home
runs, and seventy-three runs batted in. Rizzuto, in 112
games, cracked out a lusty .336 average and batted in fifty-
eight runs. He banged twenty-four two-base hits, ten three-
baggers, and nine homers. It was hard to tell which was the
better but the Yankee farm boss, George Weiss, was in the
happy position of not having to make a distinction. For
Weiss, an enthusiastic race-track bettor, it was like having
both horses in a dead heat for first. He couldn't lose.

After such sparkling performances as these, there was no
doubt that Rizzuto and Priddy were on their way to the
majors. Even his number-one fan and most reluctant be-
liever, Momma Rizzuto, was beginning to feel a warm glow
when other folks spoke of her little boy's chances of reach-
ing the big leagues,

"They moved him to Kansas City the following season/*

34 PHIL RIZZUTO

she recalls. "And that impressed both his father and my-
self. He still wasn't making much money he never really
did in baseball until after the war but he was getting
ahead."

Despite his glittering performances, Rizzuto certainly
wasn't getting rich. Who ever does in the minors? His $75-
per-month salary at Bassett was doubled when he was pro-
moted to Norfolk. The elevation to KG resulted in it being
doubled again. Baseball salaries cover only the six and a half
months of the league schedule, of course, so Phil really was
getting a yearly wage of about $1,950 in his first year at
Kansas City. His salary was doubled once more for his
second year there, incidentally.

Kans* City, Missouri, is the premier link in the Yankees'
extensive farm system the make-or-break station at which
the men are separated from the boys. Success there meant a
jump to fabulous Yankee Stadium and the chance to wear
the creamy-white flannels made famous by such greats as
Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and Tony Lazzeri. Failure in KG
put a prospect right behind the eight-ball, of course. The
Yankee front office, which deals in humans with the senti-
ment and sympathy of a card-indexer built by International
Business Machines, would earmark him for disposal. Unless
a youngster was lucky enough to be picked up by some
major-league outfit of less demanding standards than the
Yanks, he was faced with the disheartening drop down the
ladder to oblivion.

Phil met the challenge without flinching. Although the
smallest player in the American Association as usual he
quickly showed his class. "The little guy's a pro," was the
accolade paid to him by opposing players and managers.
He was even better against the tougher competition of the
Association than he had been in Norfolk the previous year.

MINOR MATTERS 35

And so was Priddy. Each increased in stature and, together,
became the outstanding stars in the Yankee chain.

Both had great natural ability and just about all they
needed was added polish they had to acquire "know
how." Billy Meyer, later manager of the Pittsburgh Pirates,
was the field boss at KG and as fine a teacher as there was
in the business. Then forty-five years of age, Billy had been
in baseball for twenty-eight of them as a player in the mi-
nors (he was a catcher) and manager. Weiss has always
picked his minor-league pilots just as carefully as most men
do their wives. He had many good young prospects scat-
tered through the fertile nurseries and wasn't of a mind to
have any of them retarded by poor handling. Meyer deftly
applied the veneer which smoothed and glossed the few
rough edges the two youngsters still had. He taught them
how to bunt, hit-and-run, tag runners, and play hitters. By
the end of the year, they were the greatest names in minor-
league baseball and seemed to be ready for the majors.

Their fielding was flawless and they hit with the force
of blacksmiths. Little Phil whammed Association pitching
for a .3 1 6 average, hit five homers, and batted in sixty-four
runs. Priddy, twenty-five pounds heavier and six inches
taller than Rizzuto, clubbed .333 and batted in 107 runs.
Jerry's extra base-power was prodigious. He led the league
with forty-four doubles, slashed fifteen triples and pow-
dered twenty-four home runs.

Their exploits helped Kansas City make a runaway race
to the pennant. The Blues won 107 games and Meyer was
named Minor League Manager of the Year by Sporting
News, a baseball weekly. Yankee Stadium was getting
closer for the two ex-sandlotters from opposite sides of the
country but circumstances dictated their continuance in
the Association for one more year.

36 PHIL R1ZZUTO

Ed Barrow, president and general manager of the Yan-
kees, was offered $250,000 for the pair or $150,000 for
Rizzuto alone after the conclusion of that season. That was
1939, before the dollar became cheapened by wartime in-
flation. He and Weiss turned down the barrels of money,
even though they had no room on the Yankees for either
player.

The year 1939 had been one of the most successful in the
history of the New York club and its farms. The parent
team had swept to its fourth straight pennant and world
championship an all-time record. Manager Joe McCarthy
seemed to be set for years to come as far as second base and
shortstop were concerned. Joe Gordon was the best second
baseman alive and agile, artful Frank Crosetti was as classy
a shortstop as the American League had seen in two gen-
erations. There simply was no reason for advancing Riz-
zuto and Priddy, although they were better ball players
than many playing their respective short and second posi-
tions in the majors.

So, it was back to Kansas City for the 1940 season, and
the presence of Priddy and Rizzuto guaranteed the Blues
their second straight pennant. They reeled off 193 double
plays, an American Association Record. Incidentally, this
was the fourth successive year each season they'd been in
professional ball that Jerry and Phil had played on flag-
winning clubs. Priddy had helped Rogers cop the Arkan-
sas-Missouri flag in '37, when Phil was at Bassett, and they
had continued to travel as champions when they joined
each other at Norfolk.

There was a slight shift in the performance of the pair
from one year at KG to the next. Priddy slipped a bit, hit-
ting only .306 for a drop of twenty-seven points. But he re-
tained his power and drove in 1 12 runs, five better than the

MINOR MATTERS _ 37

previous season. Rizzuto, the scampering scooter, became
the finest non-major-league ball player. Phil was the sensa-
tion of the league, though only twenty-one years of age.
The mite amazed all baseball by making 201 lilts for a .347
average. He belted ten triples and the same number of hom-
ers and knocked in seventy-three runs high for his career
in the important RBI column. He led the league in stolen
bases with thirty-five. The fans of the midwest metropolis,
voting in a merchant-sponsored poll, selected him as the
most popular player on the club. At season's end, Sporting
News tabbed Rizzuto as Number-one Minor League Player
of the Year.

There was no doubt that, after the 1940 campaign, the
firm of Priddy and Rizzuto would move up to Yankee Sta-
dium. Barrow merely made it official when, during the win-
ter, he placed their names on the Yankees' spring-training
roster and sent them Yankee contracts.

The Yankee organization was the envy of every other
team in baseball. Having Jerry and Phil was like having the
Hope Diamond in one hand and the Kohinoor in the other
just in case of a tie. Staid, conservative baseball men who
had no business connections with the Yanks went into un-
blushing raves over the prospects of the pair concentrat-
ing most of their bravos on Rizzuto.

Tom Sheehan, Minneapolis manager, predicted that Phil
would provoke as much of a sensation in the American
League as Joe DiMaggio had when he broke in with the
Yankees in 1936. Sheehan believed that Rizzuto was a great
shortstop, rather than merely a good one. He preached the
gospel of the Scooter's magnificente every time he gathered
with baseball people, citing an Instance to prove his point.

On Tom's Minneapolis club then was Hub Walker, for-
mer major-league outfielder who, after his retirement from

38 PHIL RIZZUTO

baseball, became a successful salesman for a Detroit auto-
mobile agency. Hub was one of the best drag bunters in
the profession probably the equal of Rizzuto, himself, at
that precise art.

One of Walker's pet tricks was to lean over the plate in
bunting position, when there was a runner on first base.
Batting left-handed from this stance, Hub caused the de-
fensive infield to swing into the usual formation, the first
baseman tiptoeing in to field the bunt while the second
baseman dashed over to cover first base and take a throw.
Instead of bunting, Walker sometimes whirled the bat like
a baton with his wrists and pushed the ball toward the spot
just vacated by the second baseman.

"It never failed," Tom related, "so long as Hub was able
to make connections with the ball, which he did most of the
time. It was the perfect play there was no defense for it.
At least, we thought there wasn't any when the bunt was
executed properly.

"We pulled it a few times against Kansas City, as well as
against every other club in the League. But one day it
didn't work because Rizzuto outfoxed us. He saw what
was coming and charged clear across the diamond from his
shortstop position, fielded the ball on the first-base side of
second, and threw to Priddy at first. He got Walker by a
couple of steps and Hub is very fast. It was a great play for
Rizzuto to field the ball, let alone throw out the runner,
because Hub gets a tremendous jump from the plate on
that particular play."

Rizzuto had been making such great plays ever since
he'd played ball. It's unlikely that any shortstop in the his-
tory of the game could cover more ground to his left than
Phi with the possible exception of long-legged Marty
Marion of the St. Louis Cardinals. Marion became manager

MINOR MATTERS 39

of the Cards for the 1951 season after a back infirmity cut
short his playing career.

Meyer considered Priddy and Rizzuto the best ball play-
ers he had ever managed. He had no doubt of their ability
to move into the Yankee picture as regulars the following
year. Asked about the kids' chances at the Stadium, Billy
grinned and said, in his soft Southern drawl, "I wonder
what the Yanks are going to do with Gordon! "

By that answer, Billy implied that both of the lads were
good enough to step in as regulars and hold their positions
for many years. He proved to be only half correct as a
prophet. Phil made it but Jerry, after two so-so seasons as
a Yankee, was traded off to Washington. He since has
played with St. Louis and Detroit of the American League.

CHAPTER FIVE

Rookie of the Year

PHIL RIZZUTO was lucky that, from his earliest
days, his good parents had so formed his character that he
was endowed with the grace of humility. Had he been
other than the modest little chap that he is, Phil might
never have been a successful big leaguer at all. The Scooter
could have become one of the many victims of premature
publicity, talented professionals whose careers were ruined
by overdoses of adulation in the newspapers and on the
airwaves.

When Phil reported to the Yankees' spring-training base
at St. Petersburg, Florida, in February of 1941, he had
played only 462 games of professional baseball, all in the
minor leagues. Yet his name was almost as well known to
the thirty million ball fans in the United States as that of
Joe DiMaggio. Surging tons of printer's ink and wild air-
waves buffeted the mite from Glendale long before he ever
put on a Yankee uniform. Certainly enough to turn his
head, if he had been cursed with a head which could be
turned.

Phil had been voted the Number-one Minor League
Baseball Player for 1940. He and Priddy, through their

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR 41

spectacular keystone capers, were labelled the greatest
second-base combination ever developed in the minors. The
Tigers wanted both boys but would gladly have taken ei-
ther if the Yankee front office was willing to do business.
It wasn't, of course. The club had finished third in 1940
and it could use good players as well as anyone else par-
ticularly if the pair were even close to being the stars every-
one claimed they were.

Rizzuto received most of the publicity, not because he
outshone Priddy by such a wide margin, but because there
was a shortstop's job waiting on the Yankees. Frankie
Crosetti, after nine years as a star player, had gone into
eclipse the previous year. He was slowing up afield and had
practically forgotten how to hit. In 1940 he had the lowest
batting average of any regular player in the major leagues,
exactly .194. In 546 times at bat he had made only 106 hits
and had driven in the anemic total of 3 1 runs. Phil was cer-
tain to replace the veteran Italian a man who had been his
own personal hero just a few years before, when Phil's
uncle used to take the youngster up to Yankee Stadium to
see the Bombers win pennants as the "Crow" starred in
the shortfield. Priddy had no such opening because Joe
Gordon was in his prime twenty-six years old and ac-
claimed as the greatest fielding second baseman of all time.

For the four years prior to 1940, the Yankees were the
greatest baseball team ever. They won four pennants and
four world championships in succession a feat never be-
fore achieved. They lost but three of nineteen World Series
games in that period. They wrecked the American League
in this devastating sweep, averaging 102 victories per 154-
game season. Then, unaccountably, they lost the touch in
1940 and finished third to Detroit and Cleveland. It was the
biggest collapse since Humpty-Dumpty defied the law of

42 PHIL RIZZUTO

gravity. Most of the blame was put on Crosetti's bad year
and the experts blatantly proclaimed that young Phil would
step in and remedy the defect. It was quite an order and an
unfair burden to place upon the twenty-two-year-old
rookie.

The first people to become alarmed over the winter-long
tub-thumping were the Yankees themselves, President Ed
Barrow and George Weiss, head of the farm system. Phil
received word from headquarters that he was getting too
much publicity in January of 1941 though there hardly
was anything that he could do about it. The Saturday Eve-
ning Post ran an article acclaiming little Phil as the find of
the year, labelling him "Rookie Number-one."

Phil had not signed his contract at the time and, in urging
him to soft-pedal the hurrahs, Barrow may have been moti-
vated by motives of finance, rather than psychology. Old
Ed's hoary hands had strangled many a buffalo unfortunate
enough to be riding a nickel in his possession. Phil did sign
up shortly thereafter. Barrow offered him $5,000 on the
condition that he make good and Phil accepted readily. Ac-
tually, Phil would have grabbed the offer at half the salary
because he was about to realize a boyhood dream playing
ball in Yankee Stadium.

The Yankees, then and now, are the greatest name in
baseball. Who can really estimate how much it means to a
ball-batty kid from the sidewalks of New York to put on
a Yankee uniform? How can you gauge the bursting pride
Rizzuto felt when he first climbed into the immaculate pin-
striped pants and blouse of creamy white and tugged at the
peak of the dignified black cap with the NY monogram
embroidered on it in white silk?

"To tell you the truth," Phil reveals now, "when I first
saw those big guys down there at spring training, I didn't

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR 43

think I'd make it. They were so darned big DiMaggio,
Henrich and Keller, Ruffing, Dickey, Lindell all of them.
I was really discouraged for quite a while/'

Phil's lack of size actually kept him from getting into the
clubhouse at Huggins Field for a while on that first day of
spring training in 1941 at St. Pete.

He approached the low, wooden building in which the
Yanks dress at the willow-bordered practice field and
started to enter.

Fred Logan, long-time clubhouse custodian for the Yan-
kees, looked up as the runty youngster stepped in and
snorted. "Beat it, Sonny," he barked, shaking his close-
shaved head vigorously and waving a gnarled hand in the
direction of the small bleacher stand which adjoins the field.
Then, in the tired voice of one who is constantly harassed
by curious youngsters and pesky autograph hounds, he
added, "You can see the players when they come out on
the field and get autographs signed, too. Outside, now! "

Rizzuto began to protest and Logan was in the process
of evicting him bodily when Lefty Gomez, the veteran
left-hander with the wonderful sense of humor, intervened.
"Aw, let him in, Fred," Lefty said. "He belongs here/'

Then, to Rizzuto, "Come on in here, you cockroach,
before one of these Florida grasshoppers steps on you!"

Phil went in and found his locker right between those
of Bill Dickey and Red Ruffing. He was so scared that he
wanted to turn around and run right out again. But those
grand veterans quickly made him comfortable with their
breezy conversation and incessant quips. In no time at all,
Rizzuto found out how swell it was to be a Yankee to be
an accepted member of a select clan of proud, dignified
professionals who were the finest in their business.

Although he had received a well-grounded baseball edu-

44 PHIL RIZZUTO

cation at Norfolk and Kansas City and had been under such
great tutors as Raj White and Bill Meyer, Rizzuto still had
a good deal to learn about the game. The Yankees, particu-
larly Manager McCarthy and, of all people, Crosetti, gave
him their time and their knowledge so that he could be-
come a better, more-rounded ball player. So did Gordon.

"Can you dance?" the manager asked him the first day.

"Sure," Phil answered, grinning at what seemed to be a
foolish question.

"Not on the dance floor," Mac snapped. "I mean on the
field. Can you shift your feet as though you were doing a
buck-and-wing dance?"

Phil, embarrassed, said no, and so McCarthy showed him
how to use little dancing steps in going after a ground ball.
He insisted that Phil practice those mincing steps so that
he could field the ball without wasted time and motion.
The manager also corrected a foot-fault which Phil never
knew he possessed. Joe noticed that, in fielding a grounder
to deep short, the rookie always jammed his spikes into the
ground before stooping to pick up the ball. McCarthy
made him bring his right foot to a sliding stop, so as to be in
a better-balanced position to make the grab and the throw
to first base. Gordon chipped in with demonstrations of the
technique and Crosetti, literally helping Phil to swipe his
job, joined in the instruction,

Those men made the little fellow a better fielder and
contributed to his ultimate stardom and MVP selection.
To them he is eternally grateful. Crosetti, particularly,
taught him to take advantage of his size to make his mi-
nute stature a favorable factor, rather than a detriment.

The outstanding feature of Phil's shortstop technique is
that he actually does stop the ball short. He plays a very

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR 45

shallow position, compared to most other shortstops, and
there is no man in baseball who can play a ball as low as
Eizzuto.

"If I played too deep, Fd be letting the ball play me/'
the Scooter says. "I prefer to rush the ball and play it low.
For one thing, that makes the throw to first shorter for
me. I don't have the 'gun' that some others have and, by
playing close, I save time. When you figure out how many
runners are beaten at first by half a step, that split second
I save becomes important."

There probably wasn't a single phase of baseball that
Crosetti didn't touch in his education of Phil that spring
hitting, fielding, base-running, sliding, playing the other
hitters, and even the art of getting hit with a pitched ball
without being damaged a faculty for which the Crow was
famous.

Someone else was interested in Phil, too. That was the
chairman of his local draft board in Glendale. The Selective
Service Law had been passed late in 1940 and Phil, being of
age, had registered. One sunny morning Phil opened his
mail and found one of those "Greetings" which were to
become coldly familiar to over ten million American
youths an order for a pre-induction physical exam in
New York.

He had the physical transferred to St. Petersburg and
was okayed for service on March 19. Ten days later he
was deferred because he was the major support of his fam-
Ey and placed in a 3 -A classification. A deferment of that
nature was a common one in those pre-war days and Phil's
was perfectly legitimate. His dad was making only $20 per
week as a part-time dock worker and his brother Al, who
was two years younger, was unemployed. Congress had not

46 PHIL RIZZUTO

legalized subsistence for a draftee's dependents at that time
and so the local boards made it a practice to defer any man
whose induction would exert a genuine hardship on his
family.

With the draft board satisfied, Phil was able to devote
his full time to making the Yankees. The advance notices
were big and the little man intended to live up to them.

Priddy didn't go unnoticed while Phil was being tabbed
as "most likely to succeed" in the Yankee training camp.
He received instruction from the older heads and, after a
couple of weeks of indecision on the part of McCarthy,
became the focal point of almost all discussion among the
writers and players in the Yankee party. The manager,
after giving the matter a lot of thought, decided that he
would have to find a place in the regular lineup for Jerry
as well as Phil. Naturally, he realized that, since both were
to be in there every day, it would be sound baseball to keep
them together as a combination. This forced a radical ma-
neuver the transformation of Gordon, the very finest sec-
ond baseman in baseball, into a first baseman. The agile
infielder agreed to the switch because the team had no first
sacker of any ability. He wasn't crazy about the idea,
though.

McCarthy was roundly criticized for sidetracking Gor-
don's talent at a proven position in favor of a rookie, but
Marse Joe stuck to his guns. He reasoned that the successful
transformation of Gordon would insure a flag for the
Yanks he was that much sold on Priddy's chances of
making the grade. The manager had no intention of hurt-
ing the Flash, of course. He merely was trying to help the
Yankees regain the world championship.

Gordon looked like a fish out of water at first base, al-
though he was the most graceful acrobat imaginable at

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR 47

second. McCarthy stuck with the plan, anyway, and the
Yanks opened the season with an infield of Gordon, iB;
Priddy, 26; Rizzuto, SS, and Red Rolfe, 36. Rolfe was the
only incumbent in his regular position.

Rizzuto was the most alert rookie the Yanks had brought
to a training camp in a long time. He had no trouble con-
vincing all onlookers in the spring exhibitions that he was
a big leaguer. Priddy, suffering by comparison in the minds
of the players and writers who recalled Gordon's amazing
second-base play, wasn't as big a hit as his partner.

Anyway, they began the season together and McCar-
thy's noble experiment was given a chance to develop into
something substantial. The Yanks' first game was in Wash-
ington, which traditionally opens the season one day be-
fore the rest of the major-league cities with the President
of the United States throwing out the first ball. President
Roosevelt attended the game and performed the rite. FDR,
alone, would have been a big thrill for the keystone kids.
But they got another.

Just before the game began, Rizzuto and Priddy were
feted in a surprise ceremony. Phil, wide-eyed and happy,
bubbled excitedly as two girls from Norfolk pushed baby
carriages loaded with packages toward home plate. Each
carriage was partially hidden by a huge floral horseshoe,
under which was a travelling bag, full of presents from the
folks and fans of Norfolk.

After the game, they opened their duplicate sets of gifts
shirts, socks, ties, slippers, pajamas, shaving kits, portable
radios, candy, and books. All that was missing was a
Christmas tree. A happy grin broke over Priddy's moonish
map as Phil yipped and yeed at each present.

The Yankees opened at the Stadium two days later and
both Phil and Jerry were understandably nervous. This

48 PHIL RIZZUTO

was it the place they'd both been shooting at for five
years. The largest crowd either had ever seen, 40,128, was
in the big ball park as the Yankees squared off against the
Philadelphia Athletics. Although they went hitless, both
came through their debuts without much trouble on the
field. But Phil will always remember his first day at the
Stadium for something else.

"I had driven my ten-year-old Ford up to the Stadium
from Long Island that morning," Phil delights in recalling.
"It was a real jalopy what the kids today call 'hot-rods.'
It was a convertible at one time but was strictly an open-air
chariot by the time I got it. There was no windshield, the
canvas top was in ribbons, I had pinup pictures of Holly-
wood babes pasted on the dashboard and even had fur tails
flying from the hood.

"There was only one parking place left when I arrived,
right between two big, beautiful cars. One was Ruffing's
Cadillac and the other was Gomez's La Salle. I guess some-
one told Barrow about it, because I got the devil from him.

" 'That thing looks terrible out there,' he told me. 'Get
it out of there after today and never let me see it again.
Don't you realize that you are with the Yankees, young
man?'"

Phil, scared silly, agreed to leave the heap home from
then on.

"I should have asked him for the money to buy a better
car," Rizzuto says, "but I was too dumb. I'd know better
now."

Life was wonderful for the pair but for only a couple
of weeks. Then the pressure, still heavy on them as they
made their debut in each American League city, got them.
The team left for a western trip on April 29 and began to
go bad. After two weeks on the road, and no improvement

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR 49

in the over-all play of the club, the Yanks returned home.

A slow start had cost them the 1940 pennant as much as
any other failing and McCarthy was anxious to avert an-
other defeat in the championship race. He conferred with
Barrow the morning of May 16 in the Harry M. Stevens,
Inc., office at the Stadium. The Stevens family handles con-
cessions at all three New York ball parks.

"It's no good, Ed/ 7 Marse Joe said quickly. "Gordon
isn't going to make it at first base and the kids are jittery.
The others haven't got enough confidence in the young-
sters yet. We are good enough to win the pennant but we
better get started. I'm going to bench Priddy and Rizzuto,
put Gordon back on second, Crosetti at short, and try
Johnny Sturm on first."

Barrow, who never in his life interfered with a manager's
handling of personnel, assented quickly as McCarthy told
of his decisions. Ed had managed the Boston Red Sox to a
pennant away back in 1918 and respected the judgment
and problems of the field leader of a ball club.

Phil reported to the Stadium at 11:30 that morning, as
usual, and went out on the field to limber up. He saw Art
Fletcher, McCarthy's third-base coach and number-one
assistant, order Jerry to go into the manager's office in the
clubhouse.

Jerry returned to the dugout a few minutes later,
plopped down on the Jbench wearily, and, fighting back
tears, said, "I'm not playing today, Phil."

The Scooter told his pal how sorry he was and was about
to resume his place on the field when Fletcher advised him
that he, too, was to see McCarthy.

"I really didn't think I was due for the same medicine,"
Rizzuto says in recalling that dismal day. "I knew the team
wasn't going good but I felt that I was just hitting my stride

50 PHIL RIZZUTO

and that we would soon get off on a three- or four-game
winning streak which would cure all our troubles.

"McCarthy asked me to sit down when I entered his
office and then he said, 1 am going to give you a rest for a
while, Phil.'

"It was the first time that I'd ever been benched and I
had a sinking feeling in my stomach. I pleaded with him to
let me stay in the line-up but he shook his head firmly. c lt
will do you a lot of good to sit down for a while,' he said."

Phil doubted that the "sit-down" would be for just a
while. He felt that he had blown his chance with the Yan-
kees and was a flop ready to be sent back to the minors.
He was so sure of it that he suspected McCarthy was giving
him bad news in a nice way. He sat there in the manager's
office, silently tracing meaningless designs with his shoe-toe
on the worn carpet.

McCarthy felt sorry for him and tried to explain.

"You'll get a different view of the game, Phil, when
you're sitting in the dugout watching the other fellows,"
he said, kindly. "You've always looked at the game from a
player's angle. Now get it from the other side. Sit near me
when the game starts. There'll be situations on the field I'll
want to point out to you. Just remember what you are told
and you'll find that the benching is really of some use to
you."

Phil and Jerry were only getting the same treatment
education by benching that other famed Yankees had re-
ceived in their rookie days. McCarthy, a master psycholo-
gist aad handler of other men, realized that relief from the
pressure was necessary. Every newcomer tries hard to make
good and one who has been ushered into the majors on a
wave of publicity usually is so anxious that he "presses"
thus making himself look bad.

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR 51

That was Rizzuto's trouble. As a dugout wallflower for
the first time in his career, Phil offered no alibis and sought
no sympathy. He didn't ascribe his bad batting eye (he was
hitting only .200) to eye-strain induced by reading his
press clippings,

"I don't blame niy bum start on publicity/' he told news-
men on the bench before the game that day. McCarthy had
announced news of the benching of the touted pair right
after he told the players, themselves. "Sure I saw all the
nice things that were written about me. But they didn't
hurt. I was pressing too much, that's all."

Phil has never been an Alibi Ike and it was characteristic
of him to take full blame.

"I didn't realize it until some of the other fellows told
me so," he went on. "They said I was so tightened up in
the field that I was trying to throw the ball before I got it,
that I was trying too hard. And, at bat, tEey tell me that I
was going after bad balls. I didn't know it myself. I guess
if I had known it I'd have stopped, but I don't know for
sure.

"McCarthy says I'll be benched for a week or so. He
didn't say exactly. But I'm not worrying. All the fellows
have told me not to let it get me down. Joe Gordon told me
that when he first came up he got off to a bad start and
they took him out of the line-up for a while. When he got
back in, he went like % house on fire and has ever since.
Charley Keller the same and Rolfe and Crosetti, too. They
tell me to just keep my eyes and ears open and my chin up
and I will return."

The benching of Rizzuto was a master stroke he was
removed before he was ruined. The circumstances were in-
volved, anyway. If the rest of the club, the veterans, had
been playing up to par, Phil's lapses would not have mat-

52 PHIL RIZZUTO

tered But the others had also started badly and the big hit-
ters were in slumps. The team sputtered and coughed and
seemed to be going nowhere. The pressure on Phil
mounted and, undeniably, he was buckling under it. Not
because he was afraid. A psychiatrist might have called it
"guilt complex." His own errors and batting weaknesses
were magnified in his own mind. Although all the stars
were stuttering and stumbling, Phil could only see his own
bad plays as the cause of the Yanks being a fourth-place
ball club, struggling to stay at the .500 mark in games won
and lost. He played every game over again at night in bed,
giving himself a mental thrashing for his mistakes. This self-
inflicted torture was slowly breaking him up and had he
been left in the line-up, he might never have recovered the
winning frame-of-mind.

Phil sat on the bench for a month, playing Charley
McCarthy to Joe McCarthy. He looked, listened, and
learned. Crosetti played a magnificent game at shortstop in
place of the rookie and, combining with Gordon, gave the
Yankees a lift. The team dropped its losing ways as the
Yankee pride and confidence again permeated the bodies
and minds of the veteran stars. DiMaggio, Dickey, Keller,
Henrich, and Gordon started to rifle homers out of the
park. The club hit a winning stride and drove to the top of
the league standings. The Crow, oldest of 'em all with the
exceptions of Dickey and Ruffing, hit at a .300 clip and
seemed to be in the process of making a comeback in his
own right.

It appeared that Crosetti's revival would keep Rizzuto
on the bench all summer, but a sliding baserunner made
that impossible, Frankie received a bad spike wound on his
left hand in mid-June and had to leave the line-up. Phil
went back in and, happily, the set-up for his return was

ROOKIE OF THE YEAR 53

ideal. No longer was there "any pressure on him. The team
was hitting and winning and his occasional mistakes in the
field or strikeout in the clutch went unnoticed.

Once he had returned, he proved himself worthy of be-
ing a Yankee. He and Gordon became the Magicians of the
Midway. They made stunning plays, day after day, an
agile, alert, reckless combination. The Scooter he re-
ceived that fitting nickname from teammate Billy Hitch-
cock at Kansas City in 1939 was the perfect complement
to Gordon. They operated together with machine-preci-
sion, a combination such as the American League had never
seen before. Even the ball players of the visiting clubs be-
gan to watch them in ordinary infield practice and there
is no greater compliment than the admiration of a fellow
craftsman.

Phil was a dynamo of energy, enthusiasm, and spirit. He
quickly became a great favorite with the fans at Yankee
Stadium and, more important, with his own teammates. No
player in the long and glorious history of the New York
Yankees has ever been so popular with his co-workers. Not
even Lou Gehrig, Babe Ruth or Joe DiMaggio. Those men
were respected for their talent and performances which
touched the hem of greatness. But none was the lovable
person, the warm human being Rizzuto is. Phil has never
been in a fight and has never had an enemy and he hopes
riiat that will be his epitaph. His teammates joshed and
teased him even as the P.S. 68 kids had years previously.
Phil took the jibes and practical jokes without rancor. He
played dumb and pretended he didn't know he was being
kidded.

The other Yankees played gags on him just about every
day and he enjoyed the quips and stunts. Always having
been the littlest fellow around and therefore the butt of the

54 PHIL RIZZUTO

jokes, Phil was used to it. Ever-smiling, and seemingly gul-
lible, he played the buffoon purposely. He was young and
breathless in those first days as a Yankee, yet it was obvious
that he possessed baseball sense that many older players
never develop.

Off the field he was bewitched, bothered, and bewil-
dered or so it seemed. On the field his talent, class, ability,
and intelligence burst forth in bountiful waves. He was the
epitome of precision and perfection. Off the field he was a
willing clown on it a dead-serious businessman. There
was nothing funny about the way he played shortstop or
snapped the bat with his powerful shoulders.

Crosetti's injury restored him to the line-up but that was
the only break he needed. He earned the rest the right to
be a Yankee. He was the regular shortstop because he
earned the job and was an outstanding figure in the run-
away surge of the Bombers that year.

In the switch which put Sturm in first base and restored
Gordon to second, it was necessary that the shortstop posi-
tion be filled perfectly. The revised infield situation
worked because Rizzuto, in his first season, became one of
the key men of the team. The i6o-pound bundle of tightly-
packed athlete performed beautiful miracles afield and dis-
sected opposing pitchers with his bat. Despite his poor start,
Phil batted .307 that year. His talent helped re-establish
the Yankees as American League champions and put them
into the World Series against the Dodgers.

He was, as predicted, Rookie Number-one.

CHAPTER SIX

The World Series

TOMMY HEN RICH remembers the 1941 World
Series as the only one in which the Yankees ever got mad.
Phil Rizzuto remembers it because it was his first one. Most
people remember it for Mickey Owen's unhappy muff.

By 1941, most of the Yankee players had been in the fall
classic three or four times and had always won the big tide
from the National League representatives. It was old hat to
these young businessmen who accepted the Series money
each year as though it was ordained to be theirs the moment
it was minted. Down through the years, Yankees have
shared over $3,000,000 in World Series pools. The extra
dough each year was becoming part of the pleasant pursuit
of being a Yankee.

The young men were not quite bored with it all. Rather,
they quietly enjoyed the moneyed monotony of pennant
upon pennant and the World Series victories following
each flag. Supreme confidence in themselves fostered a
haughty dignity in action. They knew no one could beat
them and, consequently, were disdainful of the opposition
which the NL presented. They had taken sixteen of nine-
teen games in the four Series from 1936 through 1939. The

55

56 PHIL RIZZUTO

Giants had managed to win twice in 1936 and once in '37
but it took the magnificent Carl Hubbell, one of the mod-
ern greats who is enshrined in the Hall of Fame, to pitch
two of the victories. The other was a ten-inning game on
October 5, 1936, in which Hal Schumacher triumphed by a
5-4 score over Pat Malone, the fat old reliefer.

The Yanks had swept through the Chicago Cubs in 1938
and the Cincinnati Reds the following year, neither NL
team being able to win once. Their defective start in 1940
eliminated the Bombers from the Series and the Tigers took
over the task of handling the job for the American League.
They were new boys at it and failed. Cincinnati, having
repeated as pennant winner, gained the World Champion-
ship, four games to three.

The Yankees had clinched the flag early in September of
'41 without much exertion after having put together a
seventeen-game lead by the middle of August. The Dodg-
ers, on the other hand, were embroiled in a wild race which
wasn't settled until the final week of the season.

That was the club led on the field by Leo Durocher and
off of it by Larry MacPhail a combination which pro-
vided hysteria, day after day. The National League compe-
tition had been a rat-race from the very beginning a
season-long crusade pitting the Dodgers against the world.
Durocher welded his Dodgers into a new edition of the
Cardinals' 1934 Gas House Gang, for whom he had played
short.

The Brooks talked out of the sides of their mouths,
curdled the air with blue words, forced umpires to battle
for their right to be on the ball field, indulged in fist fights
and bean-ball rowdyism with opponents, and generally cut
a swath of vulgarity through the league. They played the
game like a lot of toughs, accentuating Durocher's pet

THE WORLD SERIES 57

piece of cynicism, "Nice guys finish last." Every other ball
club in the league grew to hate them and wanted to beat
them. The St. Louis club was the contender and it had six
other teams rooting for it.

In a way, that was the toughest pennant race ever staged
in baseball history. There have been a few closer ones but
none in which one team engendered so much bitterness
throughout the league. Durocher was thrown out of count-
less games for blasting umpires and some of his more acid
remarks, both to the men in blue and to opposing players,
were recorded for the eyes of President Ford Frick. These
manifests later were turned over to Commissioner Landk
and, following his death in 1944, to Commissioner Chan-
dler. There is little doubt that Lippy Leo's full-season sus-
pension in 1947 was due, in a large measure, to the com-
plaints lodged by other clubs as far back as 1941.

Dodger fanaticism even reached a point where a pitcher
was accused of trying to bean an umpire. Big Hugh Casey,
star relief pitcher for the Bums, threw hard and high over
the head of his catcher one day in Pittsburgh with the ap-
parent intention of hitting George Magerkurth, tallest um-
pire in the league, with the ball. Casey had become enraged
with some of Maje's decisions.

The Brooks mathematically clinched the pennant in,
Boston a few days before the end of the season but they
actually won it on their last western trip in September a
frenzied journey in which they proved they had the cour-
age to back up their boasts and the talent for winning ball
games as well as inciting to riot. They left a residue of hate
all over the league as they marched arrogantly into the first
World Series at Ebbets Field in twenty-one years.

The Yankees, as they rolled along to their easy pennant,
heard and read about the Dodger incendiaries and were

58 PHIL RIZZUTO

slightly" amused. The perennial champs didn't play baseball
that way and didn't figure they would have to do so to win
the Series. Durocher notwithstanding, the Yanks were
mostly all nice guys and winners, too.

The pressure of playing in his first World Series was
enough to make Rizzuto edgy, and added to it was another
burden. All year long, as the Yanks and Dodgers headed
for their flags, the fans and newspapermen debated the
abilities of Phil and his counterpart on the Brooks short-
stop Pee Wee Reese. A rivalry, impossible on the field dur-
ing the regular season, was promoted in the papers and in
the minds and on the tongues of those who read the papers.

When both were in the American Association in 1939
(Reese was with Louisville), Rizzuto had enjoyed a statis-
tical edge over Pee Wee. Phil had batted .316 with sixty-
four RBFs and had posted a fielding average of .944. Reese,
a native of Louisville, had banged out a .279 average which
included fifty-seven runs batted in and had fielded .943.
There really was little to choose between them then for
both were ready for the majors. Reese moved up in 1940,
a year sooner than Rizzuto, only because Brooklyn needed
a shortstop that year and the Yanks did not.

The Reese-Rizzuto rivalry became a focal point of the
Series, not so much because of what they did but because
of what players of both teams tried to do to them. The
area around second base became a no-man's-land of flying
bodies, flailing legs, and probing spikes. Every game was a
close one and as the tension mounted, almost every play
became vital. There were countless close ones at the mid-
way, as hurtling runners tried to break up double-plays.

The Dodgers started it by trying to cut down both Riz-
zuto and Gordon as one or the other pivoted on a double-
play relay, and the Yankees, getting madder with each

THE WORLD SERIES 59

incident, retaliated against Reese and his second basemen,
Billy Herman and Pete Coscarart. Brooklyn had to replace
Herman, who pulled a muscle in the third game.

The rough stuff at second base consisted mainly of the
base-runner going out of his way to nail the pivot man.
Action pictures of the Series show Mickey Owen, the
Brooklyn catcher, going ten feet out of the line in order to
slide into Rizzuto as the latter was completing a double-
play toss to Sturm at first base. Reese, himself, banged in
hard as a retaliatory gesture for the wallopings he was
taking from such aggressive Yankees as Henrich, Keller,
and Gordon.

The umpires did not make any attempt to stop the may-
hem. The "take-out play" at second base was considered
to be a part of the game and, although it was flagrantly
abused in this Series, the umpires shrugged and let every-
thing go. For the record, they were Larry Goetz and Babe
Pinelli of the NL and Bill McGowan and Bill Grieve of
the AL, all of them competent veterans.

The slaughter at second base led to bean-ball squabbles.
The "duster" also is an accepted practice in big-league
baseball, it being an admitted fact that pitchers throw at
opposing hitters in order to "loosen 7 em up." Unfortu-
nately for the Dodger staff in general and right-hander
Whitlow Wyatt in particular, they had blazed their own
trails as dust-ball throwers during the regular season.
Wyatt was accused of throwing at the heads of Cub and
Red players and he had been challenged often during the
summer. Casey, too, was accused of trying to "stick one in
an ear," as Durocher expressed it. They were suspect be-
fore the Series began.

Wyatt, in the final game, became embroiled with Di-
Maggio. The Jolter is ordinarily the most mild-mannered

60 PHIL RIZZUTO

of men and he never has had a fist fight on a ball field. He
came closest to one with the big Brook right-hander and,
since the men were well-matched physically (each a 205-
pound, 6V giant), it might have been a corker. It never
did get to the punching stage, though they did square off
near the pitcher's mound.

Wyatt zoomed a couple of pitches close to Joe's noggin
in the sixth inning of the fifth and deciding contest. That
was the third at Ebbets Field. Joe took them and glared
but determined to knock the pitcher's head off with a line
drive. He deliberately slammed the next pitch right back
at Whit but his aim was a bit high. It cleared the pitcher's
head by a couple of feet and gradually gained height until
Pete Reiser, the center fielder, caught it on the fly.

That was the third out of the inning and DiMaggio, after
taking his turn at first base, ran to the mound to tell Wyatt
off. The pitcher, who was angrily leaving the pitcher's
box to go to the Dodger dugout along the first-base line,
whirled around and charged back to sass Joe. They stood
there barking for about ten seconds before Reese and the
Yankee coaches intervened.

The Series had begun at Yankee Stadium on October i,
with the Yanks winning the opener 3-2, as Red Ruffing
outpitched Curt Davis, veteran sidearmer who was a sur-
prise starting choice by Durocher. Joe McCarthy pitted
fiery Spud Chandler against Wyatt in the second game in
New York and the Brooks won that one by the same score.

The fanatics in Brooklyn had said, before it started, that
the Series would be won by the beloved Bums if they could
hold the Bombers even in the; first two games. Ebbets Field,
Hell's Half-Acre for visiting clubs, would consume the
proud Yankees in the next three.

The boast didn't quite materialize. The third game of

THE WORLD SERIES 61

the Series and the first in Flatbush provided a scorching
pitching duel between Fred Fitzsimmons, the Dodgers' old,
fat knuckleball-thrower and young Marius Russo, the
Yankee left-hander who was a Queens neighbor of Phil's
and had preceded him by a few years at Richmond Hill
High. The teams were tied i-i, when a crackling liner
from Russo's bat hit Fitz on the right knee in the seventh
inning. The ball flew one hundred feet into the air and
was caught on the fly by Reese at his shortstop position.
But Fitz was crippled and Casey had to come on to pitch
the eighth inning. He immediately gave up the winning
run.

Brooklyn fans blamed that defeat on bad luck and they
had a point. The Dodger players felt the same way about
it. "They aren't any better than we are, only luckier," said
Mickey Owen after the game. How much luckier, poor
Mick was to find out the next day.

The Bums needed the fourth game badly for they had
to tie up the Series. They couldn't afford to lose and be
down three games to one. Only once before in World
Series history had a team dropped that far behind and then
been good enough to win the championship. That was the
1925 Pittsburgh Pirates, who overcame the deficit by
sweeping the final three games of the set of seven. But they
were playing Washington, not the Yankees.

The Brooks battled manfully for it. They knocked out
Atley Donald, the Yankee starter, and had a 4-3 lead by
the time Manager McCarthy found employment for his
ace relief artist, Johnny Murphy. They held the edge right
up to the ninth inning with Casey, again relieving, on the
mound for them.

Casey retired the first two hitters, Sturm and Rolf e, as
the packed stands cheered the impending victory wildly.

62 PHIL RIZZUTO

Only one more to go, now, and the burly right-hander's
sharp deliveries were breaking beautifully, down and out-
side, into Owen's mitt. Henrich was the next batter and
there were two strikes on him when Hugh fired another
twisting delivery. The pitch fooled Henrich, who missed
his cut at the ball for the third strike.

A triumphal shout went up from the double-decked
stands and then the victory screams were suddenly stilled
aborning. Owen had muffed the ball and was chasing it to
the backstop as Henrich, alerted by the shouts of his team-
mates and coach Art Fletcher at third base, streaked to-
wards first base. Hundreds of the fans had poured from
the stands to embrace Casey and the other heroes and there
was a wild scene as special cops, assigned to keep the crowd
off the field, began pushing the spectators around. Du-
rocher, who had dashed onto the field screaming at Owen
to get the ball, was shoved by one of the bluecoats in the
excitement.

When almost everyone calmed down, the umpires or-
dered the game to resume, with DiMaggio at bat, Henrich
on first and the Yankees still in the ball game. One who
never did get over that mad moment was Casey. The blub-
bery pitcher, red-faced and fighting mad, had been de-
prived of a victory which was in his grasp. Now he had to
face DiMaggio, the toughest Yankee of them all. Hugh
should have pitched carefully but he was too enraged. He
fired the ball as hard as he could and DiMag calmly stroked
a single to center, Henrich taking third.

Here Durocher made the mistake of his managerial life.
Instead of removing Casey and giving the rest of the team,
including the shaking Owen, a chance to calm down, he
let the big pitcher keep on throwing fast balls at the rest
of the Yankee line-up. Charley Keller, up next, drove a

THE WORLD SERIES 63

high drive into the screen above the right-field wall for a
double, scoring Henrich and DiMaggio and putting the
Yanks ahead, 5-4.

The frantic Durocher now calmed down long enough
to order Dickey, a powerful left-handed batter, to be
passed so that Casey could pitch to Gordon, a free-swing-
ing right-handed slugger. But he didn't remove Casey, and
the Series was as good as over when Gordon doubled off
the left-field wall, scoring Keller and Dickey. Rizzuto drew
a walk after that and pitcher Murphy made the third out.

The Dodgers, completely deflated by the succession of
swipes on the part of destiny, couldn't score in their half
of the ninth and the Yanks laughed their way to the dress-
ing room with a 7-4 victory. Wyatt was outpitched by the
late Ernie Bonham the following day, 3-1, and crepe was
hung in Flatbush.

Rizzuto is sorry he won't be able to tell his little girls
that he had a vital part in the only World Series rally which
won a game after the third "out" in the ninth inning. He
cannot tell a lie.

"I was just as popeyed and excited as anyone I didn't
even see Owen miss the ball," he recalls. "I had my glove
and Keller's and DiMag's in my hand. I stood at the end
of the dugout, ready to rush down to the clubhouse under
the stands. I thought the game was over when the big shout
went up because I had seen Tommy miss his swing. I was
halfway down the dugout steps toward the alley leading
to the locker room when I heard the shouting from our
bench and turned around to find people running all over
the field and Henrich on first base."

Phil was glad when the Series was over for it had not
been a good one. He exulted in the Yankee victory and
looked forward to the winning share of over $5,000. But,

64 PHIL RIZZUTO

being a proud fellow, he was not too happy with what he
had done to bring the championship home.

Actually, it was only at bat that he failed two grubby
singles in eighteen tries, for a . 1 1 1 average, with no runs
scored and none batted in. Afield he was tremendous and
less jittery than he thought he would be. He handled thirty-
one chances, chalking up eighteen assists and twelve putouts
and making one error. Reese was hardly as good. Pee Wee
managed four one-baggers in twenty at bat for a .200 av-
erage, scored a run and batted in two. He was the fielding
"goat" of the classic excepting Owen, of course with
three errors in thirty chances.

All in all, it had been a wonderful year for the little fel-
low from Glendale the Yankees, the pennant, the World
Series. And then it was topped off, the very evening the
Series ended, when he met THE GIRL.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Scooter Meets a Lady

THERE HAD BEEN many pretty girls at Rich-
mond Hill High and some cute little numbers in the neigh-
borhood, too, St. Pancras Roman Catholic Church on
Myrtle Avenue, just around the corner from the Rizzuto
residence, numbered some darling teen-agers among its
parishioners. But Phil wasn't interested* A guy growing up
hoping to be a ball player doesn't think of much else but
baseball. Some of the other fellows on the block would
meet the girls their age after eleven o'clock Mass and walk
down for a soda or to pick up the Sunday papers, Phil
would be out on a ball field somewhere by that time of the
morning, after having gone to church at seven or eight
o'clock.

"I guess there wasn't anything in his life but baseball as
long as I can remember," Momma Rizzuto recalls. "There
always were lots of girls around friends of our own
daughters and others but Phil never gave any of them a
second look. He was very shy, of course. He wasn't inter-
ested in parties or dates while he was in high school and
never thought about anything except the next ball game.
We had a hard time getting him to dress up in his Sunday

65

66 PHIL RIZZUTO

su it even at Easter. I can't remember him ever having a
date before he left home to go to Bassett."

Mrs. Rizzuto wasn't worried about Phil's indifference
to the young ladies. She realized that he would find out,
after a while, that true love is more important even than
baseball.

Phil was only a bit more than eighteen when he took the
train for Bassett in the spring of 1937. Even if he had be-
come girl-conscious at that point in his life, he would have
abandoned the idea because of his larger purpose making
good as a ball player.

It wasn't until he went on to Kansas City in 1939 that
Phil began to "date." There he had a "steady" girl for a
while, brown-haired Betty Dresser. They shared a coke
and an occasional auto ride and Betty went to the games
at Blues Stadium. There was never any talk of marriage
he was only nineteen and she was two years younger. They
merely were teen-age sweethearts victims of puppy love
and nothing more serious.

Betty's family was crazy about Phil almost everyone
who comes to know the little fellow warms up to him.
Her folks hoped that, in time, something might come of
the association. But tragedy struck their pretty daughter.
She underwent what seemed to be a simple tonsillectomy
in 1940 and died from a throat infection.

Mrs. Dresser, heartbroken, buried her and erected a
tombstone which she knew would have pleased her little
girl. On it was carved a facsimile of a ball player which
looks a great deal like Phil, himself. Rizzuto visited the
grave in Kansas City when the Yanks played an exhibition
therein 1941.

There wasn't another girl in the Scooter's life until after

SCOOTER MEETS A LADY 67

the 1941 World Series and then only because of the fact
that Joe DiMaggio couldn't keep an appointment.

The great center-fielder had agreed to appear at a dinner
in Newark and make a speech the night of October 6. It
was the date of the Fireman's Annual Smoker in the Essex
House Hotel in Newark. The Yankee Clipper had been
obtained for the occasion by Jim Ceres, a Newark resident
and a close friend of his. Ceres had been asked to produce
Joe for the occasion by Chief Emil Esselborn, of the New-
ark Fire Department, who was chairman of the affair.

Coincidental^, that also was the day that the Yankees
beat the Dodgers for the fourth time in five games to win
the world championship. DiMag had to renege on the en-
gagement because his presence was demanded in San Fran-
cisco immediately. He had to check on the operations of
his restaurant on Fisherman's Wharf. Joe booked passage
on an early evening plane and, after the celebration in the
clubhouse at Ebbets Field was over, asked Phil to drive him
to LaGuardia Airport in Queens.

"While we were on the way out there," Phil says, "Joe
spoke of the dinner and how sorry he was to disappoint
those people. He asked me to telephone Mr. Esselborn and
express his regrets. I did so and Esselborn asked me if I
would like to come in place of DiMag."

Phil was reluctant to do so. He was certain that he would
be a poor substitute for the outstanding player in baseball.
"I imagined how disappointed the men at the affair would
be when a little squirt like me showed up instead of Di-
Maggio/' he recalls. "But I didn't have anything to do and
Esselborn was sort of in a hole so I went."

The firemen and their friends were happy to have die
Scooter, if they couldn't listen to and look at the Clipper.

68 PHIL RIZZUTO

Phil told a few stories in his ingratiating way, signed auto-
graphs, and just about saved the evening.

Chief Esselborn, grateful for the pinch-hitting job,
thanked Phil after the affair was over and suggested that
the little man drive over to his house for a cup of coffee. It
would have been easy enough to say no and go on back to
New York where the rest of the Yanks were enjoying their
victory party at the Hotel Commodore or to Toots Shors',
the eating place of the sports world in Manhattan. Probably
more fun, too.

But Phil, ever gracious, accepted the invitation. And that
was a decision which was to become the most important of
his life. A step inside the front door of the Esselborn resi-
dence, the Scooter found his girl.

"I saw The Kid," Phil still recounts with a glow, "and I
guess my eyes must have popped. I knew this was it. I went
there for a cup of coffee and I was in love before I even
got into the dining room. That was all. I didn't go home
for a month!"

"The Kid," as he calls her, was ravishing, blonde Cora
Esselborn, younger of the fireman's two daughters- The
Dutch-Irish beauty, then nineteen, was a knockout. Now,
the mother of three pretty little girls, she still retains her
trim figure and probably is the most beautiful of the ball
players' wives.

Phil was bowled over and showed it. Cora, with the
reserve of a correctly-reared young lady, didn't reciprocate
with a spontaneous demonstration. She had heard of Phil
Rizzuto, of course. Jim Ceres, an avid Yankee fan who
accompanies the team to spring training each year, was dat-
ing her sister Helen. Jkn and Chief Esselborn talked about
tiie Yankees continually. Pop listened to the games when-
ever he could, too. Cora, however, was not really a fan.

SCOOTER MEETS A LADY 69

She seldom goes to Yankee Stadium even now. She never
saw a regular-season game in 1950 but did get away from
the children for both the Series games in New York as the
Yanks walloped the Phils.

She took Phil in stride, as she had numerous other boy
friends. Pop Esselborn didn't have to bring home a man for
Cora and, of course, that wasn't his intention in asking Phil
over.

Rizzuto began a whirlwind courtship that night it was
literally true that he didn't go home for a month.

"I was walking on air when I left her at midnight," he
says. "I wanted to be with her all the time. I drove over to
the Douglas Hotel in Newark and took a room. For thirty
days straight we had dates. And after I took her home each
night, I rushed back to the hotel and called her up. Then
we'd talk for three hours more! "

Early in November Phil asked her to marry him and
Cora refused. It wasn't that she didn't love him she knew
darned well that she did. But the whole thing had happened
rather suddenly and she wisely decided to delay her deci-
sion.

"I just wanted time to think about it," Cora says now.
"Every girl does, I guess. I was still pretty young and there
didn't seem to be any need of hurrying. I enjoyed living at
home, helping my mother. I wasn't working at a job and
it's a good thing I didn't have one. I never would have been
able to keep it because I would have fallen asleep every day
after those nightly phone calls."

Cora's refusal stunned Phil. He knew he had found the
right girl and was pretty sure that he was Mr. Right for
her, too. Yet despite being in her company for twelve to
fourteen hours every day, he hadn't been able to convince
her. So, in something of the blue funk which envelops

70 PHIL RIZZUTO

spurned lovers, he went home to Glendale, packed a bag,
and drove to Norfolk where he had friends who could
lend broad shoulders on which to cry. He didn't dare stay
home and worry his parents with his overdose of the
"blues."

Pearl Harbor didn't do much for the rest of the world
but the Jap attack did serve to bring Phil and Cora together
once more. Phil was at Norfolk, mooning around like a lost
soul, when the news was flashed that fateful Sunday, De-
cember 7.

Lefty Gomez, ever the gag-man, phoned Mrs. Rizzuto
and kiddingly told her that the Japs were going to land in
New York any day. The kindly old lady knew of Gomez's
reputation as a prankster but she was genuinely worried
that some such calamity might befall this country. She tele-
phoned Phil and asked him to come home and he did so.
Upon arrival in New York, he called Cora and she was
happy to resume their friendship.

Phil wanted to get married right away but there were
complications. Taking on a wife to support at that particu-
lar time probably would have focused the Glendale draft
board's attention on him. The board had continued to defer
him, granting the 3 -A classification because he was the sole
support of his parents. He realized that he eventually would
be called to service but hoped that he could get in one more
year of baseball in order to leave his parents enough money
to support them during what would probably be his long
absence in uniform.

Phil and Cora saw each other off and on until Phil went
to spring training late in February and managed to have a
date once or twice a week during the summer. "I didn't see
her nearly as much as I wanted to," he recalls. "It just
wasn't possible. The team was on the road half the time

SCOOTER MEETS A LADY 71

and when we were home I had to be home early and stay
in shape."

They did agree to be married but no date was set. Phil
entered the Navy the day after the Cardinals licked the
Yanks in the 1942 World Series, being assigned to boot
training at Norfolk. He had enlisted in August

"It got prettly lonely during those couple of months in
boot camp," Phil says. "I called up Cora and said it would
be a wonderful idea if we could be married in January."

By this time the young lady, who has a mighty good
mind of her own, had decided that she wanted to be a June
bride. So the wedding was set for that month.

Could Cora have foreseen the bizarre series of circum-
stances which were precipitated by her wedding date, she
probably would have eloped with Phil. The Rizzuto-Essel-
born nuptials, on June 23, were surrounded by zany events
which might have been born in the fertile minds of the
Marx Brothers.

To start with, there nearly was no wedding that day and
only the threat of the first sit-down strike in baseball his-
tory made it possible.

Phil's duties, that summer, consisted largely of playing
ball with the Norfolk Naval Training Station team. They
played five or six games a week, including an occasional
double-header. Gary Bodie, the coach, was a Chief Boat-
swain in the regular Navy a hard-bitten salt who never
let personal preferences (his or anyone else's) interfere
with the operations of the Navy.

Phil set the wedding date with Bodie's permission and
on the promise that he would be given the twenty-third
off. Bodie intended to keep Ms promise when he made it,
a few weeks earlier. But on the twenty-second, NTS
played a lack-luster game and lost to the Norfolk Naval

72 PHIL R1ZZUTO

Air Station nine. Bodie, disgusted, immediately scheduled
a double-header with the Air Station team for the next day.

Rizzuto reminded Bodie that the schedule had been left
open on the twenty-third because it was his wedding day
and that all the ball players were going to the wedding.
Bodie, red-necked at what he had considered loafing in the
game, refused to listen.

"There's a double-header tomorrow," he thundered,
"and every one of you guys better be here to play it. That's
final."

Poor Phil was in a daze. Cora and the relatives of both
their families were en route from New York and New
Jersey for the ceremony. The church had been hired and
the arrangements had been made with the priest. Phil had
hired a parlor at the Monticello Hotel in Norfolk for the
reception and had reserved a honeymoon suite at a Virginia
Beach hotel.

Many a gag had been pulled on Phil, and this one, if it
had been intended as a joke, might have been worth a real
belly laugh. But Bodie wasn't kidding. Phil pleaded but got
nowhere. The other players, most of them ex-big leaguers,
sympathized but could offer no advice except to suggest
that he postpone the wedding for a few days.

The raw deal was too much for Phil's best friend on the
team, Dominick DiMaggio, to take, however. Joe's younger
brother, outfielder for the Boston Red Sox, quickly made
a bold move.

He walked up to Bodie and announced, "Coach, if Riz-
zuto doesn't get tomorrow off for his wedding, there won't
be any game. I won't play and neither will anyone else.
We strike if you try to make him show up here tomorrow."

Bodie, shocked at such a departure from old-line Navy

SCOOTER MEETS A LADY 73

tradition, exploded. He threatened to have Dom court-
martialed and, for a trump card, warned the player that he
would be transferred to sea duty.

"Do anything you like," DiMaggio barked into the
chief's purpling face. "There's nothing in the regulations
which says that we have to play baseball. Send me to sea if
you want to. I was happy back in San Francisco with the
small-boat detail I had. That was sea duty, of a sort. The
Navy brought me across the country to play baseball I
didn't ask for it! Same goes for the rest of us. Show us one
rule which says we have to take orders to play baseball!"

Bodie had to back down. His charges against the players,
if he had dared to make them, would not have held water.
He agreed to let Phil's wedding go on as planned and re-
scheduled the twin bill for the twenty-fourth.

Phil and Cora were married in a small Catholic church
just off the training base in the late afternoon and then the
wedding party proceeded to the Monticello Hotel for the
reception. The ball players and other of Phil's friends
among the enlisted men attended.

Before the party was over and before the bride and
groom were permitted to depart, three of the players and
another sailor quietly sneaked off. Dom DiMaggio had
decided to fix up his best friend right good and he took
along Don Padgett, ex-Dodger catcher-outfielder, Benny
McCoy, who had played second base for the Philadelphia
Athletics, and Morris Siegal, a sports writer who was serv-
ing his country as publicity man for the team.

They drove over to the Cavalier Hotel and Dom went
into the lobby alone. He approached the desk clerk and,
taking the precaution to remove his glasses, said, "Fm Phil
Rkzuto. Is the suite that I reserved all ready?"

74 PHIL RIZZUTO

The clerk answered, "Yes, Mr. Rizzuto. But where is
your bride? Didn't you get married today as I read in the
paper?"

"Yes," Dom answered. "She'll be along in a few minutes.
You know how Italian people are. She's saying good-bye
to her folks and there's a lot of crying and I thought it best
to come in here and see if everything is all right with the
accommodations."

Fortunately for Dom, the ruse worked. He was in a sailor
suit and so the desk clerk, not being a ball fan, didn't know
him from Phil. He gave Dom the key and directed him to-
ward the elevator. Dom thanked him and explained that
he would be down shortly to escort his bride through the
lobby and into the hotel.

The other three, meanwhile, strolled into the lobby and
joined DiMag in the elevator. They ascended to the floor
and entered the Rizzutos' room.

Dom had explained the business to Siegal, Padgett, and
McCoy, and so they were ready. They drew up a table,
set four chairs around it, and McCoy took out a deck of
cards. Then they started a hearts game, expecting Phil and
Cora to walk in on them at any moment. They had quite
a wait.

The newlyweds fled the reception with the rice and
"good lucks" ringing in their ears, climbed into Phil's
Model-A Ford and streaked off for Virginia Beach. It was
early evening and, as they rode along, Phil was congratulat-
ing himself on the smoothness of the aff air once Bodie had
let it even begin.

Suddenly sirens began to wail over the countryside and
Phil looked backwards (no rear vision mirror) to see if a
motorcycle cop was after him. He saw none and was about

SCOOTER MEETS A LADY 75

to step on the gas when a figure loomed on the road in front
of the car, commanding him to stop.

Phil obeyed and the man, wearing the insignia of a civil-
ian air-raid warden, opened the car and got into it.

"This is an air-raid drill, ordered by the Army," he stated
amiably. "All traffic must stop until we hear the 'all clear/
Hope you don't mind if I sit here with you."

Cora, as nervous as any bride and overwrought by the
long day, broke into tears as the sirens continued to howl.
Phil half -thought it was a gag though the warden *was a
complete stranger. But he couldn't imagine any of the
fellows arranging a real air-raid drill with sirens to go
with it.

At length the drill ended and Cora pushed back her tears
as they neared Virginia Beach.

Phil registered and was given a key by a different clerk
than the man who had been taken in by Dom.

He and Cora pushed open the door and stepped in.

Padgett, Siegal, DiMaggio, and McCoy looked down in-
tently at their cards, paying no attention to the entrance
of the bride and groom. They played out the hand and, as
the tally was being recorded, each looked up in turn, mur-
mured a polite, "Good evening," and then resumed play.

Phil, embarrassed, pleaded with them to leave but they
merely grinned and smirked.

The poor bridegroom finally plopped down on a sofa
and Cora sat next to him. The couple held hands and looked
at each other, wondering if they'd ever be alone. The card
players continued to play hearts intently, as though oblivi-
ous of the presence of anyone else in the room.

Rizzuto decided to order some coffee and McCoy sug-
gested that he order some for them, too. The little guy,

76 PHIL RIZZUTO

figuring an appeasement policy might soften up the practi-
cal jokers, agreed. The four sipped the Java when it came
and continued their efforts to duck the Queen of Spades^
which is the big penalty-bearing card in the game.

After about an hour the gag wore thin. The four sailors
solemnly arose, thanked Phil and Cora for the use of the
hall, and said goodnight.

It was the longest card game Rizzuto ever sat through!

CHAPTER EIGHT

Trousers

THE IMPACT of Pearl Harbor was not too great
on major-league baseball the game and the business went
on. But It was heavy on the ball players. By the very nature
of their profession, they were almost all healthy young
men and figured to go once war took a stranglehold on