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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
America.
There were a sprinkling of 4-F's and there -were married
men with families who were allowed to stay, of course. But
of the 720 players on the active rosters of the sixteen big-
league clubs as of December 7, 1941, more than 50 per cent
went into the services.
Phil's 3-A rating had been obtained in peacetime because
he was the main support of his family. Such deferments
were customary when the peacetime draft was being ad-
ministered by local boards. But it didn't figure to stand up
for long after the declaration of war.
Rizzuto realized full well that his number would come
up sometime during the spring or summer of '42 he was
single and healthy and a number-one commodity in the
military scheme. It was obvious that he would wind up in
the Army before the year was out and very probably be-
fore the baseball season was over.
77
78 PHIL RIZZUTO
Phil, in common with a few million other young men,
didn't want to go into the Army as a draftee. He preferred
the Navy but, at that time, the naval service was entirely
on an enlistment basis. The admirals had demanded that
the Navy continue as a volunteer branch of the armed
forces as long as was possible. (Eventually, early in 1943,
the draft was extended to cover recruiting for all services
except the Army and Navy Air Corps. Marines, sailors and
soldiers all matriculated through processing by local draft
boards. But, at the time, enlistment was possible.)
Accordingly, Phil looked around. He has always been
subject to air sickness and so the possibility of a flying ca-
reer was quickly disregarded. The Navy was his choice
and he decided to sign up. The local board in Glendale
was satisfied as long as Phil was acceptable to the naval
authorities.
The little shortstop was more than acceptable the
Navy welcomed him. The top brass in Washington was
divided on the merits of athletics in wartime, with the
Army curtailing organized sport and the Navy fostering
it in its pre-flight schools, college programs (V-i2), and
at domestic air bases and stations. For a ball player, the
Navy was a good deal.
Some players already were in middie suits and liked the
life. The Bureau of Personnel in Washington went along
with the theory that a strong athletic team was a morale
booster for the men at a base or airfield. Baseball players,
gridders, and basketball players of renown were gathered
together to make the teams as strong as possible. The Navy
recruited athletes avidly and unabashedly the thought be-
ing that a hard-hitting outfielder might mean as much as a
hard-hitting bosun's mate.
Freddy Hutchinson, pitcher for the Detroit Tigers, Bob
BELL BOTTOM TROUSERS 79
Feller, the outstanding hurler in the majors, and others
were in early and were stationed at Norfolk Training Sta-
tion in 1942. Hutch advised Rizzuto that he would be able
to be stationed there if he applied in time.
Accordingly, the Scooter made up his mind. He in-
formed the Yankees, Cora, and his parents that he was go-
ing to join the Navy and then, early in August, requested
a couple of days* leave from the Yanks so that he could go
to Norfolk and enlist. He explained that the chances were
good that he could finish the season with the club and even
play in the World Series which the Yanks were certain to
make if he were sworn in right away.
McCarthy, anxious to have Phil as long as possible and
desirous of having the likable youngster obtain as good a
deal in the service as he could, assented. Rizzuto hopped a
train to Norfolk, passed his physical, and was sworn in. He
was given permission to delay reporting for active duty
until October yth. A discerning recruiting officer set that
date on the assumption that the Yankees would wallop the
National League winner in four or five games and complete
the Series before the reporting date.
He wasn't entirely correct, however. Phil did manage
to play the entire Series, but it was as a member of the los-
ing team. The Yankees, who had not lost a World Series
since 1926, were whipped, four games to one, by the St.
Louis Cardinals in one of the biggest upsets of all time in
the fall classic. Many reasons were advanced for the Yan-
kee collapse, the most prominent being that many of the
players, like Rizzuto, were bound for service and so had
more on their minds than mere baseball. That might have
been true & half-dozen of the more prominent Yanks did
get their "greetings" before the next spring training but
it wasn't so in Rizzuto's case. The toy shortstop was the
80 PHIL RIZZUTO
leading New York hitter of the Series with a .381 average
and, in the fifth and final game, tied a twenty-five-year-old
fielding record for shortstops by making seven put-outs.
The Series, aside from the fact that it was a losing one
for his team, capped a fine season for Phil. He had been
brilliant afield and a steady, damaging hitter from start to
finish. The Yanks had won the flag without much diffi-
culty, leading from the opening week, and showing 103
victories against but 5 1 defeats in the final standings.
Phil had played in 144 games, some of them while suffer-
ing from a brain concussion during mid-season, drove in
68 runs and batted .284. He led all the shortstops in the
league in put-outs (324) and tied a major-league record
for participation in double-plays by a shortstop in one
game. On August 14, against the Philadelphia Athletics,
the Yankees made seven twin killings in nine innings for a
mark which still stands. Phil started or was the middleman
in five of them, though woozy from the brain concussion.
Rizzuto never left the line-up during the three weeks
when he had the concussion for the simple reason that he
didn't know he had one. On July 26, Bill Hitchcock of the
Detroit Tigers, a former teammate of PhiPs at Kansas City,
accidentally kicked him in the head as Phil slid into second
base in Detroit. Two days later, the littlest Yank landed
on his skull after .colliding with a Chicago White Sox
pitcher who covered first base as Phil tried to beat out a
bunt.
He suffered from headaches and blurred vision in his
left eye after the one-two whacks, plus inability to sleep
at night and loss of appetite. Since Phil normally can go
to his left or right at the dinner table as facilely as he can
on the diamond, the last symptom bothered him most. It
prompted him to reveal his troubles to Dr. Robert Emmett
BELL BOTTOM TROUSERS 81
Walsh, then the team physician, X rays showed BO break
but the doctor confirmed that the shortstop had been play-
ing every day for three weeks with a concussion.
His sophomore year had been as good as his first one and
Rizzuto was an established star. Many a first-year phe-
nomenon washes out in his second season in the big leagues
and quickly drops back to the minors or retires. Only a
sound ball player continues along an even path and 1942
was proof that the Scooter had the stuff to be a big leaguer
for years to come.
Those years, of course, would wait on the world strag-
gle for freedom from totalitarian aggression. When Phil
put his glove and bat away after the Series, he was through
being a well-paid ball player for a long time. He had re-
ceived $6,000 his first year as a Yankee after rebelling at
taking five grand as a rookie and had received $7,500 for
his second season. Along with ten million other Americans,
he gave up his income and way of life for the greater neces-
sity of winning the war.
Not that it was a tough war for Rizzuto. Like many
"name" ball players, he was accorded a comfortable billet
and his duties were confined almost entirely to athletics.
If that sounds like favoritism, please remember that it was
the Navy, with Commanders Gene Tunney and Tom
Hamilton planning the muscle-building programs, which
wanted things that way. In the Navy, enlisted men only
take orders. They don't give them.
Phil's first order was to report at Norfolk on the seventh
of October and he did so. "I would have missed the sixth
and seventh games of the Series, if it had gone further," he
says. "The only ones who knew that were Cora, McCarthy,
and myself. We decided to keep it a secret, figuring that
the Cardinals were tough enough without giving them the
82 PHIL RIZZUTO
advantage of knowing that I wouldn't be around for the
final two games."
He and Cora went to a small dinner party at Joe Di-
Maggio's penthouse apartment the evening after losing the
final game to St. Louis and Phil hopped a sleeper for Nor-
folk that night.
The Scooter took his eight weeks of boot training like
any other recruit, learning to be a sailor. He drew his gear
from the "small stores' 7 (quartermaster) and climbed into
the strange-feeling bell-bottom trousers, middie blouse and
white hat of an apprentice seaman. He would have been
happy to forget all about baseball but the other recruits
wouldn't let him. When the day's duties were done and the
gang gathered in the barracks "rec" room, Phil was sur-
rounded by eager youngsters wanting the "inside" on the
Yankees, baseball, and sports. Phil, a gabby extrovert who
enjoys a "bull session," kept them regaled with his stories.
After "boots," he was assigned as an athletic specialist
right there at Norfolk and, for the rest of the winter, per-
formed menial duties connected with the NTS athletic
programs. Both the training station and the Norfolk Air
Station which adjoins it had big-name boxers and basket-
ball players, as well as ball stars, among the personnel.
With the arrival of spring in 1943 and the baseball sea-
son, Phil and the rest of the ball players became important
people. There was great rivalry between the Training Sta-
tion and the Air Station in athletics and each facility had
the best teams that the recruiting officers could corral. The
ball games were watched by thousands of gobs and officers
and there was a good deal of friendly betting between the
enlisted men from the stations, too.
Many of the spectators were already veterans of the
fierce fighting in the Pacific Guadalcanal, the Philippines,
BELL BOTTOM TROUSERS 8?
New Guinea, Midway, and Pearl Harbor. Most of the
others were headed out, after their brief stateside training,
to the invasion of Europe or to the long and bloody South
Pacific campaigns which led to the final defeat of the Japs.
For them, these games were a treat, real entertainment
which broke the monotony of duty and training. The Navy
contended that the ball players were as valuable in raising
the morale levels as the movies, USO shows, and in-person
performances by stage and screen celebrities.
NTS played other teams than the Air Station. The Navy
had enough major-league and high-minor-league talent to
distribute it throughout the country. Stan Musial of the
Cardinals, Dick Sisler, then a Card and later with the Phils,
were the stars of the Bainbridge, Maryland, Naval Station.
Great Lakes was loaded with outstanding athletic personnel
it was their football team which handed Notre Dame
its only defeat in 1943. The pre-flight schools at the Uni-
versities of North Carolina, Georgia, and Iowa all were
staffed with outstanding athletes.
The NC Pre-FHght Baseball team came up to Norfolk
for games and on it were men like Buddy Hassett, first
baseman for the Yanks in 1942, and Ted Williams, the
great slugger of the Red Sox. Williams was a marine flight
instructor assigned to training navy air cadets in the V-j
program at Chapel Hill.
Major-league teams, during spring training and in the
regular-season interludes, also dropped by for games, usu-
ally to take a licking from NTS, which was stronger in
personnel than some of the wartime squads left in the big
leagues. The sailors went up to Washington that summer
and beat the Senators in a game which sold $3,000,000 in
war bond admissions.
Among the good ball players at Norfolk that spring were
84 PHIL RIZZUTO
Don Padgett, Brooklyn outfielder; Benny McCoy, Athlet-
ics' second baseman and first of the long, lamented line of
bonus players who received big dough for signing con-
tracts (he got $65,000 from Connie Mack as a free agent
just before the war); Charley Wagner, Red Sox pitcher;
Dom DiMaggio, star outfielder of the Boston Americans
and younger brother of Joe; Dodger pitcher Hugh Casey;
Sam Chapman, Athletics' slugging outfielder; Eddie Robin-
son, first baseman who saw post-war service with Cleve-
land, Washington, and Chicago of the American League;
Pee Wee Reese, shortstop and captain of the Dodgers;
Vinnie Smith, Pittsburgh catcher, and Freddy Hutchinson.
It was, as Hutch had told Phil previously, good duty.
"We had very little else to do besides play baseball," Phil
recalls. "We'd report for muster in the morning, then go
out and practice. If it was too hot to practice or we were
too lazy, we'd go under the stands and drink beer or play
cards. In the afternoon, most days, we'd play a ball game."
As you might expect, the little guy was the butt of most
of the practical jokes thought up by the agile minds of the
others, just for laughs and the idea of keeping themselves
occupied. Phil, who lived off the base with Cora in an apart-
ment, had a Model-A Ford of rare vintage, circa 1929. He
and Cora would tool around Norfolk with it when he was
off duty and he used it for transportation to and from the
base. It wasn't much of a car he had won it in a card game
from a sailor who was about to ship out and didn't care if
he lost it but it was of as much value for transportation
as a shiny new Cadillac would have been. Anyone who had
to contend with the busses and street cars of wartime Nor-
folk, the most overcrowded city in the United States, can
appreciate the value of any kind of locomotion.
Hutchinson, a broad-shouldered mountain of muscle,
BELL BOTTOM TROUSERS 85
and Vinnie Smith, of equally strong physique, used to de-
light in playing tricks with the car. Some days they'd sneak
out to where it was parked near the ball field and turn it
upside down, forcing Phil to go and get help to right it
before he could get home to his new wife.
Every now and then one of the pair would swipe the
keys from Phil's sailor pants in the locker room while the
shortstop was out on the field, practicing or playing in a
game. They'd drive the car right into the dugout, scattering
the rest of the team, or else spin right out on the diamond
with it and delight all onlookers by chasing Phil all around
the field in a wild attempt to run over him.
"Lots of times I had to climb the backstop screen or dive
off into a hole under the bleachers to get away from those
maniacs! " Rizzuto remembers.
One day the Washington Senators came to the base for
an exhibition game. Bob Johnson, who was part Indian and
one of the strongest men in the majors, was told of the car
by Hutch. The Nat outfielder, who was not in service be-
cause of a large family, shoved the little Ford out on the
diamond and, before Phil's horrified eyes, tore the roof off
the car with his bare hands. Everyone else on the squad
was in on the gag and enjoyed it even Phil, though it cost
him ten bucks to get the top put back on properly.
The players indulged themselves in other gags at Phil's
expense, some of them routine, such as nailing his street
shoes to the floor and putting him into the shower with all
his clothes on, and some bizarre stunts, one of die latter
leaving the little guy in a most embarrassing condition.
The NG Pre-Flighters came up to Norfolk to play a
game one afternoon during die summer but a sudden storm
washed it out before the players could take infield practice.
The teams, most of them big leaguers, sat around the locker
86 PHIL RIZZUTO
room recalling the "old days" and incidents during the past
few American League races. Suddenly, with a pre-arranged
signal Williams, Hutchinson, McCoy and a couple of others
grabbed Phil and stripped him to his birthday suit.
While three or four held him down and kept his strug-
gling to a minimum, Williams took a bottle of indelible red
mercury solution which was used to paint parts of the body
before adhesive tape wrappings were applied. The chemi-
cal, which looked like mercurochrome, protected the skin
from peeling off when the strapping was removed. Ted
then painted many kinds of messages and remarks on Phil's
hide some of them slightly obscene and the others held
him down until the red dye dried thoroughly. It was impos-
sible to get it off with any available solution and it just had
to wear off, a process which took a few days.
So Phil had to go home to Cora that night with his body
decorated with the bright red paint and such sayings as "I
Love You, Cora" on his chest and "Fin a Naval Hero"
written on his bellybutton. Some of the other remarks were
unprintable but Cora took it all in stride. She had heard of
the gags that had been pulled on Phil at Kansas City and
with the Yanks and understood that they stemmed from
affection for the guy, not derision.
It wasn't much of a way to fight a war, of course, and
the fun had to end. The fame of the Navy's athletic teams
became nation wide that summer and, along with the ac-
claim, there were storms of protest. Most of these poured
onto the desks of congressmen and were funnelled through
to BUPERS the Navy's code name for the Bureau of Per-
sonnel. They took the form of wires and letters from
parents who decried the safe harbor of star athletes in this
country while their own sons were overseas in the fighting.
The brass in Washington was too busy fighting two wars
BELL BOTTOM TROUSERS 87
to engage in a verbal one with the folks at home. They
might have pointed out their reasons for ever having per-
mitted the situation in the first place. Instead, they dis-
patched blanket orders which busted up the fine teams
which had been recruited by the various naval establish-
ments. Almost all the Norfolk athletes were sent overseas,
Rizzuto being ordered to Gammadodo, New Guinea, in
company with Don Padgett. They shipped out a few days
after New Year's Day of 1944.
While at the receiving station at Gammadodo he was
awaiting shipment to some outfit which had a billet for an
athletic specialist second class Phil came down with
malaria.
"We had been issued atabrine and told to take it," he
says, "but I was too smart. I listened to some wise guys in
the barracks. They said it would turn my skin yellow. I
refused to take it and the bug got me. It was nothing seri-
ous. Just about everybody in the South Pacific got it at one
time or another and I guess it was as common as a cold in
the nose during the winter in the United States. Anyway,
they sent me to a hospital in Brisbane, Australia, for treat-
ment."
There Phil took all the medicine prescribed, and the
only wise guys he listened to were doctors. They put him
on a diet of milk, eggs, and steak and he gradually recov-
ered his strength. He arrived "Down Under" in February,
which was the end of fall there. During his hospitalization,
Phil was befriended by Lieutenant Commander Jerry
Seidel, a former Columbia University football player who
was serving as assistant to\ Commander George Halas. The
famed football coach and \>wner of the Chicago Bears was
boss of the Navy's athletid program in that area and Phil
was assigned to his staff % Seidel. The ex-Yankee led
88 PHIL RIZZUTO
classes of convalescing patients In setting-up exercises and
helped organize participant sports and games for those
whose condition permitted them to play.
While Phil was in Australia, Cora gave birth to the first
of their three daughters. Patricia Ann was born in Presby-
terian Hospital, Newark, on March 8, 1944. Like many
other servicemen, Phil had to wait until the end of the war
to see his first-born in person, and by that time she was
twenty-one months old. Cora sent along pictures of the
baby as she progressed and described the thrills which Phil
was deprived of Patty's first steps and first words.
It was pleasant enough duty and PM, as usual, was satis-
fied. But, In June, there came new orders.
The idea of collecting a group of major league ball
players together in the service could be criticized if those
players were in the States but there was little that anyone
could complain about if they were assigned overseas for
the same purpose of building morale. So, perhaps in some
officers' club, an idea was born. Why not a service world
series between the best Army and Navy players in the
Pacific, some unidentified admiral reasoned. He contacted
his opposite number in the Army and the general thought
it was a fine idea.
So the services arranged a special Army-Navy series at
Honolulu Stadium and quickly issued the orders which
would bring the cream of the talent together in beautiful
Hawaii, The Army already had assembled a pretty good
outfit, the seventh Air Force team, in the islands. On it
were Phil's former Yank teammates, Priddy, Gordon and
Joe DiMaggio. The War Department, perhaps wiser than
die Navy, had shipped its baseball talent out of the country
early.
Dona DiMaggio, who had become a Chief Specialist in
'*, 1
Top: TINY TODDLER One of the earliest pictures of Phil, taken
when he was about two. LEARNING EARLY Rizzuto hadn't
got to school when baseball captured his fancy a. four-year-old
slugger. Bottom: THE INEVITABLE There hasn't yet been a
five-year-old in Greater New York who hasn't been photographed
on a pony. And it always looks like the same pony. FIRST UNI-
FORM When Phil was eleven, he already had a baseball suit, com-
plete to spikes.
Top: BASEBALL FIRST No matter what the costume, Rizzuto
felt he needed a glove and ball. A "PRO" AT LAST Rizzuto in
his first professional uniform, with Bassett, Virginia, in the Bi-State
League, in 1931. bottom: RIZZUTOS AT HOME Left to right:
Dad, Rose, Mom, Mary,Phil, and Alfred.
Wide World
Top: ON THE WAY UPRizzuto, left, with Jerry Priddy when
the two were Yankee farmhands with Kansas City in -194-0. Bottom:
NO BLUES WITH THE BLUES The Scooter grins on the KC'
bench. On Phil's immediate left are Ivy Paul Andrews and the late
Ernie Bonham. , ,
EARLY TROPHY Phil with trophy presented by Kansas City
radio stations for his work with the Blues.
Wide World
Top: SWEARING IN Rizzuto enlisted in the Navy in September
of 1942. Being sworn in by Lt. Commander John Quincy Adams.
Bottom: UNIFORM SWITCHES Phil, in baseball uniform of
Norfolk Naval Training Station, meets Jerry Priddy, former Yankee
teammate , then with Washington, in April, 1943.
Wide World
WEDDING MARCH Phil and his bride, the former Miss Cora
Esselborn, leave St. Mary's Catholic Church in Norfolk after their
wedding, June 24, 1943.
Top: A NEW BALL CLUB Phil and some of the men 'who played
with him on the camp team in New Guinea. Phil is third from left;
on his right is Frankie Darro, movie actor. Bottom: A LONG WAY
FROM THE BRONX New Guinea wasn't much to look at but
Rizzuto managed to smile for the birdie. HOME WITH MOM
Mom shows Phil she kept his gloves in good shape while he was
away. Home, after his discharge, in February, 1946.
Wide World
RIZZUTO DAY Fans honored Phil at Yankee Stadium, Au-
gust 29,1948, and he presented orchids to Mom. Daughter Patricia
and wife Cora are in party.
"Wide World
Top: PART OF THE LOOT Convertible, shotgun, golf dubs,
movie camera were some of the gifts Yankee fans gave to the Scooter.
Bottom: HE'S MY BOY! Manager Casey Stengel beams pride-
fully as he and his shortstop accept plaques presented by New York
writers, February, 1950.
NEVER RAINS BUT IT POURS! The New York writers
weren't the only ones to take cognizance of Phil's great 1949 season.
Some of the trophies were taller than Phil.
->v^^7^^^/5^^7T^AVT o>r fi
,,. tafc^v ( ;fe''1^>^
Wide World; AP Newsphoto
Top: THE FLEA BITES! One of Rizzuto's greatest offensive
threats is the surprise bunt, manipulated here against the Phils in the
1950 World Series. Andy Seminick is the catcher. Bottom: UP WE
GO!Rizzuto leaps high to avoid the sliding Mike Goliat of the
Phils in another Series play.
'<*.
*ifa^.**&u *4,, . , "i&Mire
Wide World
Top: TAKING HIS CUT Despite his small size, Rizzuto takes a
good riffle at the ball. Bottom: PHIUS BASEBALL "FAMILY"
Roy Hamey, assistant general manager; George M. Weiss., general
manager; Manager Casey Stengel and President Dan Topping all
point to the dotted line as Phil signs his 1951 contract.
Wide World
TRY THIS ONE FOR SIZE After being named the American
League's Most Valuable Player, Phil tries to sell a bill 0f goods to the
MVP of the National League, Jim Konstanty, ace relief pitcher o]
the Phils.
BELL BOTTOM TROUSERS 89
Athletics, also was in Australia. He and Phil were ordered
to Hawaii by plane with a high priority. In order to make
room for them on the Navy transport, two sailors who
were going home on furlough after many months of front-
line sea battles were bumped off the flight.
"Imagine us getting preference over them," Phil said to
Dom in disgust. "These kids have been in the fighting and
we're just ball players. Its a bum deal."
It was typical of Phil that he should feel a personal re-
vulsion at the arrangement. Most ball players, used to get-
ting the best things in life, would have bragged about being
considered VIP's (Very Important People). It bothered
Phil and he felt deep remorse that he had been the cause
of the incident though he could not have waived his seat
in favor of one of the battle-starred sailors.
Regardless of the unpleasantness attached to his depar-
ture for Hawaii, Phil found the tropical island one of the
great adventures of his life. It was all that the Pan Ameri-
can Airways travel folders claim so good that he tried in
vain to get a transfer to permanent duty there.
The Army-Navy World Series was a big thing on the
islands and the betting between sailors and soldiers was
terrific. "Some of those guys bet thousands," PhH recalls.
"Many of 7 ern were loaded with dough won in crap games
out in the South Pacific and no place to spend it. The ball
games were good ones because every player gave out*
There was no loafing or exhibition stuff. We levelled, out
of pride in our services and in ourselves."
The Navy levelled a bit better, winning five straight
games before letting the Army bounce back to take the
last two. Bill Dickey, Yankee catcher who had been com-
missioned a lieutenant right after the Yanks' 1943 World
Series victory over the Cardinals, was the manager. Among
PHIL RIZZUTO
his players were first baseman Johnny Mize, then of the
Giants and later a Yankee; outfielder Barney McCosky of
the Detroit Tigers and, in the post-war years, the Athletics;
and pitchers Virgil Tracks (Detroit), Schoolboy Rowe
(Detroit and the Philadelphia Phils), and Johnny Vander-
Meer, who hurled successive no-hitters for the Cincinnati
Reds in 1938. PHI was assigned to third base by Dickey
and Pee Wee Reese was the shortstop. Bill, a fair-minded
fellow, was bending over backwards to be certain that avid
Dodger fans from Hawaii to Herkimer St. in Brooklyn
wouldn't accuse him of using Phil at short and Reese in an-
other position as an implication that he thought the Yankee
was the better shortstop.
Phil's stay in Hawaii was a very short three weeks. Just
about when he was convinced that he would love to wear
a lei around his neck for the rest of the war, an admiral in
Australia ordered him and Dorn back. The war had moved
up toward the Philippines and Phil was assigned to tag
along. He was shipped to Finschhafen, New Guinea.
After two months in Finschhafen, Phil was promoted to
Specialist, First Class, and assigned to duty aboard the SS
Triangulum, an AK (cargo ship) which carried supplies
from New Guinea to the island of Manus, in the Philippines
Group. As a first-class petty officer, the Flea was in charge
of a four-man gun crew on a twenty millimeter anti-air-
craft gun. "We took a few pot shots at Jap planes that
were snooping around now and then, but never hit one,"
he recalls.
Life on the Triangulum was, for the most part, undiluted
boredom of the kind so cleverly shown in the play "Mr.
Roberts." Rizzuto used his off-duty time to write letters to
Mom and Cora and play pinochle with Anton Christofor-
dis, the fighter who had been a prominent light heavy-
BELL BOTTOM TROUSERS 91
weight before the war. Occasionally the ship nosed into a
small island to deliver supplies and it was on a couple of
those islands that Phil ran into other boxers. He met up
with Steve Belloise, middleweight contender, and Gus
Lesnevich, who carne back after the war to gain the light
heavyweight title.
He spent Christmas aboard the Xiiangulurn and, having
completed three months of duty aboard that vessel, was
transferred to shore duty on the island of Samar in the
Philippines in January of 1945, By that time, the entire
Philippine Archipelago had been reclaimed from the Japs
and the war was moving northward toward Tojo's home-
land. The battles for Iwo Jima and Okinawa were still to
come (in February and March, respectively) and the
climactic atomic attacks on Hiroshima (August 6) and
Nagasaki (August 9) .
While on Samar, Phil was promoted to Chief Petty
Officer and assigned to duties commensurate with that
rank* He was in charge of athletics for enlisted personnel
and it was a big job. The little guy organized softball
leagues, ran handball and boxing tournaments, and super-
vised other recreation programs.
He was too busy to play much baseball himself, beyond
a bit of pitch-and-catch now and then. In his entire nine-
teen months overseas, Rizzuto played only one ball game
other than those in Hawaii. That happened in Finschhaf en,
New Guinea, late in 1944. An Army team not big lea-
guers, merely soldiers and officers who liked to play ball
challenged a similar Navy group, which was organized by
Rizzuto. Phil was the only professional ball player on either
side.
The Army nine had a Negro pitcher named Jenkins, a
"sleeper." He was a captain and could fire the ball as fast
92 PHIL RIZZUTO
as Bob Feller. Hundreds of the soldiers on the island, white
and Negro, dug into their jeans for the dough to bet on
Cap Jenkins and the Army. The money was matched, of
course, by the ever-ready gobs.
Phil had to catch for his team, since there was no one else
able to handle the mask and mitt. Jenkins was all that the
wild-wagering GFs expected him to be but the Navy
hurler was good, too. The diamond was a rough one cut
out of a jungle clearing and the players wore only shorts
and shoes. But it was an expertly-played game and the
sailors won it i-o, with Rizzuto scoring the only run of
the game. Jenkins held the Navy to three hits but one of
those was the game-winning double by the Yankee short-
stop.
The Japs gave up in August and the millions of men in
the Pacific could start thinking of home. Phil was ordered
back to the States and left by ship in September. He and
his shipmates heard the World Series on short-wave
through the Armed Forces Radio en route to California.
There was a great deal of betting on the classic, there being
very little in life that sailors wouldn't wager on. Naturally,
many officers and men sought Phil's advice before getting
their money down.
"I picked Detroit to win the Series from the Cubs," the
Scooter remembers, "and I was right in selecting the win-
ners of each game as it was played except one. I picked
the Tigers in the third game the day Claude Passeau
pitched a one-hitter for Chicago. Some of the guys who
followed my advice on that one looked a little mean for the
rest of the day!"
The transport landed at San Jose in mid-October and the
first thing Phil did, after phoning Cora, was to see a ball
game. *Td been dying to see a real game for over a year
BELL BOTTOM TROUSERS 93
and I heard that a group of Coast Leaguers and other mi-
nor-league players, some of whom I knew, were barn-
storming. I went to Long Beach to see 'em."
He was shipped across country to Norfolk for discharge,
at the Camp Shelton Separation Center. On October 28,
1945 (three years and twenty-one days after his gob career
began), the little fellow became a civilian once more.
CHAPTER NINE
La Cucaracha
THE YEAR 1946 ushered in a new era for all of
major-league baseball the post-Avar happy hour of bulg-
ing ball parks and fat profits. The Yankees were to prove
most prolific of all, under the colorful leadership of Larry
MacPhail. MacPhail had slipped into the Yankee Stadium
picture in January of 1945, after forming a trio to buy the
club, Dan Topping, heir to a tin-plate fortune, and Del
Webb, an Arizona construction baron, were his partners.
They paid the heirs of the late Colonel Jacob Ruppert
$2,900,000 for the teams and ball parks in New York,
Kansas City, Newark, New Jersey and Binghamton, New
York.
Larry presided over the club in 1945 but could do little
more than make plans for the future. Fettered by wartime
restrictions and the absence of the stars in service, he was
unable to exert his tremendous personality and capacity for
work to make a winner. The Yanks finished fourth that
year, lowest place they ever landed in Joe McCarthy's
fifteen years as field leader.
But that wasn't important 1946 was to be the big year.
Over the winter, Larry rebuilt the box seat sections of the
94
LA CUCARACHA 95
Stadium to produce more comfort and larger revenue; put
the first public bar and cocktail lounge into a ball park, the
plush Stadium Club which was and still is snobbishly
limited to holders of season-box subscriptions; installed the
finest available lighting system for night ball, and set up a
spring-training schedule which was designed to get the ball
players into shape and also fatten the club treasury through
gate receipts.
MacPhail was a strong believer in the value of training a
ball team in the tropics. He had taken the Cincinnati Reds
to Puerto Rico and his 1941 Brooklyn champs spent part
of their time in the tropical breezes at Havana.
Accordingly, he booked the Yanks into Panama for their
1946 conditioning exercises. Because there were so many
players returning from service who might need additional
work to sharpen up their old skills and because it was going
to be difficult for Manager McCarthy to cut a swollen
squad of sixty ball players wartime holdovers and service-
returnees down to working size, the conditioning began
on February 10. That date, in the light of later events, was
much too early.
Panama liked the Yankees and the Yankees liked Panama.
The ball players attracted the natives of Panama City and
the American government employees in the Canal Zone.
These people thrilled at the long drives of such sluggers
as Joe DiMaggio, Charley Keller, Bill Dickey, and Joe
Gordon in the practice sessions and at the fielding shows
put on by Gordon and Rizzuto around second base. These
performances were planned, just as circus acts are staged,
Joe and Phil made unbelievable fielding plays in the infield
practice which ended each day's workout. The scorching
heat shortened the sessions to an hour and half from
ii A.M. to 12:30 and the keystone combination climaxed
96 PHIL R1ZZUTO
each training period. The coach who was hitting to the in-
field would purposely slash grounders for which either Joe
or Phil would have to range far and deep. They invariably
came up with the ball and reeled off phantom double-plays
with snappy pivots and throws.
The natives, jabbering in Spanish, thrilled at Rizzuto's
quick stops and starts, his darting movements and silky
smoothness in getting just about everything hit his way.
"La Cucaracha," they dubbed him "the cockroach." It
was a term of endearment, a compliment for Phil's agility
and fluidity of movement.
The Panama sun seemed to be baking everyone into
shape though the Panama moonshine was acting as a coun-
ter-agent. More than two-thirds of the players in camp had
recently returned from three or four years in uniform.
Some had spent many weary months of boredom on island
outposts, others had been in rough going on European and
South Pacific battlefields. Spring training was their first
release from the limits and pressures which necessarily are
imposed upon men in military services.
As a consequence, many of the Yankees burned the
candle at both ends and enjoyed it. They practiced hard
at midday and played hard at midnight. The night clubs
of Panama proved as attractive to them as to other tourists.
Rum, rhumba and romance was the order of the night
'neath the tropical moon. One Yankee player even became
"engaged," though he happened to have a wife and child in
the United States. Another befriended a generaPs niece and
occasionally was seen spinning around town in the high-
brass' big Cadillac.
Not everyone joined the fun, of course. The majority
of the players confined their extra-curricular activities
to sight-seeing, fishing, and shopping, and the occasional
LA CUCARACHA 97
parties which government officials gave for the team with
the sanction of McCarthy.
Phil doesn't smoke or drink and hates staying up late,
Panama and its attractions didn't change him. He was
anxious to play baseball he was then twenty-seven and
not too certain that he still was as capable a ball player as
he had been in pre-war days* He never got out of shape or
did anything to harm his condition. Yet, as time went on,
the Scooter became the most prominent victim of Panama
training.
The Yanks had been in the Canal Zone only a couple of
weeks when the old malaria bug came back and bit the little
shortstop. A malaria victim remains susceptible to the germ
after he has been cured. Recurrences are possible, particu-
larly if the person remains in or returns to a tropical cli-
mate.
Rizzuto always has had trouble with his weight keeping
it, that is. His malarial attack in the Navy pared him from
1 60 pounds to 150 and he never recovered the extra ten
pounds while in service. After his discharge, he took it
easy at home for a few months with Cora and Patty and
then went to Florida with them early in January so as to get
himself in the best possible condition for the ball season.
He took a beach cottage at St. Petersburg, and there he did
pick up weight and felt fine when he left for Panama early
in February.
But the recurrence of the malaria quickly hacked the
pounds off his husky, well-muscled frame. He isn't fat, so
the loss of weight meant the sapping of strength. Dizzy
spells in the heat of the Isthmus were evidence of the return
of the disease and Phil was ordered to the government
hospital at Ancon for treatment.
Sulfa and other anti-biotic drugs smothered the germs
98 PHIL EIZZUTO
but Rizzuto was very slow in getting over the effect of the
attack particularly the loss of weight. McCarthy rested
him frequently during the ten-game schedule against teams
in Panama and the Canal Zone using rookies at short.
Most of the other regulars, feeling great, played every day,
however.
The team left Panama early in March, after a month of
varied activity, and flew to Florida. The forty-odd players
who had been in the tropics were united with some twenty
who had reported directly to St. Petersburg. A few days
after the tourist landed in Florida, the exhibition schedule
was resumed, now against major-league clubs as usual.
There were thirty of these games in the space of a month
March pth to April 8th. Then the team broke camp and
took off on a long tour of Texas and five other states, with
daily games and wearying overnight train rides.
The Yanks won everywhere they went, of course, and
the great names DiMag, Keller, Chandler, Rizzuto, Stirn-
weiss, Gordon, Dickey, and Ruffing drew huge crowds.
The long training grind had achieved its dual purpose
the players were in terrific shape and the management had
picked up nearly $100,000 at the box office.
Baseball men who had seen the team in Florida, where it
won its first nine games against major-league competition,
quickly tabbed the Yanks as certain pennant winners. A
few wise ones also noted that the players were already in
mid-season condition, almost everyone at physical peak.
There was an implication that some of the great stars,
already over or nearing thirty, might be drawn too fine and
ultimately wear out in the late stages of the pennant race.
This forecast proved correct.
Phil, though weak and underweight, believed himself set
for a good season. There were still the doubts, of course.
LA CUCARACHA 99
Rizzuto, although he plays without compkining when
handicapped by injuries, is a worrier and a brooder. Some
days he felt fine and sometimes the dizzy spells knocked
him for a loop. But he was certain that all would go well
once the season began, and that he would be playing on
his third straight championship Yankee team as well as the
seventh successive winner in his professional career.
The Scooter received a mild shock one day, just before
an exhibition game with the St. Louis Cardinals, who also
train at St. Pete. His mind, already heavy with doubt and
insecurity, was made more uneasy when he saw his "suc-
cessor" hand-picked and signed with typical MacPhailian
fanfare.
Loud Larry called a special press conference to announce
the acquisition of twenty-one-year-old Bobby Brown, a
shortstop who had hit over .400 as a wartime collegian at
Stanford, UCLA and Tulane. Brown was signed for a
bonus of $51,000, which was spread over three years to
enable him to keep as much as possible from the tax collec-
tor. MacPhail painted a glowing picture of Brown, insisting
that seven other clubs had sought the boy and that two of
them had outbid the Yanks. Bobby, claimed Larry, was
the greatest shortstop prospect since Hans Wagner bow-
legged for Pittsburgh and the Yankees were very lucky to
get him. The baseball writers of the New York papers,
cynical and inured to MacPhaiPs boasts, marked the whole
thing as another of Larry's extravagances and dubbed die
youngster "Golden Boy."
MacPhail, beaming at the scribes as he recounted Brown's
prowess, suddenly realized that his listeners were trying to
smother their snickers. Will Wedge, veteran newspaper-
man who is now Librarian for the Baseball Hall of Fame at
Cooperstown but who then was Yankee correspondent for
100 PHIL RIZZUTO
the New York Sun, finally convulsed on Larry's blarney.
Wedge, a distinguished white-haired gentleman whose
pen often dripped bitter satire, remarked idly to MacPhail,
"May we write, Larry, that Rizzuto's job will be safe for
another two weeks?"
MacPhail, never far from the boiling point, blew his top,
and started to storm from the room. Only the presence of
cooler heads kept the conference from ending right there.
It might as well have, at that, for neither Larry's pretty
words nor Brown's actions at shortstop could mount a
threat to Phil.
Brown arrived at St. Pete the following day and worked
out at short, under the microscopic examination of Manager
McCarthy and the Missouri-minded pressmen. The new
boy's obvious slowness of foot and apparent inability to
cover ground particularly to his left was remarked on
by most of the writers. Rizzuto, standing by like a small
boy who fancies he has lost the love of his family upon the
arrival of a baby brother, looked on in silence.
A newspaperman stepped over to comfort Phil, noting,
"He's no bargain, Philly. I don't think youVe got much to
worry about."
Rizzuto grinned his appreciation and then added, rather
forlornly, "Gee! Fifty thousand bucks. Boy, that's a way
more money than they've ever paid me. I sure was born a
few years too soon."
Brownie finished his first workout in a Yankee uniform,
then dressed and sat in the stands to watch the game with
the Cards. Rizzuto, meeting the challenge of his "successor"
in the way he knew best, gave a most amazing exhibition
in the field. The Scooter ranged rapidly in all directions to
handle sixteen chances without the slightest hint of a fum-
ble. He even made Marty Marion, the Card shortstop, look
LA CUCARACHA 101
ordinary in comparison and at that time Marion was ac-
knowledged as the best alive "Mr. Shortstop."
"My goodness," exclaimed Brown. "That little fellow
certainly can play shortstop, can't he?"
After the game, Bobby was asked if he expected to re-
place Phil. He thought for a little while, then answered,
"I guess some people must think Fm a pretty good ball
pkyer or else they wouldn't have signed me for so much
money, before I ever pkyed a game in organized baseball.
Honestly, though, I imagine it will be a long time before
Fll ever begin to think of taking Rizzuto's place,"
The Yankees, with all their great pre-war stars back
under the direction of Joe McCarthy, were heavy favorites
to win the pennant. The greatest outfielders in the game
Henrich, DiMaggio, and Keller were reunited. An aging
but still effective Bill Dickey was set to do the catching.
Nick Etten, a wartime player who had led the league in
runs batted in and in homers while the conflict was on, was
set for first base. Gordon and Rizzuto, the incomparables,
were twin Gibraltars in the middle and George Stimweiss,
the batting champ of 1945, was a solid citizen at third base.
The pitching staff, anchored by Spud Chandler, Bill Bevens,
and Red Ruffing, with Johnny Murphy for relief duty,
looked superb. Hardly anyone thought they could lose.
The rosy outlook changed quickly, however, once tie
season started. Some of the veterans never did recover from
the habits incurred in their tropical holiday in Panama.
Others just didn't have it anymore. A few experienced that
one bad year that seems to come to all professional athletes
sometime in their careers. The disintegration was mental,
moral and physical.
The Boston Red Sox, with a host of their own stars
returning from service, figured to give the Yankees some
102 PHIL RIZZUTO
slight competition that year. Instead, they overran the rest
of the league and the Bombers in the first third of the season
and virtually locked up the pennant by mid-June. The
Sockers won forty of their first fifty games for an incred-
ible percentage of .800.
The Yankee players, almost all of whom had known the
invincibility of a long lead in pre-war days, knew the jig
was up for them. Although there were over one hundred
games remaining, they realized that the Sox were home
free.
First to realize it, of course, was the smartest man in a
New York uniform, the manager. Joe McCarthy, winner
of more world's championships than any other pilot, threw
in the sponge even before the month of June. He and
MacPhail clashed over policy and Joe staggered under the
dual burden of battling the front office while trying to lead
a dispirited group of battle-wise veteran ball players. The
onus grew too great for McCarthy and one day he climbed
aboard his white horse, figuratively speaking, and rode off
in all directions at once. MacPhail forced the Buffalo Irish-
man to resign and appointed Dickey in his place.
Bill, a brilliant catcher, did not prove to be a brilliant
leader though the cards were stacked against him when
he took over the helm on May 24. He and MacPhail also
battled through the rest of the season as the club floundered.
The pitchers held up fairly well but it was difficult for
them to win because, with the exception of Keller, nobody
was hitting the ball. Charley managed to carry the club
along on his broad back, hitting .333 for half the season.
Then the herculean task overwhelmed him and he went
into a tailspin.
The Sox kept on galloping and the Yanks, bad as they
were, were able to hold on to second place. Being the run-
LA CUCARACHA 103
ner-up is a creditable condition in most major-league towns
but not in New York, where the fans are used to winners,
With all his star players collapsing en masse, Dickey did
very well to land the club where he did. That was the year,
you may recall, when Joe DiMaggio failed to hit .300 for
the only time in his career. He hit only .290 and batted
home but ninety-five runs.
Rizzuto folded up with the rest. Phil was no longer the
scooter of pre-war days. Hobbled by injuries, annoyed by
batting slumps, and unsettled by the offers from Jorge
PasqueFs Mexican League, the little man was a handicap to
the club. At one stage, he went hitless in twenty straight
times at bat. He was ten pounds underweight and getting
weaker and weaker from the grind of daily play. The effect
of the malaria recurrence was evident and he was further
hindered by bruised and knotted thigh muscles. Frequent
dizzy spells, some of them in the blazing heat of the playing
field, added to his discomfort and the team's over-all defi-
ciency. The little guy was a rambling wreck and, for a
good part of that season, would have been better off in a
hospital than on the diamond.
Eventually he got there, too.
On July 17, Phil was batting exactly .222 a bit below
the team average of .239. The Yanks swept a double biU
against the St. Louis Browns at the Stadium that afternoon
but the day was marred by a near-tragic accident to
Rizzuto.
Phil stepped to bat in the fourth inning of the second
game and was mowed down by a fast ball which flew from
the arm of right-hander Nelson Potter. The ball struck
him in the vicinity of the left temple. The mite crumbled
in the red dust near home plate like a battered rag doll and
was carried from the field on a stretcher. His mother, who
104 PHIL RIZZUTO
usually goes to the afternoon games, was one of the hor-
rified spectators.
She rushed down to the dressing room and waited anx-
iously outside, keeping her vigil with prayers while her son
was being treated on a rubbing table. After ice packs were
applied and Phil's mind was cleared, he was rushed by
ambulance to New York Hospital for observation and X
rays. The pictures showed no skull fracture and Mrs.
Rizzuto was sent home with the assurance that her boy was
resting comfortably.
Though the ball hit him squarely, Phil's life was spared
by an inch or so. He was lucky that it did not hit him high
on the temple, against the weak wall of flesh which would
have caved in and permitted a serious brain injury. The
upper portion of his cheekbone took most of the impact
and, though groggy, he never even lost consciousness.
While he was lying in the clubhouse, awaiting the
ambulance, Phil said, "I can't understand why I couldn't
get out of the way of that pitch."
"The ball sailed/ 7 he was told. "You were lucky at that.
It might have been worse."
"Yeah," he grinned through the pain. "That might have
been Feller pitching! "
Bob Feller, Cleveland's tremendous fireballer, was then
having a great year and setting a major league strikeout
record of 348 batters for the full season. One of the Yan-
kees' indignities earlier that year had been a no-hit blanking
by the Indians' star. Potter, never a really fast pitcher,
didn't throw half as hard as the Cleveland speedboy.
Phil was beaned on a Wednesday and released from the
hospital on Friday, with permission to return to uniform
by Saturday. But painful headaches and dizzy spells at home
over the weekend caused him to go back to the hospital the
LA CUCAEACHA 105
following Monday. While lying down or seated in a chair,
he was comfortable, but any attempt to stand up or move
quickly brought on a skull-wacMng, dizzy feeling.
The doctors released him after two more days of obser-
vation and he rejoined the team, which had departed for a
Western trip. He went back into the line-up right away,
replacing Frank Crosetti who was serving as a stand-in.
Although the doctors had assured him that he was sound,
Phil's teammates were afraid that the little fellow might be
plate-shy as a result of the incident. In conversations away
from Phil's hearing range, they recalled players such as Joe
Medwick, Hank Leiber, and Bill Jurges who never were
good hitters after similar beanings, though they had been
solid stickers before being skulled.
Phil quickly assured them with his performances. The
week of rest, though unpleasant because of the headaches,
proved to be a tonic. It gave his sore legs time to recover
and made him fresher physically. The shortstop took on a
new lease on life, his spirits surged and so did his batting
average. He showed no trace of timidity at the plate as he
began to bat his way out of the slump. Phil was successful
at finally snapping out of his hit-famine and he picked up
steadily over the rest of the season. Although the Yanks
were out of the race Boston had moved to the front by a
sixteen-game margin Rizzuto played as though there was
a chance for the flag. He came on to raise his average thirty-
five points during the final two months of the schedule and
ended up with a .257 mark.
Despite the strong finish, it was a terrible year for Phil.
Also for many of the others. The active careers of pitchers
Ernie Bonham, Red Ruffing, Marius Russo, Atley Donald,
and Johnny Murphy ended with that season, as did that of
Dickey.
106 PHIL RIZZUTO
About the only man connected with the club who
thought It was a great season was MacPhail. Larry's eyes
were lighted with dollar signs all season as the Yanks be-
came the first baseball club to play before 2,000,000 people
at home. They drew 2,200,000 paying customers, breaking
the old record by nearly three-quarters of a million. It was
on July 17, the very day that Rizzuto was beaned, that the
Cub's 1929 mark of 1,485,166 for a full season was sur-
passed. At that point, the Yanks had played only forty-six
games at Yankee Stadium.
When he finally packed up his gear at the end of the sea-
son, Rizzuto was between a fit and a funk. He had watched
men he had known as great players breaking up alongside
of him. He had been told that Gordon already had been
traded to Cleveland in a deal which was to be announced
during the World Series between the Red Sox and Cardi-
nals. He knew that Bobby Brown, his "successor," had
batted a resounding .341 at Newark. The Golden Boy had
been sent to the club's International League affiliate for
seasoning, with the idea that he'd be available as shortstop
for the 1947 club in the event Rizzuto was through.
Through? Phil wasn't sure. He just didn't know. So
many of the others even the great DiMag seemed to be
washed up. Even the reporters who, being his friends, tried
to be kind about it, wrote that it was just a bad year that
so fine a ballplayer as Rizzuto couldn't be on the down-
grade at twenty-eight years of age. But they didn't believe
what they wrote. Too many of those scribes had the feeling
that the most likable little guy in the world was a gone
duck.
Through? That's the worst word in the English language
for a professional ball player the last one he wants to
hear or think of. Few of them ever wiU admit they are
LA CUCARACHA 107
finished it usually takes the harsh, uncompromising
mathematics of the batting and fielding tables to get the
point across to an athlete who has lost his ability.
Rizzuto, intelligent, sensitive, giving to worrying, was
well aware that he might be washed up. The thought
wouldn't leave him. His earning capacity might be disap-
pearing. And he had turned down the chance to grab many
thousands of easy dollars by the simple act of jumping to
the Mexican League. Was he a failure? Was his security
gone? Had he shot his bolt?
Phil didn't know. But the thought tormented him all that
winter. It was like a cold rock in the pit of his stomach.
CHAPTER TEN
Mexican Hayride
NOT SINCE the Black Sox scandal of 1919 had the
major league clubowners been so shocked. It was spring of
1946 and they were looking forward to an all-time bo-
nanza. Baseball interest was at an unprecedented height.
Exhibition games were drawing thousands and tens of
thousands of people; the return of the stars from service
promised the highest brand of baseball ever and the moun-
tains of loose money in the immediate post-war era prom-
ised the fattest and fastest turnstile clicking in the history
of the national pastime.
This was Paradise. Soon every owner would be rolling
in money. Most of them had done well enough during the
war years. Washington had given baseball a green light
and, though the available players were older and less tal-
ented than in 1941, the magnates had managed to get along
beautifully. The services took the healthy men but left a
residue with which baseball was able to continue at a
handsome profit for the men who met the payrolls. Al-
though night ball was curtailed on the East Coast and
spring training during the three years of conflict (1943-45)
was limited to the frost-bitten sections of the country
108
MEXICAN 109
above the Mason-Dixon line, the game had prospered
They had a big plum and it was ripe for the plucking.
But suddenly the shadow of a tall, dark man fell across
the beautiful picture. Jorge Pasquel, one of the richest men.
and probably the most flamboyant in Mexico, had decided
to start a new war one in which he would pit the world's
most important commodity, the American Dollar, against
the baseball empire of the United States. Old Jorge, a
swashbuckling merchant prince, had an overpowering am-
bition to make the Mexican League superior to the National
and American with the ultimate goal of having his native
land and its league included in the World Series.
Jorge and his brother Bernardo had amassed vast fortunes
south of the border by various dealings in imports. They,
through the grace of President Miguel Aleman and the
Mexican government, had become multi-millionaire. It
was all legitimate enough and their practices were entirely
in accord with past and present ways of doing business in
our sister republic. Jorge, a strong man, carried two pearl-
and diamond-studded revolvers in side holsters for his own
protection. He admitted, with some pride, that he had once
killed a man "but in self-defense, of course."
The Pasquels had used money, Mex or American, to
reach the pinnacle. The revolvers were good show but it
was the buck and the peso which were their weapons.
They believed that by the simple process of importing
American ball players to Mexico, for higher salaries and
bonuses than those men were receiving in America, they
could raise the level of the Mexican League to the point
where it would become a third major league. Jorge was
certain that the star ball players of America could be had
for dough. His blueprint for action was etched in dollar
signs. Pasquel was convinced that money would buy any-
110 PHIL R1ZZUTO
riling and that a laborer would come to work for the estab-
lishment which would pay him best.
There may have been an undercurrent of chauvinism in
die Mexican magnate's attempt to lift the standards of the
Mexican League. There may have been a profit motive
though it was hard to see how he ever was going to get
back the hundreds of thousands he was prepared to dole
out to lure America's stars to his country. Most likely, the
Pasquels decided to open up a dollar war with American
clubowners for the primary purpose of making themselves
the biggest and most publicized men in their country. Some
perturbed American baseball people hinted that Jorge was
trying to become president of his native land and that a
sensational success in building up the country as a baseball
power would achieve more fame and votes than a deftly-
planned and consummated political campaign. Next to love
and bull fights, Mexicans like baseball best. There are, it
seems, many paths to national heroism.
The Pasquels began their raids quietly enough in the late
winter and spring of that first season after World War II.
Their agents approached players in Florida training camps,
California sites and also those who, like the Yankees, were
based in Latin America.
Since they knew they had to ran their war on a grand
scale no one would be impressed if they had raided the
American clubs for second-raters the Pasquels engaged in
high-rolling dice. Stan Musial of the St. Louis Cardinals was
the top star of the National League and they set their sights
on him. They went after Vernon Stephens, shortstop of
the St. Louis Browns and star of the team which, in 1944,
had brought the Mound City its only American League
pennant. They gave Mickey Owen, brilliant Brooklyn
catcher, $90,000 to jump his contract with the Dodgers.
MEXICAN HAYRIDE III
They worked as quietly as possible In the beginning. But
when the American magnates became aware of these com-
mercial commando tactics, open war was declared.
Jorge, resplendent in his fierce black mustachio and bril-
liantly diamonded attire, angrily promised that he had only
begun; that he would get Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams
to come to Mexico; that he, Jorge, would take as many
American players as he wanted and that the raiding would
stop only when the major league bosses buckled to their
knees and sought an amnesty. PasquePs lawyers advised
him, correctly, that the "reserve clause" which was a part
of every player's contract would not hold water in a legal
test and that the major league owners' threats of suits
would never materialize. The reserve clause bound a
player to his club for the year following the contract he
could not seek other employment in baseball but could be
fired on short notice.
Although he had listed DiMaggio as his top desirable,
Pasquel didn't approach Joe with an offer at any time.
There were reports that he had sent an agent to visit Wil-
liams in Havana, where the Red Sox had gone for an exhi-
bition game in March, with an offer of $500,000 if the tall
clouter would jump to the Mexican League.
Jorge and Bernardo decided to wait a bit on the Yankees'
greatest star and, meanwhile, to shoot for a couple of good
ones. A Pasquel agent (a former minor-league ball pkyer)
quietly contacted both George Stirnweiss and Rizzuto in
Panama, offering no concrete terms but suggesting that die
Mexicans would make it worth their while to leave the
Yankees. Phil delayed any decision and so did George, fig-
uring that they'd still have a chance to do business after the
ball season started, if they were so inclined.
The two little guys were roommates and they talked the
112 PHIL RIZZUTO
possibilities over from time to time. They also told other
players of the Mexican agents and at least two pitchers,
Frank Shea and Herb Karpel, and infielders Steve Souchock
and Hank Majeski were interested.
"See what you can get for us," they told Phil.
Rizzuto didn't tell the Yankee officials about the ap-
proach, since he had not really thought seriously of making
such a drastic change. The matter died there in Panama for
the time being. Shea came down with appendicitis and had
to be operated upon. Majeski and Souchoch couldn't break
into the lineup as regulars and so were not of particular in-
terest to the Pasquels. Karpel never made the grade in the
majors. Stimweiss was attractive to the Mexicans because
he was the American League batting champion, having hit
.309 to win the crown in 1945, the last year of baseball,
World War II style. Phil's malaria came back on him in the
Panama heat and he was too sick to think of a switch to
another tropical climate.
But late in April, after both Stimweiss and Rizzuto had
gotten off to miserable starts along with nearly all the other
regulars on the club, they were approached again. Stim-
weiss heard from the Pasquels first and turned them down.
He explained that he was working on the first year of a
two-year contract and that he didn't want to jump.
Rizzuto, unsure of himself and doubting that he could
still play up to major-league standards after his war-
enforced absence, was more willing to listen. If he was
through, then Mexico, instead of being a land of exile
(Commissioner Happy Chandler had decreed a five-year
baa from the majors for all jumpers), would become a
haven and the means of financial salvation.
The same man who had contacted him in Panama ap-
proached Phil as he came out of Yankee Stadium some ten
MEXICAN HAYRIDE 1 1 3
days after the season had opened. Phil walked toward his
own car, which was parked near the players* entrance.
"Do you want to see Mr. Pasquel now?" the agent asked*
Phil, not certain, nodded and stepped toward the car. He
looked in it and saw Karpel and three others.
Rizzuto recalls the shock he got as he was aboot to get
into the car.
"I looked into my car, see. There's three guys sitting in
it along with KarpeL I look at the gnys. They're dark and
scary and I don't know any of them."
"Karpel says, 'Phil, this is Mr. Pasquel.'
" 'My God/ I yell, 'Let's get out of here. What if
MacPhail sees us! *
"They insist that we take a ride and we drive over to-
ward the west side. Pasquel, this is Bernardo, not Jorge,
tells me to park under the elevated highway. We do and he
and I get out of the car. With the traffic rumbling over our
heads, Bernardo takes me behind a pillar and starts counting
out a roll of bills nearly as big as Dickey's catcher's mitt.
They're all thousands on top, anyway.
"He says to me, 'Here, take this money. It is for you.
For nothing. Come to Mexico. Leave right away with my
chauffeur. Your family, everything. We fix.' "
Phil shied away from taking any of the money and they
got back into the car. On the way downtown, Pasquel of-
fered the Yankee shortstop a bonus of $10,000 to sign and
$15,000 for the season. It was a quick twenty-five grand
and half of it was to be deposited in an American bank at
once. But Phil, knowing that Stirnweiss had been offered
a five-year contract, merely said he would have to think it
over.
Pasquel then said that he would give him a five-year
contract, too, at $12,000 per year and the ten-grand bonus
114 PHIL RIZZUTO
to sign. (The Yankees were then paying him $7,500).
The baU player promised to call Bernardo the following
day. He did and that evening he and Cora met Bernardo
and others at the Wedgewood Room of the Waldorf Asto-
ria for dinner. Included in the group were Mario Loustou,
a friend of Pasquel who acted as interpreter, and his wife
and two other couples who were friends of Bernardo.
"It was some dinner," the Scooter remembers. "Off gold
plates we ate, I tell you. Champagne and thick steaks. Any-
thing I wanted. Orchids for Cora. Pasquel wore a diamond
the size of an egg and he caught me staring at it and wanted
to give it to me."
The richly-dressed foreigner, through Loustou, kept up
a running sales talk all through the gorgeous meal. One of
the women at the table worked on Cora, too, telling her of
the wonderful things which were available in Mexico
such as nylons and girdles which American women still
were having a hard time finding.
To clinch it, Bernardo put in a call to Mickey Owen, in
Mexico City, and had the phone brought to the table.
"Owen told me how wonderful everything was down
there," Phil says. "It sounded like the greatest deal in the
world. I was impressed but, since then, I've wondered if
maybe he had a gun at his back! "
Phil said that he'd be willing to jump if Pasquel would
raise the bonus to $15,000, instead of $10,000. Bernardo
agreed immediately. He even promised to throw in a new
Cadillac after Phil was across the border.
The Mexican made one mistake, however, and it prob-
ably cost him the chance to get Rizzuto. He knocked
American baseball all night long, insisting that it was not as
well played or organized as the Mexican League. That tack
grated on Cora's nerves and made her dislike Mexico with-
MEXICAN HAYRIDE 115
out ever seeing the place or the brand of baseball. She had
been willing to let Phil make the decision when the meal
started but by the time it was over, she was wavering.
Another grandiose and unnecessary gesture rubbed both
Cora and Phil the wrong way, too. Bernardo, with dramatic
Latin gestures, acted out the story of how Jorge had killed
his opponent in a duel, Bernardo flung himself to the floor
of the Wedgewood'Room and, while falling, drew an im-
aginary gun with the dexterity of Hopalong Cassidy out-
drawing a villain. The Rizzutos tittered politely at the
recital but privately wondered whether they wanted to
bring up their children in a country where men fought
duels.
Phil and Cora left the Waldorf with PasquePs top offer
written on a menu. Mrs. Rizzuto keeps it for a souvenir of
the "mistake we almost made."
The following evening the Rizzutos were at home in
their small apartment in Hillside, New Jersey.
Phil and Cora were discussing the proposed deal, with
Cora voicing objections to everything but the financial an-
gle. Phil's mother, who had been advised by Phil and Cora
of the offer and was against it, called on the phone from
Glendale to plead with her son to stay with tie Yankees.
Cora added her voice, telling him, "You'll be like a man
without a country. It would be a disgrace for the children/'
Phil fretted indecisively, still feeling that he should jump
because of the financial gain. Uppermost in his mind was
Bernardo's promise that "we will pay you more this year
than the Yankees will in the next three."
"I admit that I was ready to go, right then and there/'
he said. "I was afraid it was my last year as a Yankee, any-
way."
While he was stewing, the doorbell rang. A portly stran-
116 PHIL RIZZUTO
get, with the face and figure of a cupie doll, grinned a
cherubic "Hello." With him was his attractive wife.
Phil, harassed by his personal problem, was in no mood
for company, particularly strangers.
"Yes?" Phil asked.
"Fm George Weiss," said the visitor, "and this is my
wife.' 7
Phil gulped and quickly introduced Cora. Although
Weiss had been overseer of the farm system of the Yankees
and had steered Phil's career through the minors, they had
never met. And this was 1946, after both had been in the
Yankee organization for ten years.
"Joe McCarthy sent me over," said Weiss. "He called
me and said that he had heard you were on your way to
Mexico. I want to talk to you about it."
Phil listened and while Weiss was advising him against
the move, the phone rang.
It was McCarthy on the other end. Joe began to talk to
Phil like a Dutch uncle. He reminded the little fellow about
how he would be letting his friends down and added that
it was dishonorable and disloyal to jump a contract.
a You jumped to the Federal League in 1914, didn't
you? " Rizzuto shot back.
Phil seldom gets mad but he was fed up with the sudden
rash of advice tendered by the club's bigwigs.
Weiss talked on, raking up all the ammunition he had
thought of while driving the thirty miles from his own
home in Jersey to Phil's.
When he left, George said, "Well, do me one favor.
Don't leave until you see MacPhail."
Rizzuto promised and the next day he went into New
York to see Larry. The Yankee president, bristling mad at
MEXICAN HAYRIDE 1 1 7
the Pasquels and at Phil for listening to the Mexican League
offer, was in a wild-bull rnood.
Rizzuto found himself in a unique and exhilarating posi-
tion, one that few ball players ever enjoy. He was a prize
and was going to the highest bidder with he, himself,
playing the part of the auctioneer.
"I'll stay if you'll give me a $ 10,000 bonus," he told
MacPhail.
Larry did a slow burn at the holdup, stormed and raged.
"He asked me to sign a complaint against the Pasquels so
that he could get an injunction," Phil recalls. "I refused. I
told him that they were only trying to help me by giving
me more money for playing ball and that, if he wanted to,
he could do the same thing."
MacPhail then threatened to suspend Rizzuto unless he
signed the complaint. Phil still refused. The executive, un-
able to sway the Scooter with threats, finally agreed to
give him a $5,000 bonus immediately and an additional
$5,000 at the end of the season if Phil had a good year. (He
didn't and never got the second bonus.)
MacPhail, to save face, insisted that the money paid was
a "cost-of -living" increase which had been promised to the
player because his $7,500 salary for 1946 was no larger
than the one that he had worked under in 1942 when the
cost of living was so much lower. Larry did go through
with the injunction proceeding but Phil was not listed as
plaintiff.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Comeback
THE YANKEES had a new manager in 1947, a new
coaching staff, and new bleats and promises by MacPhail.
One of the baseball writers, looking at them in spring
training, remarked wryly that the big trouble was that
there weren't enough new ball players.
There were a few, of course. Bobby Brown had come
back after a great year at Newark, where he hit .341.
There were other rookies around and there was a new
pitcher, Allie Reynolds, who had been secured from Cleve-
land. Joe Gordon, whose ineffectiveness had irked Mac-
Phail into rages the previous year, had gone to the Indians.
Gordon's departure broke up the zippiest double-play com-
bination in the business and Yankee fans, wondering what
MacPhail would do to wreck the team altogether, were
fearful that he would trade off even Tommy Henrich.
There was a rich rumor that spring that Tommy was on
the block and Loud Larry didn't make any vigorous denial
of the suggestion.
Rizzuto, who had been so glad to see the end of the 1946
season, wasn't too happy to have to pick up again in the
spring of '47. MacPhail had scheduled another tour of the
118
COMEBACK 119
tropics and it was to begin with a flight to Pnerto Rico.
Phil had no stomach for the trip. He was afraid of another
malaria siege and he loathed flying. But Larry had planned
all activities in tune with the jingle of a cash register and,
despite their deflation of the previous season, Phil and the
other Yank stars were still big box office in peso land.
Too, it was an unhappy time to leave home. Cora was
pregnant and a woman likes to have her husband around at
a time like that. She had no difficulty, fortunately, and the
baby their second girl was born on April 19, the open-
ing day of the season. Phil learned of the arrival of Cynthia
Ann while out on the field at Griffith Stadium, Washing-
ton, before the inaugural game with the Senators.
For Phil this was to be a year of decision either he
could come back to his pre-war eminence or drop down
into a position of mediocrity. Another bad year and every-
one would write him off as a war casualty and say what a
shame it was that he lost the three best years of his life in
service.
Most of the other veteran players were in the same boat.
Excepting Charley Keller, none of them had had even half
of a good year in 1946. Rufling, Dickey, Murphy, and some
of the others had been released. Billy Johnson, the third
baseman, was labelled as through and offered in trades nu-
merous times during the winter and even after spring train-
ing began. Johnny Lindell, veteran outfielder who had
played during the war but had been relegated to a sub role
when the Henrich-Keller-DiMag combination returned,
also was ticketed for less green pastures by the Yankee top
brass.
Only a "mass comeback" could get the Yankees back on
top and Rizzuto had to be one of those able to climb base-
ball's toughest hill It has been said and written often, in
120 PHIL RIZZUTO
references to athletes, that "they never come back." It
seemed unlikely that all those veterans, some of them on
the shady side of thirty, could regain their ability at the
same tine. It was a long shot and the new manager, Bucky
Harris, knew it. That was why he had insisted on a two-
year contract for himself when he signed as field boss for
MacPhail.
Harris and his aides, Chuck Dressen and Johnny (Red)
Corriden, worked hard during the spring to develop the
more promising rookies. The veterans were left alone,
Bucky being one of those rare adults who, when in a posi-
tion of power, doesn't abuse it. Although he was aware of
the Panama party-boy stuff of the previous year, the pilot
refused to set a rigid code of training rules. He treated the
players as adults, cautioning them that they could only
damage their own careers by intemperance. Most of those
who had flaunted the training rules and midnight curfew
set by Joe McCarthy quietly accepted Harris' "easy hand"
without biting it.
The Yankees began training shortly after Lincoln's
Birthday in San Juan and were playing games against na-
tive teams from the Puerto Rican League by Washington's
Birthday. From that territory they flew to Caracas, Vene-
zuela, for half a dozen games, three against native nines and
three with the Dodgers, who hopped over from Havana,
where they were training. The presence of Jackie Robinson
on the Montreal Royals, Brooklyn's Number One farm
club, forced Branch Rickey, then Dodger president, to
train his clubs in a geographical location which would not
be inimical to the Negro. The Yanks and Brooks clippered
from Venezuela to Cuba to play three more games and then
the New York club took off once more for the States and
St. Petersburg.
COMEBACK 121
Harris, trying to avoid the mistake of '46 when the older
players wore themselves thin during the long spring grind
and eventually collapsed in the pennant race, never forced
a veteran to appear in the Ene-up. Rizzuto, Keller, Henrich,
and the others played when they wanted to and only as
long as they cared to do so. There was one man, unfortu-
nately, who had no choice. Joe DiMaggio, who had under-
gone an operation to have a bone-spur removed from his
left heel the previous December, wasn't able to play. He
went to San Juan but the incision refused to heal and he
never put on a pair of spikes. The great center-fielder had
to be flown back to the United States for a second opera-
tion and never went to bat in an exhibition contest that
spring.
Rizzuto, under the Harris system, prospered. He kept
his weight at 160 pounds, rested frequently, and paced
himself. PHI, who never is far out of shape, took good care
of himself day by day and never knew a moment of fatigue.
He did have one worry a soreness in his throwing elbow
while the club was at St. Pete in late March but that dis-
appeared after a couple of weeks. It's a condition that ham-
pers him every year but it was magnified in his mind in '47
because he was so anxious to have everything right physi-
cally. He knew the comeback trail would be a rough
enough one for a healthy man.
With Gordon gone, Rizzuto inherited a new keystone
partner in Stirnweiss, who had played second base for the
Yanks during the war and had moved to third when Gor-
don and Phil were re-united in 1946. Snuffy, nearly as
small as the Scooter, fitted perfectly with him. They
showed early in training that they were going to make a
steady pair around the middle bag.
There were other pleasing facets that spring. George
122 PHIL E1ZZUTO
McQuinn, an aging first baseman who had been released
by the Athletics, signed on with the Yanks and became a
sensation at the bag. Johnson recovered his form at third
base and Brown, though new to that position, also indicated
an ability to play it. There were more good infielders than
were needed.
The farm system incubated a couple of terrific rookies
in pitcher Frank Shea and catcher Yogi Berra. Spud Chan-
dler, veteran wheelhorse of the pitching staff, looked as
good as ever. Except for the "hole" left in center field by
DiMag's absence, Harris had a pretty fine-looking ball
team.
Even that yawning chasm was quickly filled. DiMag, re-
covering rapidly after his second surgery, trained himself
in Florida while the team was en route north on a barn-
storming trip. He jumped into the regular line-up four days
after the season began and went well. The Clipper played
in all but ten of the remaining games of the schedule and
finished up with a .315 average as well as ninety-seven
RBFs.
Joe Page suddenly blossomed into the outstanding relief
pitcher in baseball history and the rest of the staff went
well. Seemingly, everything Harris did to win a ball game
turned out fine. Despite a morale-shattering act by Mac-
Phail in May, the club took a firm grip on itself, steadily
forged to the front, and then ran away from the rest of the
league.
Larry's f aux-pas took place in New York, about a month
after the season had started and when the club was making
only a fair showing in the race. DiMaggio was in a slump
and refused to pose for pictures at the request of a photog-
rapher one day during batting practice. He angrily insisted
that he wanted to use his time swinging. Keller and Lindell,
COMEBACK 123
following Joe's example, also turned down the lensman,
who was from the Army Signal Corps and who had pre-
arranged the set-up with club officials.
MacPhail slapped a $100 fine on Joe and tagged the other
two for fifty apiece. He also separated a rookie pitcher*
Don Johnson, from $50 when the kid reneged on appearing
at a banquet after having notified the sponsor of the affair
that he would be there. The Yankees have a clause in their
contract which requires cooperation with the club in its
promotional ventures. Larry invoked that and levied the
fines.
Some ball clubs would have rebelled and quit in disgust
at MacPhaiPs application of iron rule. But the Yankees
didn't. Harris called the players together, carefully smoth-
ered the smouldering indignation and united the men into
a team. They took out their anger on the rest of the league
and, by late June, had opened up a gap of seven games.
They won the second game of a double-header on June
29 and then ran off eighteen more in succession, the nine-
teen straight victories equalling the American League rec-
ord of consecutive wins set by the Chicago White Sox in
1906. That streak ended all possibility of a pennant race and
insured the flag.
It was a happy year for the Yankees, for every one of the
doubtful veterans made a marvelous comeback. DiMag was
voted Most Valuable Player in the league. Page broke a
record by appearing in fifty-six games, of which he won
fourteen officially and saved sixteen others. McQuinn, who
had been rescued from the boneyard, hit .300, And Rizzuto
proved himself a champion among champions by snapping
out of the doldrums of the previous season.
After each victory in Yankee Stadium that summer, Har-
ris, his coaches, and the writers who travelled all year with
124 PHIL RIZZUTO
the club would go through a ritual. Someone would raise
his glass after all had been served at the press bar and offer
a toast: "To Joe Page" or "To George McQuinn" or "To
Tommy Henrich."
Invariably, after taking a sip to the player named, Harris
would add fervently, "And don't forget little Phil!"
No one really could, of course. Certainly no infielder in
the major leagues filled a pair of spike shoes (he wears five
and a half) better than the Scooter that year.
"He pulls a miracle out there each day," Harris said one
evening. "I wouldn't trade him for any shortstop in base-
ball. I don't care if he only hits .250, it's what he does with
his glove, the way he saves our pitchers, that makes him
great. I don't believe I have ever seen a game in which he
did not make one great play."
Phil hit more than .250 that year. He played in 153
games, missing only one, and whacked out a .273 BA. Al-
though he usually batted first in the line-up, he managed
to drive in sixty runs. Afield, as Harris said, he was a won-
der. The mite erred only twenty-five times while handling
815 chances.
Corriden, oldest member of the Yankees at sixty, sang
even louder praises of Rizzuto than did Harris. "Lollypop"
Corriden was a popular and well-loved figure with the
players and mingled with them. He enjoyed the confidence
of the athletes to a unique degree a habit he first picked
up as a coach for the Chicago Cubs and expanded later on
as aide to sharp-spoken Leo Durocher of the Dodgers. Cor-
riden had helped greatly in the development of Pee Wee
Reese, fending for the youngster when Pee Wee made mis-
takes which drew the barbs and barks of Lippy.
Corriden's pet among all the Yankees was Rizzuto.
"I've been in baseball for over forty years," he said one
COMEBACK 125
day during a gab-session on the Yankee bench, "and FI1 be
darned if I ever knew a ball player with the priceless, per-
fect disposition of Rizzuto.
"Phil's a sweetheart. He means a tremendous lot to the
team because everyone likes him and responds to his cheery
manner and is the better for it,
"Phil, you might say, is the spark plug of the Yankees.
He's the happy balance wheel which keeps the team spin-
ning along merrily and successfully. His value can't be
measured in mere fielding and batting figures. It's some-
thing that goes deeper. Growls and gripes in the locker
room after a bad day disappear quickly with Rizzuto
around. No team can get into the dumps with Phil to pep
things up.
"I know Reese and admire him. But I have to go for Phil
because of his disposition and the cute way he has of bind-
ing the Yankee infield into a perfect unit."
Reese and Rizzuto found themselves matched again in
the World Series that year, the Dodgers having managed to
outkst the Cardinals again. It was a riotous set of games,
the most spectacular Series ever played between the two
leagues. The Yankees won two of the first three games but
dropped the fourth when Cookie Lavagetto's double with
two on and two out in the ninth inning ended a no-hit game
for Yank right-hander Bevens and earned a 2-1 Brook
victory.
They divided the next two and carried the decision into
the seventh and final game, which was played in Yankee
Stadium on October 6.
Phil singled in the second inning to drive in the Yanks'
first run of the game and, after hitting safely again in the
fourth, scored what was to stand up as the winning run.
Page pitched five scoreless innings in relief as the Yanks
126 PHIL RIZZUTO
took the title with the 5-2 victory. It wasn't sealed until
the ninth when Rizzuto's sure hands strangled the Bums*
last gasp.
Brooklyn got a man on base with one out in the final
inning and Bruce Edwards was the batter. The chunky
catcher drove a sizzling grounder to short and Phil, fielding
it cleanly, tossed to Stirnweiss at second. Snuffy relayed
the ball to first baseman Tommy Henrich and the battle
was over. That was the third double play started by the
little guy in the Series and concluded a perfect fielding per-
formance. He set a World Series record for putouts by a
shortstop with eighteen and had fifteen assists.
Phil also shaded Reese in their "battle within a battle" for
the second time. The Yankee hit .308 to Reese's .304, a
slight difference, but Pee Wee yielded in the field by mak-
ing one error in twenty-four chances.
The Series-ending double play became a running gag
among the Yankees the following spring.
Corriden would break the silence or small-talk of the
locker room by booming, "And who is the unhappiest man
in baseball?"
"Bruce Edwards!*' would come the answering shout
from a dozen laughing voices.
"And why is he the unhappiest man in baseball?" quiz-
master Corriden would continue, with a grin.
"Because the damned fool hit the ball to Rizzuto!" would
come the chorus.
Edwards has something in common with hundreds of
other hitters. It's not smart to hit a ball anywhere near
Rizzuto.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Tailspin
ALMOST EVERYBODY figured the Yanks to re-
peat in 1948, Why not? They were the champions. Nearly
everybody was back except MacPhail. Larry had gone
out of the Yankee picture the night the team celebrated its
World Series victory at the Biltmore Hotel the previous
October. After a long evening at the festive board, irrecon-
cilable differences arose between MacPhail and his partners,
Del Webb and Dan Topping. Webb and Topping sum-
marily agreed to buy out his one-third holdings in the club
for $2,000,000 and then handed Larry his hat.
George Weiss, long-time farm-system director under Ed
Barrow and then MacPhail, was elected general manager
by the remaining partners. Unfortunately, Weiss' elevation
was to result in a high-level echelon rift between him and
Harris. The men who had to work together in harmony to
insure the club's success were unable to do so.
Harris had been brought into the Yankee organization
by MacPhail in the summer of 1946, from Buffalo, where
he had been general manager of that International League
team. Bucky bore no title in the Yankee picture at that
time but it was assumed by most people and apparently
127
128 PHIL RIZZUTO
by the sensitive Weiss that he would be MacPhaiTs assist-
ant. George believed that by virtue of his nearly twenty
years of service to the club he should be the second-in-
command.
Whatever explosion might have taken place that year
was postponed when Harris was named field manager for
the 1947 season with MacPhail as majordomo. Weiss, a re-
tiring soul, shrewdly reasoned that, given enough time,
MacPhail would blow himself out of the Yankee family.
George was named MacPhaiTs assistant, and, when the
Yanks rolled to their easy pennant in '47, everybody in the
organization took a bow for the job well done.
But the clashing personalities of Harris and Weiss made
an untenable situation in '48. They managed to keep their
mutual dislike under the surface for a while but eventually
anyone who came in contact with both could read the
story in their faces. With the two most important men in
the organization, the general manager and the field man-
ager, pulling their oars in opposite directions, there had to
be an adverse effect on the team.
The players sided with the affable Harris out of a natural
resentment for Weiss. Most of them had come up through
the farm system and had come to know George as a hard
man who deprecated their worth and held them to miser-
able salaries while they were serving their minor league ap-
prenticeships. The average ball player only knows two
kinds of figures, batting averages and dollar signs. Weiss
and Scrooge were, in their minds, carbon copies.
The breach between the executives was not the main
cause of the team finishing third that year, of course. No
matter what is going on in the front office, a ball player
thinks mainly of himself and his team. The Yankees were
trying to win the pennant for themselves, for the prestige
TAILSPIN 129
and the acclaim of die fans, and for the World Series
money they would gain. But it is a fact that the continual
discord did have an effect on some players.
More important, of course, was the fact that many of
the athletes had bad years and Rizzuto was among them,
Both Chandler and Bevens were forced to retire due to
dead arms before spring training was completed and so the
pitching staff was hit hard. Red Embree, who had been
figured as a big winner when he was obtained from Cleve-
land in a trade the previous winter, turned out to be only
a fair right-hander. Shea, Rookie of the Year in '47, was a
failure for the first half of the season due to weight and
arm trouble. Page lost his magic touch and wound up with
a 7-8 record for the season.
The mass comeback of 1947 became a wholesale retreat
in '48. Only a few of the old guard stood firm notably
DiMaggio. He was the Magnificent Yankee, a tower of
strength and inspiration all season. Joe hit .315 and led the
league with 155 runs batted in, although partially crippled
during the last month of the season due to painful muscle
tears in his thighs, an arm injury, bad knees and another
bone spur this one in his right heel.
It was 1946 all over again and only the managerial ability
of Harris kept the club in the contest. The Yanks, crippled
physically and affected by front-office dissension, hung on
until the second-last day of the season, when they were
eliminated by the Boston Red Sox in a game at Fenway
Park. Boston won again the following day to tie Cleveland
and force the first playoff in American League history a
one-game affair which the Indians won.
For Rizzuto, it was a brutal season and, once again, led
him to doubt his ability to play in the big leagues. The
Scooter was a walking ad for the band-aid manufacturers
130 PHIL RIZZUTO
from start to finish. He had everything wrong with him, at
one time or another, except frostbite.
Phil tore a muscle in his right thigh in the first week of
the schedule and was out of the line-up three different times
in the first month. It was a deep-seated muscle tear which
hemorrhaged. There was no treatment possible, no remedy
except nature's own healing processes. His thigh was black
and blue and Phil, recalling his near-tragedy in the minors,
was pessimistic. He was afraid that it was the sort of injury
which would never heal completely. As much as he loved
baseball, the thought of showing up at the Stadium each
day was agony. He was in no shape to play and only man-
aged to do so when the leg was rightly taped to lend sup-
port and kill pain.
The leg never did heal properly that season but Phil
managed to navigate on it after missing thirteen games in
the month of May. The layoff gave it enough rest to enable
him to hobble along the rest of the year. He came back to
the line-up on May 28, on one leg, so to speak. Harris
benched Bobby Brown, who was hitting .381 while filling
in at short, in order to take advantage of the way the little
fellow inspires his teammates.
His underpinning was only the first of Phil's troubles,
however. In June, he began to experience dizzy spells while
trying to catch pop flies in the sun. The heat bothered him
and his eyes seemed to be out of focus at times. The optical
illusions became so pronounced that Harris sent him to a
doctor while the team was in Chicago on a western trip.
Both Phil and Bucky figured he would have to wear glasses
in order to continue in the line-up. But the optometrist
vetoed that idea and assured Phil that his trouble could be
remedied by eye exercises.
TAILSPIN 131
In July, after the dizzy spelk subsided, Rizznto was en-
gulfed by a new plague arm trouble. He had always had
some elbow stiffness in spring training but it had always
disappeared after a couple of weeks. This was not the dis-
appearing kind. An examination by X ray showed bone
chips in his throwing arm, in the vicinity of the elbow. Phil
tried to hide the defect from the opposition but wasn't able
to do so.
He and DiMaggio had the very same ailment but the out-
fielder was able to keep his a secret. The chips permitted
one good throw per day and Joe never had to make more
than one. The shortstop did, of course, and fans, writers,
and opposing players noted the weakness of Phil's heaves
as well as the painful expression on his face when he was
forced to try the long throw from deep short to first base.
It was Rizzuto's worst year ever. He hit only .252 and
could make only twenty-one extra base hits in 464 times at
bat. His bad leg and eyes reduced his potency at bat
though the best bunter in the league, he couldn't ran fast
enough to beat them out and cut his efficiency afield.
Strangely, Joe and Phil had to find different cures for
their similar ailments. When the season was over, both wait
to Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, to be examined
by Dr. George E. Bennett, famed surgeon for athletes,
Joe's calcification deposit had to be removed by surgery
but Phil was able to beat the knife.
Phil was afraid to undergo an operation and didn't want
to go to Baltimore. He had seen too many pitchers' careers
ended by a gleaming scalpel. But Weiss insisted that Ben-
nett, not Rizzuto, make the decision. The doctor, perhaps
with a nudge from Phil, okayed a delay and the condition t
did clear up. Weiss had feared that Phil might suffer in-
132 PHIL RIZZUTO
flammation of the elbow during the following season and
be forced to undergo an operation which would make him
miss part of the schedule.
Despite his poor season, or perhaps because they wanted
to lend some encouragement to their idol, friends and fans
of Phil gave him a "Day" at Yankee Stadium on Sunday,
August 29.
His parents were there to share the great occasion with
the little guy. Mama Rizzuto was at most of the games,
anyway, and Phil, Senior, came when he could. Rizzuto
was showered with gifts, the prize presents from his faith-
ful admirers being a television set and a luscious yellow Olds
convertible.
It was a wonderful day and he appreciated the generos-
ity of his friends. But the little shortstop, thinking of the
kind of year he was having, couldn't help wondering
whether this was going to be the last big day in his baseball
career. Phil was beset with uncertainty and, as he drove
the shiny new car home that night, wondered about him-
self and his future once more.
If a voice inside him had asked, "Little man, what now? "
he couldn't have answered.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Near Miss
THE WEISS-HARRIS FEUD had been resolved the
day after the 1948 season ended, with Bucky getting the
boot. One or the other had to go and Webb and Topping,
unable to run a baseball operation themselves, had to stick
to the man who had the know-how. Webb, a rich man
through widespread construction operations, is a resident
of Phoenix, Arizona, but travels extensively in overseeing
his coast-to-coast interests. In the Golden State he had
come to know Charles Dillon Stengel, a transplanted Cali-
fornian 'whose roots were in Kansas City, Missouri. "Casey"
Stengel, who received his nickname from the initial letters
of his birthplace, had been an outfielder with the Dodgers
and Giants in the twenties. He had been a failure as a ma-
jor-league manager with Brooklyn and the Boston Braves
but was in the midst of his own successful comeback, at the
age of fifty-nine, as field boss of Oakland, champions of the
Pacific Coast League.
Despite Casey's waspish ways and boundless sense of the
ridiculous, he is a smart baseball man. Webb picked him to
manage the Yankees, and Stengel and Weiss decided upon
a coaching staff which was to have the Yankee tradition
133
134 PHIL RIZZUTO
behind it. They hired Dickey, the once-great catcher who
had managed the club unsuccessfully in '46, Jim Turner, a
pitcher with the wartime New York club and later man-
ager of Portland, Oregon, of the Coast League, and re-
tained Crosetti, who had been carried over by Harris from
the McCarthy era.
Stengel had his work cut out for him but good. He,
like Harris in '47, had to hope that the veteran Yankees
could again come back to their real abilities. Additionally,
Ilasey -had a psychological-problem. One of the reasons-
jiven by Weiss for his dissatisfaction with Bucky was the
[atter's weak handling of the "bad boys" on the club.
Some of the Yankee players had been enthusiastic night
>wls during the previous season and Harris refused to disci-
pline them for their carousing. The thing got to such an
anbarrassing point that Weiss hired private detectives to
ail the more fun-loving Yankees.
The gay members of the club were in the minority
>nly five or six of the twenty-five players but they helped
:ost Bucky his job and contributed directly to the team's
Failure to win the pennant.
Stengel, in spring training, prescribed stringent rules of
conduct, instituted a twelve o'clock curfew, and forbade
ittendance at the dog races on any night but Thursday.
Weiss, an inveterate race-track fan himself, thought that the
players had spent more time handicapping the puppies in
lie spring of '48 than they had in studying their own base-
iall form. He was behind the greyhound ban.
Rizzuto, who doesn't drink anything harder than an oc-
casional glass of beer with his meals that to keep up his
ivtight never was one of the party boys. Phil, good year
>r bad, was a model athlete. Stengel knew this and he never
worried about die litde shortstop. Casey, in fact, exempted
NEAR 155
Phil from all the "policing" and gave him permission to
miss the daily practice sessions if he cared to do so. Only
once did the Scooter avail himself of that opportunity,
incidentally.
The manager insisted on reduced activity by Phil right
from the beginning. When the squad assembled at Huggins
Field, St. Petersburg, on March i, Stengel took Rizzuto
aside and told him to get into shape as slowly as he pleased
and to use his own methods.
"When you are-ready to play ball, let me know," the
manager stated. "Give that arm plenty of rest and don't
throw a ball hard for at least a month."
Phil complied. He baked his right elbow through heat
and diathermy treatments daily and was careful not to
strain the elbow. Dr. Bennett had permitted him to avoid
the knife on condition that he rest the arm completely over
the winter and during the spring, as well. By the end of
March, the calcification no longer affected his throwing
and Rizzuto asked Stengel for a chance to test it in an ex-
hibition game.
He had gotten into shape gradually and sensibly as Sten-
gel had suggested no rushing or straining at any time. He
had pkyed in a few exhibition games up to then but for
only a few innings at a time. He hadn't thrown hard and,
except for the "good feeling" in his elbow, there was no
assurance that he could. While admitting that he wasn't
sure of himself, he asked Stengel to put him into the line-up
against the Boston Braves at St. Petersburg on the afternoon
of March 3 1.
"Fve got to find out some time," he said seriously to the
manager, "and this looks to be as good a day as any."
It was one of the happiest days of his life. In the course
of the 9-7 Yank win, Phil made eight hard throws. Three
136 PHIL RIZZUTO
of them were from deep in the "hole" between third and
short. Phil made the last throw as hard as the first, with his
full arm and without pain or flinching.
Stengel was a mighty happy man that day. Casey
couldn't afford another illustrious cripple he already had
Joe DiMaggio on the doubtful list. The Clipper had under-
gone an operation in November for the removal of the
bone spur on his right heel and that member was causing
trouble. Joe tried it gingerly in a few Florida exhibitions
and felt some pain. The team broke camp on April 6 and,
a few days later, was in the little town of Greenville, Texas,
for an exhibition. DiMag decided to put the heel to pres-
sure that afternoon. He sprinted from first to third on a
single by the following hitter and the pain made his hair
stand on end. He had to be fitted with a braced shoe and
flown to Johns Hopkins for another operation.
DiMaggio's injury was the most serious of seventy-three
which beleaguered Stengel and the Yankees that year. Joe
missed the first sixty-seven games of the schedule before
finally making his seasonal debut on June 28 in Boston.
That was the opener of a three-game series, with first place
at stake. Had the Yanks lost two of the three, they would
have dropped out of the lead they had held from the open-
ing game of the season. DiMag broke in with an explosion
which would have seemed fantastic if it had been described
in a work of fiction such as Frank Merrl^well or Baseball
Joe. He hit four homers and batted in nine runs as the
Yanks swept the series all three of the decisions being
gained through his four-baggers.
The Clipper's resounding debut took the spotlight off
Rizzuto, who had been playing the most exciting ball of his
career up to then. It also dimmed in significance an injury
NEAR MISS 137
to the shortstop the only one which made him miss an
inning that season.
The game on June 28 was a night affair and, in the first
inning, Johnny Pesky of the Sox crashed into Phil as the
latter took a throw from second baseman Jerry Coleman at
second base. Pesky, a bit taller and heavier than Phil, was
trying to break up a double play. His shoulder hit Rizzuto
flush on the jaw and knocked him down.
The Yankees accused the Sox of playing rough and be-
gan to retaliate. DiMag plowed into Vern Stephens, Boston
shortstop, with intent to kill in the following inning and,
later on, Lindell, a 6 / 4 // , 21 5-pound giant, knocked second-
sacker Bobby Doerr groggy with a slide.
Phil was able to finish the game but complained of a
headache in the clubhouse and the Yankee trainer, Gus
Mauch, arranged for X rays to be taken the following
morning. Phil couldn't sleep when he got to bed that night
and had to ask Mauch for sleeping pills. These knocked him
out and caused him to oversleep in the morning. So, instead
of going for the X rays, the shortstop went directly to the
ball park.
Although he was slightly dizzy and "achey," he played
the full game. It was a great play by the Scooter which cut
off a Red Sox rally in the first inning at four runs and en-
abled the Yanks ultimately to achieve a one-run victory
with a rally in the ninth. With one out and the bases full,
Ellis Kinder was at bat. Bonder lined a smash off the glove
of Cuddles Marshall, Yankee relief pitcher. The ball crack-
led on the ground toward second base. Coleman and Phil
converged toward the skipping grounder. But it hit the bag
and bounced off Colexnan's right arm. Phil, racing behind
second, picked up the carom, beat the runner coming down
138 PHIL R1ZZUTO
from first to second for one out, and then completed the
sensational double play on the hitter with a bullet throw to
first. Only Rizzuto could have made that play.
Although he hadn't been able to eat anything which had
to be chewed at breakfast he couldn't move his sore jaw
Phil made two doubles in the game and beat out a
squeeze-play bunt.
The Scooter went for the X rays the following morning
and they proved negative. His jaw was bruised but there
was no evidence of a fracture. The headaches were con-
tinuing, however, when he took infield practice before the
third and final game of the series.
Then, in the first inning, his right arm began to quiver
nervously as he went to bat. He fanned.
Phil took his place in the field for the Sox half of the
inning and Pesky, his nemesis, banged a ball past the
pitcher's feet and on over second base. Phil tried to reach
it but couldn't control his left arm, which was shaking as
with palsy.
Stengel immediately removed him from the game and
ordered him to be rushed to Massachusetts General Hospi-
tal. Physicians there took an electro-encephelograph of his
brain, in order to detect presence of a blood clot. This is
the same test which is given to prize fighters who show
distress from the after-effects of a blow on the jaw,
"They glued twenty-four wires to my hair and began
to Ksten to what was going on in my mind," Phil related
merrily the next morning. "They listened and listened but
they must have heard nothing because the doctor said he
couldn't find any serious symptoms. Toughest part of it all
was the job I had getting the glue out of my hair."
There was no clot but the hospital held him for a day
just to be sure he was all right. The condition the arm
NEAR MISS 139
tremble was diagnosed as a post-traumatic tremor, a
slight nerve injury due to the wallop on the jaw by Pesky's
shoulder.
Before he left the hospital, the little guy was told that
the records of the nerve control test he had taken would
be incorporated in a text book for the use of medical stu-
dents. "It's to show the difference between normal and
abnormal but they didn't tell me which I was," he gagged.
The Yanks moved along to Washington the next day
and Phil missed that game, the only one on the schedule
in which he didn't make the box score.
That scare was the worst one Phil ever had as the result
of being the victim of a "take-out" pky at second base. He
is philosophical about the rough stuff, feeling that it is part
of the game and must be accepted. He carries lumps and
bruises on his legs and body all season long every year
from the battering of enemy runners.
Pesky is the worst offender in Rizzuto's experience, a
more rugged runner than some of the big players in the
league. That may lie in the fact that Johnny is a small man,
too, and it doesn't look so bad for him to crash into another
little fellow. Where a big brute, such as Walt Dropo or
Ted Williams, would be accused of picking on Rlzzuto,
Pesky is excused on the ground that he and Phil are of
nearly equal size.
"Pesky, he's a corker!" Phil exclaims. "He must hit me
a dozen times a season. And every time he does, he apolo-
gizes and picks me up. But the meathead wallops me again
the next chance he gets. He has cut me up more often than
anyone else even Elmer Valo of the A's, the roughest
slider in the league."
Strangely, no umpire has ever called an interference play
in Phil's favor wfeen someone deliberately plows into him
140 PHIL fflZZUTO
to break up a double play. The rules permit the men in
blue to do so but Phil's still waiting for the first one to
make such a decision.
"You just have to be quick enough to get out of the
way," he says. "When I first came to the Yankees, Crosetti
told me that I would have to master several ways of making
the double play, such as cutting inside or outside the bag
after tagging it instead of following through with a direct
throw to first* He cautioned me not to let the baserunners
know where I'd be in the vicinity of the bag because Fd
get killed if I let them type me as a target."
The Yankees were lucky that PhiFs injury didn't prove
serious enough to keep him out of the line-up for an ex-
tended period. They needed him more than they did any
other player. It's conceivable that they could have won
the pennant if DiMag had not played a game, though Joe
certainly was great once he got into action. But it is highly
improbable that they would have been in the race at all if
Rizzuto had been forced out for long.
Phil was the hub of the infield from opening day on. He
played the first six weeks with a pulled muscle in his right
leg, the result of a misstep on a diamond in Texas while
the team was coming north. The leg had to be tightly
bound each day in order that he could maneuver a repe-
tition of his experience the previous season.
But he stayed in there and held the team together, day
after day. He was hitting well and working miracles in the
field. Phil was the only constant fixture in the ever-shifting
infield defenses. Johnson and Brown alternated at third
base and rookies Dick Kryhoski and Jack Phillips at first
base. Stirnweiss was at second, at rimes, in place of Cole-
man.
The peppery guy was, once more, the best shortstop in
NEAR MISS 141
the league and the main reason why the Yankees were lead-
ing the league for the first half or pre-DiMag portion of
that 1949 season. He consistently made the plays which had
been the trademark of his performances before the war. He
went into the "hole" for ground balls which required
throws that figured to pull his bad arm out of its socket.
That the arm didn't go with the ball and still hung in its
regular place, without showing symptoms of distress, was
encouraging. That Phil was hitting close to .300 was more
than anyone, including himself, expected.
Phil was zipping along, the outstanding player on the
front-running club. At that time, in mid- June, the fans of
the nation were voting for the players who would make up
the teams in the annual All-Star Game, between the Na-
tional and American Leagues, to be played in Brooklyn on
July 12. Rizzuto had never made the Star Game because
the bigger and better Yankees had overshadowed him. But
this year, he was the biggest star of the Bronx Bombers and
it seemed that he couldn't miss.
Unfortunately, he did. The fans, who voted in ballots
supplied by the newspapers, were more taken with slugging
performances than with all-round play. They voted Eddie
Joost, the A's slender veteran, as top shortstop because he
had hit eighteen home runs in the first ten weeks of the
season and placed Stephens of Boston second because he,
too, was hitting the ball out of sight and driving in a lot of
runs. The fact that neither of them could carry Rizzuto's
glove was overlooked.
Stengel, realizing too late that Phil was running third in
the voting, put on a campaign to get votes for his little
champ. He never failed to mention Rizzuto when he talked
to newspapermen and radio men. Casey did everything but
take out a paid ad for Phil. But both were disappointed.
142 PHIL WZZUTO
The Al-Star manager for the Americans, Lou Boudreau of
Cleveland, needed only two shortstops and he selected
Stevie as the alternate for Joost* Lou, himself a shortstop,
realized Phil's worth but, to avoid criticism, he stuck to
die results of the poll.
As the season went on, following the All-Star Game,
Rizzuto proved how wrong the fans were. Joost petered
out badly and Stephens went into a terrible batting slump
which cost his team valuable games in their great rush to
overtake the Yanks. Boston, which was twelve games be-
hind on July 4, came on fast to catch the Yanks in the final
week of the season. Except for a September slump by
Stevie, they might have won the flag, going away.
The schedule-maker, with dramatic foresight, booked
the last two games at Yankee Stadium with the Red Sox.
Boston had to win only one of them to take the flag. They
didn't and the Yanks, by sweeping the two-game series on
the final weekend, became American League champions.
Phil helped win the final game with a triple in the first
inning. He scored after reaching third and that was the
only run either team got until the eighth inning.
Rizzuto, beyond all doubt, had been the outstanding
pkyer on the Yankees the most valuable man on the pen-
nant-winning club. He led the Yankees in the following
offensive categories: games played, 153; at bat, 614; runs
scored, no; hits, 169; total bases, 220; stolen bases, 18;
doubles, 22 and triples, 7. In addition, he led all shortstops
in fielding with only 23 errors in 792 chances. Joost came
second with 25 boots in 8 19 chances.
Despite his brilliance, it just wasn't Phil's year to win
elections. The All-Star snub was by the fans. He also fin-
ished second with the baseball writers, who named Ted
Williams as the Most Valuable Player in the American
NEAR MISS 143
League. Williams, greatest of modern hitters, had lost the
batting title by a fraction of a point to George KeU of the
Tigers, each finishing with a. .343 average. There was no
real fault to find with the selection. Williams received thir-
teen first-place votes from the twenty-four writers select-
ing and Rizzuto but five. Ted's majority was clear-cut, the
lithe larrupper gaining a total of 273 points, nearly a hun-
dred more than Phil's 175.
The voting is held before the World Series, of course,
so that the play in the classic would not influence the men
casting ballots. And it was just as well, for Phil's Series
exploits were, for the first time, somewhat on the dull side.
The Dodgers again were the opposition and, though the
Yanks won in five games, Reese outshone Phil. Pee Wee
made six hits, including a double and a homer, in nineteen
at bats for a .316 average while Phil had only three singles
in eighteen tries for .167. Afield, the little Yankee held a
slight edge, with twenty errorless chances to Reese's one
miscue in a total of fifteen chances.
There had been a lot of newspaper talk, with the fans
picking up the idea, that Rizzuto should be the MVP in
the league. Most of the Yankees thought he was, of course.
Though he himself never said a word about it, Phil was
hoping that he'd be accorded baseball's greatest individual
honor.
The announcement of Williams* selection was made the
day after Thanksgiving, although all the ballots had been
counted and tabulated seven weeks earlier by Ken Smith,
Secretary-Treasurer of the Baseball Writers' Association of
America. Usually the MVP winner is kept a tight secret
until the day the story is released by Smith to press and
radio. But, somehow, there was a leak and it was fairly
common knowledge among newspapermen and fans that
144 PHIL RIZZUTO
Ted had won. The Baseball Writers' Association wouldn't
have minded so much except that a story broke at the same
time, to the effect that a gambling syndicate had made
$500,000 betting on a "sure thing," that Williams and not
Rizzuto or Joe Page was the top man. The BBWAA, which
had never been aware that anyone bet on the award, was
incredulous and embarrassed. Steps were taken immedi-
ately to avoid a repetition of the premature disclosure.
Rizzuto was not very much disappointed when the an-
nouncement came.
"How could I be?" he suggested. "I knew about it two
weeks before. Anyway, Ted deserved it. He had all those
homers and runs batted in and practically shared the bat-
ting title. A guy like me, who doesn't hit a long ball, has
got to finish second to one of those sluggers. After all, I
only hit .275,
"Not that I was glad to see Williams get it. I wasn't be-
cause I felt that a little guy like myself would never get
another chance at the big prize. It only happens once to a
fellow in my position, I figured. It was tough to come so
close. I couldn't believe I'd ever have another year like that
one and, even if I did, somebody like DiMaggio or Wil-
liams would have a better one!"
The New York Chapter of the BBWAA annually holds
a dinner at the glittering Waldorf Astoria Hotel the first
Sunday in February. The writers award two plaques, both
named in honor of deceased members. The BiU Slocum
Memorial Plaque is given for long service to baseball over
a period of years and the Sid Mercer Memorial Plaque to
tie "Player of the Year." The New York writers voted the
latter award to Rizzuto, hoping in some measure to make
up for the fact that he had not been named Most Valuable
NEAR MISS 145
by the committee representing the entire national associa-
tion.
They reasoned, along with Phil, that the little shortstop
never would have another chance.
He was wrong and they were wrong.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The Heavier the Load
HIS GRAND COMEBACK in 1949 could easily
have been Phil Rizzuto's peak performance the year of
years in his career. There certainly was no reason to expect,
as spring training began in 1950, that the little man could
or would do anything more. He hardly had to. The Yanks
were champions and they still had most of their good ball
players. Only Charley Keller was gone and the veteran
had not been a factor in the pennant and World Series
triumphs.
The Yankees could win again if Rizzuto had only an
* average season. Sure they had a couple of weaknesses lack
of depth in the outfield and a first-base problem. But they
looked good enough to repeat, particularly with Joe Di-
Maggio healthy enough to start the schedule. It didn't
figure to be a breeze not with such strong clubs as Boston,
Cleveland and Detroit to lick. But the Yankees were sound
and sure to get good pitching. Casey Stengel wasn't wor-
ried a bit and he predicted the team would win again.
The manager was to find smoke shrouding his rose-
colored glasses, however. Tommy Henrich's left knee went
permanently lame before spring training ended. Shortly
146
THE HEAVIER THE LOAD 147
after the regular schedule began, DiMaggio went into the
worst slump of his long career. Even Softball-throwing left-
handers were making a monkey of the great hitler and, by
the end of May, the Yankee Clipper was sinking with a
batting average of but .227.
Such a performance by the star should have dragged the
club down, too, particularly since Henrich was physically
unable to take up the slack. But for the little man, it might
have. With the other veterans slowing down, Rizzuto re-
tained and strengthened the legend of greatness which has
always been associated with the Yankees. The mite short-
stop became the star of the team the inspirational force
which kept the club in the race.
Joe Cronin, Boston's general manager, was talking of the
Yankees and the spirit which moves them one day. He
pointed out on the diamond, identifying DiMaggio, Hen-
rich, and Rizzuto.
"The pride of the Yankees did not pass with Ruth and
Gehrig. It lives on in the minds and hearts of men like Di-
Maggio and Henrich and Rizzuto an indefinable some-
thing which makes the word Yankee stand for something
apart the very best there is in baseball," he said. "Players
like those inspire a respect for victory in the others around
them; show them the enjoyment of winning. Look at those
Yankees they're living! They know that being a Yankee
is goody the tops, the best there is in this business,"
While Joe was plunging to the bottom of the league
batting statistics, Phil was soaring to the top. The little guy
blazed away at all pitching and built up a .355 batting aver-
age for himself in the first six weeks of the season. The
Yanks swept all eight games on their first Western trip in
May and Rizzuto led them with a .441 average during the
streak. At thirty-two, in his tenth year as a Yankee, he was
148 PHIL RIZZUTO
having his finest season. His hitting had eyes popping all
over the league and so loud were the paeons of praise for
Rizzuto the socker that everyone practically forgot about
Rizzuto the fielder that is, everyone but the Yankee
pitchers who lived better and longer on the mound because
of his eiforts. Phil's general excellence afield was so taken
for granted that nobody noticed that he hadn't made an
error since the season began. On the night of May 22, in a
game against Cleveland, Phil broke the American League
record for consecutive errorless games by a shortstop and
no one noticed it until a week later! The old mark had been
Eddie Joost's 42 games and 226 chances, set in 1949.
The night was a momentous one for the Scooter in other
ways, too. He found himself being "dusted off" for the
first time in his career and, in the same game, came close
to being injured for the only time all season, It was Mike
Garcia, roly-poly Mexican right-hander of the Indians who
dusted Phil four times. This served as a mark of tribute to
the little man because beanballs are not wasted on poor
hitters. Early in the game, Phil dove into catcher Ray Mur-
ray, 6 7 3" and 220 pounds, in a successful effort to score a
run. His left leg, already giving stable room to a charley
horse, was bruised in the collision and the wind was
knocked out of Phil. Stengel and half a dozen others ran
out to home plate as Phil lay in anguish. They were afraid
they had lost him for a long time and that was one thing
they just couldn't afford.
They gathered nervously as trainer Gus Mauch offered
first aid. Meanwhile, many thousands of Yankee fans back
east were shuddering along with the players as Mel Allen,
Yankee broadcaster, screamed into his "mike," "Little Phil
is hurt, little Phil seems to be badly hurt."
Fortunately, the impact only shook up Rizzuto and he
THE HEAVIER THE LOAD 149
was able to complete the game. He was back In action the
next day, though limping. Phil went on and played in every
one of the 155 games the Yanks had in 1950 the extra one
above the usual 1 54 coming about because a tie game with
Washington had to be played off.
With Rizzuto burning up the league and running on to-
ward a new fielding record, Manager Stengel began a pro-
motion campaign to get the little shortstop elected to the
Ail-Star team. Casey, who is as wise in the ways of public-
ity as he is in directing a team on the field, took the stump
early. He had expressed his own disappointment at the fans*
failure to nominate Phil in '49 and was anxious to avoid a
repetition of that slight in '50.
Stengel believed that Joost and Stephens led Phil in the
'49 balloting only because he, himself, and the baseball
writers travelling with the Yankees had failed to promote
Phil's cause in time.
The writers with the Yankees were only too happy to
join in Casey's conspiracy of ballyhoo in behalf of Phil,
to whom they believed the honor should rightfully go,
anyway. The manager piously intoned eulogies of the
shortstop and the writers saw that the praise was distributed
throughout the nation.
"Fve seen some great boys in the short field in my time/'
Stengel announced one day, "but none of them ever did
anything PhU has not shown this year. In fact, I would call
my boy 'Mr. Shortstop' because I cannot conceive of a
better showing by Reese, Marion or any other shortstop in
the game."
On another occasion, Stengel used the entire train trip
from New York to Boston for a five-hour declamation on
the value of Rizzuto.
"So he won't hit the long ball like Stephens or Joost,"
150 PHIL RIZZUTO
Casey bellowed, "But show me anything else he can't do
better. He's the fastest shortstop in the league, covers the
most ground, is the most accurate thrower, and has the
surest hands. He can go get a pop fly better than anybody.
No shortstop alive can make as many 'impossible 7 plays as
Rizzuto. And did you ever see a better man on the double
play?"
Stengel kept firing his ammunition as the voting began
in June. "He's the best bunter in baseball," the manager
roared to all within hearing. "He bunts with thought and
precision and what a guy he is to use for the squeeze play!
We won eight straight this season and Phil squeezed home
die winning run in two of those."
Stengel repeated his demands that the fans vote for Phil
in an interview with Hy Turkin, of the New York Daily
News, shortly after that paper had begun to run the Ail-
Star coupon which the fans were to fill in. The game was
to be played at Comiskey Park, Chicago, on July n.
"The fans are nuts if they don't vote for Rizzuto," Casey
barked. "And tell 'em I said so! "
Lou Boudreau, who had played shortstop on five Ameri-
can League All-Star teams, added his voice to Stengel's.
"Rizzuto unquestionably is the best shortstop in our
league," the then Cleveland manager said in New York
early in June. "He always was a great fielder. Now he's
becoming a great hitter. Fellows like Stephens, Joost and
Chico Carrasquel of the White Sox are good, too, but
you've simply got to put Phil ahead of 'em all, the way he's
playing now."
Hank Greenberg, front office boss of the Tribe and an
all-time great slugger, also rode along with the Scooter.
"I'd like to have him on any team I had anything to do
THE HEAVIER THE LOAD 151
with. He can do more with Ms ability and equipment than
any shortstop Fve ever seen. About the only thing he can't
do regularly is hit the long ball for you, like Cronin used
to do."
It was news, of course, when Phil did make his first error
of the season. It caine in the fifth inning of a night game at
Yankee Stadium on June 8 and on the easiest sort of a
play. Bob Swift, lead-footed Detroit catcher, bounced a
simple roller right to Phil.
"It was so easy that I over ran the ball, 7 ' he said, explain-
ing the muif. "I had lots of time but I flubbed it, pure and
simple."
Just the day before, Phil had come up with a tremendous
performance in a key game. The Yanks and Tigers were
grappling for the league lead, with New York holding a
half-game edge over the Bengals. A Yankee loss that day
would depose the Bombers from first place. Rizzuto hit
his first homer of the season as he helped rout Hal New-
houser, the visitors* star left-hander, and also got a single.
He made a great stop of a smash over second base by
George Kell, who was leading the league in hitting at that
time, turning it into a fast double play. That sensational
stab came in the fifth inning, pulled pitcher Vic Raschi out
of a hole, and enabled the right-hander to go through to his
sixth victory in nine games. Raschi is one of the Yankee
pitchers who pay daily tribute to Rizzuto.
"It's nice to turn around and see that little guy at short-
stop," he says. "He makes pitching easier."
Phil's error on Swift's bounder ended his errorless string
at 288 chances in 58 games, a new record. He had com-
mitted his previous error a bad throw on September 17,
1 949. His next one came in Cleveland on June z i He made
152 PHIL RIZZUTO
only fourteen all year as he led the league's shortstops in
fielding with a .982 percentage. He had 767 total chances
and took part in 123 double plays.
Rizzoto was so terrific that he caught the fancy of the
fans all over the nation. He didn't need Stengel's help to be
named to the All-Star team. He won the shortstop position
easily and played the entire fourteen innings as the National
Leaguers won, 4-3.
Tom Ferrick, a veteran relief pitcher who began the
season with St. Louis but was traded to New York on
June 15, told the whole story of Rizzuto's value when he
was asked the difference between pitching for St. Louis
and New York. He had won one game and lost three with
the Browns and showed an 8-4 record for the Yanks.
"Well," Ferrick answered, "in St. Louis when a batter
smacked a hard-hit ball in the infield, by the time I turned
around the ball was in the outfield for a hit and I had to
start running to back up one of the bases. With the Yan-
kees, I just turn around and watch Rizzuto and the other
guy, Coleman, reel off a double play. Rizzuto gets the balls
that go by other shortstops and that's the main reason why
pitching for the Yankees is such a good deal."
Rizzuto believes that his best day of the year came in
Cleveland on August 6. The Yanks had just blown a series
of three straight in Detroit and then had come into Cleve-
land and split the first two games of a three-game set, win-
ning Friday night and losing on Saturday. They badly
needed the rubber game with the Indians on Sunday. Bob
Lemon, who was the winningest pitcher in the league and
probably the toughest for Phil to hit, was the hurler for
the Indians. He was seeking his tenth successive victory.
The Scooter started operations with a single in the first
inning, but that was wasted. It was memorable in that it
THE HEAVIER THE LOAD 153
was his one-thousandth major-league ML He came up in
the third, with a scoreless tie prevailing, bases full and one
out. He doubled down the third-base line, driving in two
runs. Two more scored in the inning, making four and
resulting in a quick knockout of the best pitcher in the
league. Phil went on to make four hits in four times at
bat. He added a single and a triple, for a total of seven
bases, and had four runs batted in. The Yanks won the
game, 9-0.
After his perfect day, Phil sat on a trunk in the club-
house. He had just completed one of his greatest days
afield, too. He was all over the infield at Cleveland Munici-
pal Stadium, gobbling up tricky hoppers and racing far
over the foul line in left field for a couple of mile-high
popups.
"You know, if you'd told me this morning that I was
going to have this kind of day, I'd have told you that you
were crazy. Fve been tired lately and haven't felt well," he
said, adding, "Nothing serious. Just sort of woozy every
now and then. The doctors have given me eight different
tests but all they can find is a low blood count. They've
been feeding me vitamin pills to build up my energy. Of
course, I hadn't been hitting and you always feel bad when
you don't hit."
Phil paused and grinned, "You know, 'it has taken me
three days to get that thousandth hit. And when I went
hitless Saturday, while looking for the big one, I thought
maybe I was going to have as tough a time getting that one
as I did my first one when I broke in back in 1941.
"I'll never forget how hard I had to work for that one.
We opened in Washington that year. Dutch Leonard shut
me out in the first game and Sid Hudson did it the next
day. We came home to the Stadium and played the A's. I
154 PHIL RIZZUTO
was horse-collared again In the opener of that series but
I don't remember who pitched for them. Then, in the
second game, Jack Knott was their pitcher. Pete Suder, my
old Kansas City buddy, was playing third for them and my
first two times up he made a couple of fancy stops to rob
me of hits. Then, in the seventh inning, I laced one to left
field on a line and I had my first major-league hit."
Rizzuto's steady hitting seemed to surprise some of the
other teams in the league. That a fellow who had barely
managed a major-league batting average of .275 should sud-
denly be elbowing his way into the five leading hitters was
shocking. It made about as much sense as if crooner Frankie
Sinatra Phil's idol and pal had suddenly decided to be-
come an opera singer. There had to be a story behind it.
"Johnny Mize started it all Johnny and his bat," Phil
explained to inquisitive people who wanted to know the
reason.
"I used to grip my bat too hard," he said. "I was
so anxious to get hits that I was too tense. It made me com-
mit myself and sock at balls that I should have let go by.
Mize noticed that at batting practice one day in Florida
and suggested that I loosen up my grip and relax.
"I did so and, at Mize's suggestion, I adopted a spread
stance at the plate, widening the distance between my
feet. It's the same stance I used to use in the minors, when
I hit with more power than I have in the American League.
My hitting seemed to improve in the exhibitions and I
figured I was on the right track."
Phil found himself derailed just as the season began,
however, and it was Mize who got him back on an even
keel. The Scooter had gone hitless in his first eleven times
at bat and was wondering Tyhat had happened, he looked
to the first baseman for aid.
THE HEAVIER THE LOAD ' 155
"Try my bat," Mize suggested. Big John is the kind of
fellow who always is looking to help another guy out,
"Mize's bat started me off/ 3 Phil says. "Pm not saying
that I just took John's bat and held it out and the base hits
bounced off. But it was almost like that the first time I
used it. We were playing Washington and I tried to duck
away from a pitch. The ball hit the bat and went into
center field for a line drive single* I said to myself, 'This
is it.* "
The bat had a big handle and a big barrel Phil stuck
with it all season, except to change the length and weight
specifications. In the hot weather, it began to feel heavy.
Mize's stick was thirty-six inches long and weighed thirty-
five ounces. In mid- June, Phil asked the manufacturer
(Hillerich and Bradsby, makers of the Louisville Slugger)
to reduce the weight to thirty-four ounces. It still felt a
bit on the lead side, so in July the bat company made a
further reduction to thirty-four and one-half inches and
thirty-three ounces. That weight suits and Phil intends to
order all his future bats in the Mize type but in his dimen-
sions.
A ball player has to be as careful in his selection of bats
as a dancer does his shoes or an actor his roles. Those are
bread and butter implements.
Phil is mighty careful about his gloves, too. Although he
is a small person, the Yankee shortstop has normal-sized
hands. On him, they look large. The glove he is now using
is five years old that is, this is his fifth season with it.
He acquired it in 1947, during spring training at St.
Pete. A kid pitcher named Pat Pasquarella was working out
with the Yankees. Phil liked Pat's glove ball players often
test and weigh each other's equipment and offered to buy
it. The young sandlotter, grateful that a Yankee star had
156 PHIL RIZZUTO
admired something of his, quickly offered it to Phil and
refused any payment.
It was that mitt a long-fingered model from which he
has removed most of the stuffing with which the little
Yank set his fielding record. Phil intends to use the glove
for the rest of his active career, even though he has four
others in his trunk. His only worry is that he may lose it.
That's the only thing that will cause him to use another.
All gloves wear out, of course, but the Scooter is so in love
with this particular leather that he is going to avoid that,
too.
"I figure on never letting it wear out," he says seriously.
"So far, Fve had new insides put in it twice and a new out-
side once. Even if it sounds like one of those old Ford car
jokes, I wouldn't part with it for anything in the world."
Old glove . . , new bats . . . all-around excellence . . .
daily miracles at shortstop . . . timely, powerful hitting
... an incessant inspiration to his teammates. All these
things made Phil Rizzuto in 1950, the best baseball player
on the best team in the American League. From one end
of the league to another, opposing players and managers,
newspaper reporters and radio and television broadcasters
aU joined in the litany of praise to the little man.
The Yankees clinched the pennant on Friday, Septem-
ber 29, in Boston when the last remaining contender the
Detroit Tigers was mathematically eliminated by the
Cleveland Indians in a game in Detroit.
The Yankees held a victory party in Boston's Hotel
Kenmore that night. Toasts were drunk to all, from the
lowliest rookie who had pitched one inning, to Rizzuto,
who had played in every game and had meant to the Yan-
kees the difference between a pennant and finishing in
fourth place.
THE HEAVIER THE LOAD 157
Looking back, the players knew that the smallest pair
of shoulders in the room had carried the heaviest load.
With the decline of Henrich and the season-long batting
woes of DiMaggio (Joe's late surge in the final month just
got him up to the .300 mark), there was only one pre-war
Yankee left who still was the same. In fact, he was better
than ever.
Rizzuto had finished fifth in the league hitting averages
with .324, which also was high for the Yankee team. He
had made two hundred hits for 271 total bases and included
in those were his seven homers. He had been the standout
Yankee over the course of the entire season the one in-
dispensable man. When Henrich's bad knee forced him
to the bench early in the year, a newspaperman commiser-
ated with him. But the Old Pro, disdaining sympathy, said,
"Don't worry too much about me, This ball club will get
along fine even if Fm not able to play. But just pray that
nothing happens to that little scamp at shortstop. He's the
one we can't get along without."
When reminded that he was the last of the "Old Yan-
kees/* with the declines of Henrich and DiMaggio, Phil
said modestly, "I don't belong in the same class, much less
the same breath with those guys. Jeepers, I'm lucky to be
on the same team with them. 5 '
The World Series was an anticlimax, for the Yankees
and for the baseball world. The Phils, worn out after stag-
gering through to victory on the final day of the National
League race, were beaten in four straight games. Phil didn't
have much of a series at bat, just two hits in fourteen times
up, but he was his usual classy self in the field. It didn't
make any difference. The Scooter had trailed the paths of
glory from April to October.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
A Foregone Conclusion
THE BASEBALL WRITERS' ASSOCIATION
carefully guarded against a premature revelation of its
Most Valuable Player Awards for 1950. Ken Smith locked
up each ballot in a safe-deposit box when It was received
in the mail, without opening one envelope. Usually the
announcement of the winner is held off until the day after
Thanksgiving. But, in order to avoid a leak, he decided to
spring the results on Thursday, October 26, a month
earlier than usual.
The sealed envelopes were taken to the office of Ford
Frick, National League president, in Manhattan's Radio
Qty, and opened. The tabulations were made and the news
was released to newspapers immediately.
The "lock and key" secrecy was unnecessary, of course.
The voting only confirmed a fact that was evident just
about every day of the baseball season that Rizzuto was
the Most Valuable Player in the American League for 1950.
The little fellow won in a landslide, being accorded sixteen
of the twenty-three first-place votes. Billy Goodman of
die Red Sox, the league batting-champion, was a distant
second with Yogi Berra, Yankee catcher, third. Goodman
158
A FOREGONE CONCLUSION 159
received four first-place designations and Berra the other
three. They finished in that order in the point tabulation,
too. First place was worth fourteen points, second nine,
third eight and on down to one point for tenth.
Phil's selection was no surprise to anyone though he
expressed amazement when a reporter phoned him at home
to break the good news.
"Me? No!" the modest midget gasped. "There must be
better players in this league than me! "
Phil shouted the word to Cora and the kids and they
began to yell and sing. "They staged a snake dance all
through the house," Phil says. "Everyone was kissing
everyone else and Cora waltzed around with the baby in
her arms."
The baby, Penelope Ann, had been bom in July. Phil
had hoped for a son, as he had when the other girls were
on their way. "My brother has a boy and each of my sisters
has a boy," he said after Penny arrived on July j. "Guess
Fm just never going to get a ball player in this family."
The MVP Award capped a long list of honors which
Phil had gained in 1950. He had been selected as the "Best
Dressed Athlete of 1950" by the Clothing Institute of
America; named as the "Sports Father of the Year" on
Father's Day in June; received an Austin sedan for being
selected as the "Most Popular Yankee" by the fans of the
Bronx; had been designated as the "Outstanding New
Jersey Athlete of the Year" and had won a $10,000 jew-
elled belt The Hickock Award as "Outstanding Pro
Athlete of 1950."
Aside from the glory, the Most Valuable Award meant
cash. Not directly, but the winning of baseball's highest
prize meant high-powered ammunition in his battle for a
substantial raise for 1951.
160 PHIL RIZZUTO
On November 28, 1950, precisely at n A.M., Rizzuto
walked Into the Squibb Building on fashionable Fifth
Avenue at 58th Street, and ascended twenty-nine floors to
the plush headquarters of the Yankees. Phil was ushered
Into the office of George Weiss and, after a brief discussion
with the club's general manager, emerged as the fourth-
Mghest-salaried ball player in the history of the New York
organization. Babe Ruth had been paid $80,000 per year,
Joe DIMaggio f 100,000, and Tommy Henrich $45,000.
Rizzuto minced happily atop the wall-to-wall carpeting,
feeling as though he were walking on clouds. In his hand
was a contract calling for $40,000 for the 1951 season the
greatest amount ever paid a man solely for playing short-
stop. Only Lou Boudreau, of all the shortfielders of all
time, had gotten more per annum, and at least half of his
$65,000 from the Cleveland Indians in 1949 was for han-
dling the role of manager.
The little fellow then stepped into an adjoining confer-
ence room to join Casey Stengel and a group of reporters
who were discussing the future of the Yankees. Phil quietly
took a seat on a wall-bench, smoothed the crease in the
trousers of his glen-plaid suit, and winked at the manager.
OF Case winked back and then, turning towards the news-
men, said jocularly, "Well about shortstop, I just dunno.
Seems as though we have quite a few likely-looking young-
sters coming up from the farm clubs. May have to look
over a few of them in case we need someone."
Then, nodding seriously in Phil's direction, "That is, in
about five years or so. I think this little fellow here is going
to be around for quite a while now. You know, when I
took over this club in 1949 they told me I had problems
and that the worst one was at shortstop. A lot of people
A FOREGONE CONCLUSION 161
around here told me Rizzuto was through. I more or less
believed "em then.
"But I guess he wasn't. All this little rascal has done is
miss two games in two years for me. He held my team to-
gether many a time when it should have fallen apart. I don't
know but what I would have been back in the minors with-
out the job he did for me. I told Weiss to give him a big
raise and I guess that came about. I have to be good to Riz-
zuto, he's been good to me."
Phil grinned modestly at the praise, then, changing the
subject to cover his embarrassment, offered to sell Casey a
suit.
He wasn't kidding, very much. Next to his family and
baseball, the clothing business is his life. For five winters
he has occupied himself as a salesman and good-will ambas-
sador for the American Shops, Inc., a large clothing firm
in Newark. He likes to keep busy and the money is good.
But, more important, he has been learning a business which
could provide a comfortable living for Cora and the kids
once his ball days are over.
He is on his way to realizing his ambition to become a
small-scale industrialist. The owner of the Newark estab-
lishment, grateful for the business which Phil's presence
brought hnn, will set up the littlest Yank in his own store
in New York City. Rizzuto, without putting up a cent, will
become a one-third owner of the place, the stock of which
is valued at a quarter of a million dollars.
It is his name and fame as a player which has made his
business career in Newark such a success. Bobby-soxers of
both sexes, are (in the jitterbug jargon) "gone" when they
see Phil. Little boys howl until their parents take them into
the American Shop so that they can touch Phil, talk to him
162 PHIL EJZZUTO
and get his autograph. Teen-aged girls, though hardly to
be classed as customers, clatter into the place in their saddle
shoes, jumping up and down like crazy. Some days it takes
the amiable, curly-haired little fellow fifteen minutes to
get through the crowds and into the store. He signs auto-
graphs on every conceivable surface, even the babushkas
which the delighted girls pull off their heads.
More important, Phil has sold suits. He has learned the
business buying, style, merchandising, tailoring, and fi-
nancing. He has been taught the difference between qudity
and inferior goods. In the language of the cloak and suit
trade, a poorer garment is called an "Eighty Six." Many a
time when Phil showed up at the start of a western trip
wearing a snazzy new suit he has nearly a hundred of
them Yankee players would josh him unmercifully, refer-
ring to the handsome garb as an "Eighty Sixer."
"I like the business and believe I can make good in it,"
he says of the retail clothing line. "IVe got to think of the
future. This big money in baseball doesn't last for too many
years. It took me a long time to get up in the bucks and
I might go downhill in a hurry. How many players have
you seen who were good one year, bad the next, and
through after that? Fm not kidding myself. Some day my
legs will go and they'll get some other guy who can cover
ground and make the double play better than I can.
I expect to be a successful cloak-and-suiter when Fm
through as a ball player. And I don't think I'll need my
name in the headlines on the sports pages to keep me in
business. Quality merchandise and a good deal for my
customers will take care of that."
All that, of course, is for the more distant future when
it will be "Phil Rizzuto, Proprietor." Stengel said this time
is five years away and he should be pretty close. Phil,
A FOREGONE CONCLUSION 163
thirty-two last September, should go on for five years more
in baseball provided both he and the world stay in one
piece.
There should be a great many more base hits ringing off
the bat of Phil Rizzuto in the clutch; more daring and suc-
cessful base-running ventures; hundreds more of those sen-
sational fielding plays which soothe the nerves of shattered
pitchers and win pennants and, of course, more top-bracket
contracts following conferences with the reluctant Mr.
Weiss.
Phil was the first Yankee to sign for 1951 and his inking
of the record pact was in the nature of a logistical triumph
for the general manager. Weiss wanted Rizzuto in the fold
first, so as to have a basis on which to argue with the rest
of the raise-demanding athletes who had brought two
straight pennants to Yankee Stadium. He told Rizzuto
exactly that in a talk prior to the final contract get-
together.
"I demanded a two-year contract first," Phil explained
to his friends after he had agreed to take the $40,000. "He
quickly squashed that. He said he might have to give others
a two-year deal if he gave me one. He insisted that no
player should be signed for more than one year.
"He said that what happened to Tommy Henrich might
happen to me," Phil related, "and that if I was unable to
play, then he'd have to pay me for a whole year for noth-
ing. I told him that was exactly the reason I was asking for
a two-year arrangement job security. But it was no go,"
Phil also argued for more money than he finally ac-
cepted. He had made $25,000 in 1949 and he blithely asked
Weiss to double the figure. He didn't expect him to do so,
of course.
"I tried to use Joe DiMaggio as a basis for my raise," Phil
164 PHIL E1ZZUTO
recalled. "I figured that if Joe was worth $100,000 a year
for what he had done in 1950 (DiMag hit .301 but had to
be benched for a week because of a slump) , and I was the
Most Valuable Player, then I figured to be worth at least
half as much as he would in 1 95 1 .
"But Weiss laughed me off. "People come to the ball
park to see him hit homers/ Weiss said. 'They don't come
in to see you bunt! ' "
Rizzuto accepted the refutation.
For one more year, probably no longer, the littlest Yan-
kee would have to wait before becoming the biggest one.
But with the eventual decline of the great slugger, Rizzuto
seems destined to become the top player of the top club
in baseball nominally and financially. Artistically, he al-
ready had superseded even DiMaggio as the most impor-
tant player in New York and in the American League.
The Scooter will carry the Yanks in the years to come.
The fan, hurrying through the Stadium turnstile, will settle
in his seat and look, not to center field for the star, but to
the wide area between third base and shortstop. Other
Yankee followers, finding their comfortable parlor chair
and the appropriate channel, will watch their television
screens for the little man who's always there.
Won't have a bit of trouble finding him, either. As
Patricia Ann Rizzuto, aged seven, says, "It's easy to pick
out daddy on the television. He's the littlest one on the
field!"
THE MOST VALUABLE PLAYER
AMERICAN LEAGUE 1950
Selected by the Baseball Writers' Assmatim of America
Phil Rizzuto was elected most valuable player of 1950 In the American
League and received the Kenesaw Mountain Landis award.
Three baseball writers from each of the eight cities listed ten players
in the order of their value. A first place choice counted fourteen points
while any man second on a list received nine points, with eight points for
a third spot and so on down to one point for being named tenth.
The tabulation:
Player 1
Rizzuto, New York. . 16
Goodman, Boston. ... 4
Berra, New York 3
Kell Detroit...
234
5 1 1
5 5 1
5 2 1
433
5
4
2
7
6
1
3
7
7
1
3
8
1
1
4
9
10
2
Total
284
180
146
127
Lemon, Cleveland ...
Dropo, Boston
1 3 4
52
3
1
2
7
2
1
1
5
2
102
75
Raschi, New York. . .
Doby, Cleveland ....
DiMaggio, New York
\Vertz Detroit
2
1 1
1 1 3
1 1 1
3
1
1
?
2
1
I
3
3
1
1
3
1
4
4
1
1
1
1
1
3
63
57
54
50
Evers, Detroit
1 1
1
3
1
1
T
38
Carrasquel, Chicago..
Trout, Detroit
- 1
Tf
1
1
1
1
1
1
1
21
71
DiMaggio, Boston ...
Noren, Washington. .
Doerr, Boston
1
1
1
1
1
2
2
1
1
17
16
H
Mize, New York
Priddy Detroit
1
1
1
1
1
1
11
11
Rosen, Cleveland. ...
Yost, Washington ...
Parnell, Boston
* '
1
1
1
1
T
3
11
8
7
Ford, New York ....
Williams, Boston
Garver, St. Louis
Stephens, Boston
Houtteman, Detroit..
Lollar, St. Louis
~
I
1
1
1
1
2
1
1
3
1
7
7
6
6
6
4
Lopat, New York. . .
Wood, St. Louis. ...
1
1
t
2
Dente, \Vashmgton . .
i
1
Philley, Chicago
165
166 PHIL RIZZUTO
Honorable Mention
Rosen, Cleveland, and Stephens, Boston, 9; Evers, Detroit, and Raschi,
New York, 8; Priddy and Wertz, Detroit, and Williams, Boston, 7;
Dropo and DiAlaggio, Boston, and Noren, Washington, 6; Carrasquel,
Chicago, Easter and Wynn, Cleveland, Ford, New York, and Garver, St.
Louis, 5; Fain, Philadelphia, Houtteman, Detroit, Loliar, St. Lx>uis, and
Mize, New* York, 4; Bauer, Cpleman and DiMaggio, New York, Doby,
Cleveland, Lehner, Philadelphia, Lipon and Trout, Detroit, Reynolds,
New York, and Yost, Washington, 3; Brissie, Chapman and Hooper,
Philadelphia, Ferrick, New York, Kell, Detroit, Lemon, Cleveland, and
Parnell, Boston, 2; and Berra and Lopat, New York, Doerr, Boston, Cole-
man, Lenhardt, Moss and Stimweiss, St. Louis, Groth, Detroit, Hudson,
and Mele, Washington, Joost, Philadelphia, and Robinson and Scar-
borough, Chicago, 1.
COMMITTEE
Chester L. Smith, Chairman
BOSTON John M. Malaney, Post; Joe Cashman, Record; Edwin M.
Rumill, Christian Science Monitor.
CHICAGO Warren Brown, Herald- American; Edgar Munzel, Sim and
"Times; Neil Gazel, Daily Ne*ws.
CLEVELAND Edward J, McAuley, News; Frank Gimmons, Press;
Harry N. Jones, Plain Dealer.
DETROIT H. G. Salsktger, News; Leo Macdonell, Times; Lyall Smith,
Free Press.
NEW YORK Dan Daniel, World-Telegram and Sun; Joe Trimble, Daily
News; Edward Sinclair, Herald Tribune.
PHILADELPHIA Arthur H. Morrow, Inquirer; Raymond Kelly, Bul-
letin; Edward Delaney, Daily Nrws*
ST. LOUIS Raymond J. Gillespie, Star-Times; Dent McSkimming,
Post-Dispatch; Harry Mitauer, Globe-Democrat.
WASHINGTON Shirley Povich, Post; Burton Hawkins, Star; Robert R.
Addie, Times-Herald.
APPENDIX 167
AMERICAN LEAGUE
MOST VALUABLE PLAYER AWARDS
Chalmers Award Highest possible total, 64pmts
YEAR PLAYER CLUB POINTS
1911 Tyras R. Cobb, Detroit Tigers 64
1912 Tris E. Speaker, Boston Red Sox 59
1913 Walter P. Johnson, Washington Senators 54
1914 Edward T. Collins, Philadelphia Athletics 63
(DISCONTINUED)
League Aimrd Highest possible total, 64 points
1922 George H. Sisler, St. Louis Browns 59
1923 George H. Ruth, New York Yankees 64
1924 Walter P. Johnson, Washington Senators 55
1925 Roger T. Peckinpaugh, Washington Senators 45
1926 George H. Bums, Cleveland Indians 63
1927 H. Louis Gehrig, New York Yankees 56
1928 Gordon S. Cochrane, Philadelphia Athletics 53
(DISCONTINUED)
Baseball Writers' Association Award
Highest possible total, 80 points
1931 Robert M. Grove, Philadelphia Athletics 78
1932- James E. Foxx, Philadelphia Athletics 75
1933-~James E. Foxx, Philadelphia Athletics 74
1934 Gordon S. Cochrane, Detroit Tigers 67
1935 Henry Greenberg, Detroit Tigers 80
1936 H. Louis Gehrig, New York Yankees 73
1937 Charles L. Gehringer, Detroit Tigers 78
1938 James E. Foxx, Boston Red Sox 305
1939 Joseph P. DiMaggio, New Y9rk Yankees 280
1940 Henry Greenberg, Detroit Tigers 292
1941 Joseph P. DiMaggio, New York Yankees 291
1942 Joseph L. Gordon, New York Yankees 270
1943 Spurgeon F. Chandler, New York Yankees 246
1944 Harold Newhouser, Detroit Tigers , 236
1945 Harold Newhouser, Detroit Tigers 236
1946 Theodore S. Williams, Boston Red Sox , 224
1947 Joseph P. DiMaggio, New York Yankees 202
1948 Louis Boudreau, Cleveland Indians 324
1949 Theodore S. Williams, Boston Red Sox 274
1950 Philip F. Rizzuto, New York Yankees , 284
* System changed so that highest possible total became 336 points in-
(Courtesy of The Little Red Book of Baseball, New York City)
168
PHIL RIZZUTO
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APPENDIX 169
THE MOST VALUABLE PLAYER AWARD
'NATIONAL LEAGUE 1950
Selected by the Baseball Writers* Association of America
Jim Konstanty was elected most valoable player of 1950 in the Na-
tional League and received the Kenesaw Mountain Landis award.
Three baseball writers from each of the eight cities listed ten players in
the^ order of their value. A first place choice counted fourteen points
while any man second on a list received nine points, with eight points for
a third spot and so on down to one point for being named tenth.
flayer 123456789 10 Total
Konstanty, Philadelphia 18 3 1 286
Musial, St. Louis 16531213 158
Stanky, New York 25331122 I 144
Ennis, Philadelphia 422421 104
Kiner, Pittsburgh 111127 111 91
Hamner, Philadelphia.. 212 2 13 179
Roberts, Philadelphia. . 1131 52 68
Hodges, Brooklyn 222111 55
Snider, Brooklyn 2 1 1 222 53
Maglie, New York.... 1 2 1 2 1 1 3 51
BlackweH, Cincinnati.. 1 2 1 1 1 1 3 41
Pafko, Chicago . . __ __ i j j 2 1 4 1 38
Campanella, Brooklyn, 1 1 1 3 1 2 29
Seminick, Philadelphia. 1 1 - 1 2 25
Robinson, Brooklyn. . . 1 1 3 2 23
Simmons, Philadelphia. 2 1 2 22
Roe, Brooklyn... ; 1 1 -. 15
Kluszewski, Cincinnati. 2 1 4 14
Spahn, Boston 2 2 14
Newcombe, Brooklyn. . 1 1 1 14
Sain, Boston 2 2 12
Gordon, Boston 1 1 11
Hearn,NewYork 1 2 10
Reese, Brooklyn 1 1 8
Waitkus, Philadelphia.. 1 8
Elliott, Boston __. _____ i __ 2 8
Torgeson, Boston 1 6
Jethroe, Boston 1 6
Sauer, Chicago 1 1 5
Bickford, Boston 1 1 4
Furillo, Brooklyn 1 4
Westrum, New York.. 1 3
Sisler, Philadelphia.... 1 2
Thompson, New York. 1 2
}ansen, New York 1 2
ones, Philadelphia 1 1
24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 24 1416
170 PHIL RIZZUTQ
Homrabk Mention
Seminick, Philadelphia, and Spahn, Boston, 10; Campanella, Brooklyn,
and Blackwell, Cincinnati, 9; Sauer, Chicago, 8; Robinson, Brooklyn, Cox,
Brooklyn, Waitkus, Philadelphia, and Roberts, Philadelphia, 7; Bickford,
Boston, Pafko, Chicago, Maglie, New York, Hamner, Philadelphia,
Slaughter, St* Louis, Elliott, Boston, Dark, New York, Jansen, New York
and Schoendienst, St. Louis, 6; Sain, Boston, Snider, Brooklyn, Hearn,
New York, and Kiner, Pittsburgh, 5; Reese, Brooklyn, Kluszewski, Cin-
cinnati, Wyrostek, Cincinnati, Westram, New York, Simmons, Phil-
adelphia and Jones, Philadelphia, 4; Jethroe, Boston and Hiller, Chicago, 3;
Torgeson, Boston, W. Copper, Boston, Newcombe, Brooklyn, Smalley,
Chicago, Ennis, Philadelphia, Ashburn, Philadelphia, Sisler, Philadelphia,
and Konstanty, Philadelphia, 2; Gordon, Boston, Palica, Brooklyn,
Klippstein, Chicago, Wehmeier, Cincinnati, Adcock, Cincinnati, Lock-
man, New York, Thompson, New York, Thomson, New York, Stanky,
New York, D. Mueller, New York, Westlake, Pittsburgh, Pollet, St.
Louis, Musial, St. Louis, Marion, St. Louis, and Lanier, St. Louis, L
COMMITTEE
Chester L. Smith, Chairman
BOSTON -Roger Birtwell, Globe; Gordon Campbell, Traveler; Robert
Ajemian, American.
BROOKLYN Harold C. Burr, Eagle; Gus Steiger, Daily Mirror; Roscoe
McGowen, Times.
CHICAGO John C. Hoffman, Sun and Times; Edward Burns, Tribune;
Dan Desmond, Herald-American.
CINCINNATI Tom Swope, Post; Frank Y. Grayson, Times-Star; Lou
Smith, Enquirer.
NEW FORK James P. Dawson, Times; James McCuUey, Daily News;
Barney Kremenko, Journal-American.
PHILADELPHIA -Stan Baumgartner, Inquirer; Grant Doherty, Daily
News; Franklin W. Yeutter, Bulletin.
PriTSBURGH--Ch*rles J. Doyle, Sun-Telegraph; Lester J. Biederaian,
Press; Jack Hernon, Post-Gazette.
ST. LOUIS Martin J. Haley, Globe-Denwcrat; W. Vernon Tietjen, Star-
Times; Robert W. Broeg, Post-Dispatch.
APPENDIX 171
NATIONAL LEAGUE
MOST VALUABLE PLAYER AWARDS
Chalmers Award Highest possible total, 64 paints
YEAR PLAYER CLUB POINTS
1911 Frank Schulte, Chicago Cubs 29
1912 Lawrence J. Doyle, New York Giants. 48
1913 Jacob E. Daubert, Brooklyn Dodgers 50
1914 John J. Evers, Boston Braves 50
(DISCONTINUED)
League Award Highest possible total, SO points
1924 Arthur C. Vance, Brooklyn Dodgers , . 74
1925 Rogers Hornsby, St. Louis Cardinals 73
1926 Robert A. O'Farrell, St. Louis Cardinals 79
1927 Paul G. Waner, Pittsburgh Pirates 72
1928 James L. Bottomley, St. Louis Cardinals , 76
1929 Rogers Hornsby, Chicago Cubs 60
(DISCONTINUED)
Baseball Writers' Association Award
1931 Frank F. Frisch, St. Louis Cardinals 65
1932 Charles H. Klein, Philadelphia Phils 78
1933 Carl O. Hubbell, New York Giants 77
1934 Jerome H. Dean, St. Louis Cardinals. 78
1935 Charles L. Hartnett, Chicago Cubs 75
1936 Carl O, Hubbell, New York Giants 60
1937 Joseph M. Medwick, St. Louis Cardinals 70
1938 Ernest N. Lombardi, Cincinnati Reds 229 *
1939 William H. Walters, Cincinnati Reds 303
J940 Frank A. McCormick, Cincinnati Reds 274
1941- Adolph Camilli, Brooklyn Dodgers 300
1942 Morton C. Cooper, St. Louis Cardinals 263
1943 Stanley F. Musial, St. Louis Cardinals 267
1944 Martin W. Marion, St. Louis Cardinals 190
1945 Philip J. Cavarretta, Chicago Cubs 279
1946 Stanley F. Musial, St. Louis Cardinals 319
1947 Robert L Elliott, Boston Braves 205
1948 Stanley F. Musial, St. Louis Cardinals 303
1949 Jackie R. Robinson, Brooklyn Dodgers 264
1950 C. James Konstanty, Philadelphia Phils 286
* System changed, so that highest possible point total became 336 points
instead of 80.
(Courtesy of The Little Red Book of Baseball, New York City)
172
PHIL RIZZUTO
i
- os o GO r so O
fsj J> Tf CO Tf O s *
APPENDIX 173
THE BASEBALL WRITERS' ASSOCIATION
1950 Membership
President: Chester L. Smith, Pittsburgh Press
Vice President: Franklin W. Yeutter, Philadelphia Bulletin
Secretary-Treasurer: Ken Smith, New York Daily Mirror
Board of Directors: Charles J. Doyle, Pittsburgh Sun Telegraph
John C. Hoffman, Chicago Sun-Times
Rud Rennie, New York Herald Tribune
Stan Baumgartner, Philadelphia Inquirer
(Numerals after name indicate year in which member joined the
Association)
* Sports Editor
BOSTON
American: Bill Grimes '33, Austen Lake '30, Herbert A. Finnegan
'39, Michael Gilloly '48, Robert Ajemian '49, Leo White '49, Sam
Brogna '50.
Globe: Jerry Nason * '36, Melville E. Webb '08, Gene Mack '21, Hy
Hurwitz '34, Harold W. Kaese '34, Roger Birtwell '36, John F.
Berry '42, Robert Holbrook '47, Clifford Keane '50,
Herald: Edward Costello * '42, Ed Cunningham '20, Bill Cunning-
ham '28, Ralph Wheeler '42* Henry F. McKenna '44, Will doney
'46, Victor Johnson '48.
Post: Gerry Hern* '46, John M, Malaney '21, Robert Coyne '28,
Gerald W. Moore '33, Howell D. Stevens '39, Albert Hirshberg
'42, Joseph McKeimey '42, Paul Hines '49, William Listom '50.
Record: Sam Cohen * '31, Joseph Cashman '28, Dave Egan '32, John
Brooks '34, John Gilloly '36, Stephen B. O'Leary '40, Matthew
Keany '41, Murray Kramer '48, Alexander H. MacLean '50.
Traveler: Arthur Siegal '35, George C. Carens '14, John J. Drohan
'28, Gordon Campbell '43.
Christian Science Monitor: Webster J. Morse* '36, Edwin M.
Rumill '30.
Advertiser: Michael McNarnee '32.
Associated Press: William R. King '29, Joseph Kelley '46.
International News Service: James Bagley '35, Al Blackman '48.
La Notiz&a: John Garro * '33.
United Press: Jack Frost '46, Henry Minott '47.
Patriot-Ledger: Roger Berry '50, Linwood Raymond '50.
Telegram (Worcester): Paul N. Johnson '50, Roy J. Mumpton '50.
174 PHIL RIZZUTO
BROOKLYN
Eagle: Lou Niss * '30, James J. Murphy '20, Tommy Holmes '23,
Harold C. Burr '28, Benjamin Gold '40*
Jomnal American: Al C. Palma *i8.
Long Island Journal Advocate: Jack Schwartz * '39.
Long Island Daily Press: Michael Lee * '39, Jack Lang '46, John
Powers '49.
Long Island Star Journal: Louis F. O'Neil * '31, George C. Burton
'44, Stephen Rogers '45.
CHICAGO
Daily News: John P. Carmichael * '32, Francis J. Powers '17, How-
ard L. Roberts '35, Joseph Rein '46, Neil R. Gazel '50.
Herald-American: Leo H. Fischer* '24, Warren Brown '22,
James E. Enright '43, Dan T. Desmond '45, William H. Becker
'45-
Sim md Times: Dick Hackenberg * '47, Gene Kessler '23, John C.
Hoffman '24, Edgar H. Munzel '29, Seymour V. Shub '48.
Tribune: Arch Ward * '28, Irving Vaughan *u, Edward H. Burns
'27, Howard T. Martin '40* Edward Prell '35.
Associated Press: Charles Dunldey '09, Charles Chamberlain '42,
Jerry Liska '45.
International News Service: Ken Opstein '50.
United Press: Edward Sainsbury '47.
Howe News Bureau: John S. Phillips '23, Fred K. Howe '34.
Polish Daily News: Ted A. Tryba '43.
Baseball Digest: Herbert F. Simons '28.
American League Service Bureau: Earl J. Hilligan '38.
CINCINNATI
Enquirer: Lou Lawhead * '21, Harold E. Russell '18, Lou Smith '36,
Bob Husted '46, Saul Straus '50.
Post: Tom Swope '14, Clarence Wiese '43.
Times-Star: Nixson Denton * '37, Frank Y. Grayson '26, Walter
Brinkman '26, George Bristol '40, Earl Lawson '49.
Associated Press: Claude Wolff '48, Harold Harrison '49.
Daily News (Dayton): Si Burick * '46.
Journal (Dayton): Ritter Collet '47.
CLEVELAND
News: Ed F. Bang * '08, Herman Goldstein '22, Edward J. McAuley
'28, Hal Lebovitz '47, Regis McAuley '49.
APPENDIX 175
Plain Dealer: Gordon Cobbledlck * '28, James E. Doyle '27, Milton
Ellis '35, Fred G. Reinert '41, Harry N. Jones '47, Charles Heaton
'48, Ed Katz '50.
Press: Franklin Lewis * '30, Frank Gibbons '37, Robert F. Yonkers
'41, Jack dowser '41, Milton J. Lapine '44, Louis F. Darvas '48.
Associated Press: James Sibbison '49, Richard H. Smith '49.
Central Press Association: Walter L. Johns * '39, William Ritt '31.
Szabadsag (Liberty): Zoltan Gombos '34.
International News Service: Adolph Ponikvar '47, Howard Babcock
>
United Press: Richard L. Dugan '45, Milton B. Dolinger '47, Robert
Morrison '50.
Be aeon- Journal: James Schlemmer '47.
DETROIT
Free Press: Lyall Smith * '44, James Zerilli '35, Thomas Devine '42,
Robert E. Latshaw '43, Richard T. Thompson '46, Frank L.
Williams '47, James B. Eathorne '49.
News: Harry G. Salsinger * '09, Sam Greene '23, Harry F. Leduc
'22, Harry V. Wade '22, Watson N. Spoelstra '39, Paul M.
Chandler '47, Lee Kavetski '50.
Times: Robert Murphy * '35, Leo Macdonell '27, Charles P. Ward
'29, Edgar Hayes '32, Lewis Walter '35, Harold Kahl '38, John C
Manning '40, W. E. Anderman '40, George E. Van '43, George
Maskin '48, Robert McClellan '49.
Associated Press: David Wilkie '26, Robert R. Sieger '45, Charles
Cain '49.
International News Service: Frank R. Snyder * '45.
United Press: Jerry Le Donne '50.
Detroit A. C. News: E. A. Batchelor, Sr. '08.
Daily Star: Douglas Vaughan '39.
News- Advertiser: Harry M. Dayton '19.
Journal: Thomas Mercy '49.
NEW YORK
Compass: William Mahoney * '50, Herbert Goren '36, Jack Orr '48.
Daily Mirror: Dan F. Parker * '25, Gus Steiger '24, Ken Smith '27,
James S. Hurley '28, Fred Weatherly '39, Ben Epstein '45, Clar-
ence Cassin '46, Leonard Lewin '48.
'48.
176 PHIL RIZZUTO
Herald Tribune: Robert B. Cooke * '38, Rud Rennie '25, Walter
W. Smith '29, Al Laney '37, Jesse P. Abramson '37, Irving T.
Marsh '42, William Lauder, Jr. '45, Harold Rosenthal '48, Edward
Sinclair '48.
Journal- Amen cm: Max Kase * '29, Lester Rice 'n, Frank Graham
'15, Bill Conim '24, Hugh Bradley '26, Harry Glaser '28, Lewis
Burton '29, Michael Gaven '38, Barney Kremenko "46.
Morning Telegraph: Ira Seebacher * '35, Thomas O'Reilly '41.
Post: Ike Gellis * '49, Henry H. Singer '23, Bert Gumpert '32,
Leonard Cohen '33, Jerry Mitchell '34, James Cannon '37, Edward
Wade '39, Milton Gross '41, Al Buck '42, Arch Murray '43, Sid
Friedlander '50.
Times: Raymond J. Kelly* '20, James P. Dawson '18, John Dre-
binger '23, Arthur Daley '26, Roscoe McGowen '27, Louis Effrat
'35, Laurence J. Spiker '39, Joseph Nichols '44, Joseph M. Sheehan
'46.
World-Telegram: Joe Williams* '14, Edward T. Murphy '19,
Joseph P. Val* '32, Daniel M. Daniel '13, Pat McDonough '32,
Willard Mullin '35, Joe King '40, William Roeder '45, Lester
Bromberg '47.
Associated Press: Ted Smits * '47, Gayle Talbot '32, Ted Meier '37,
Whitney Martin '39, Jack Hand '44, Joseph Reichler '44, Hugh
S. Fullerton, Jr. '46, Harold J. Classen '48, Murray Rose '48.
Associated Press Features: Frank Eck * '33, Tom Paprocki '31,
James Becker '47.
International News Service: Lawton Carver * '35, Pat Robinson '21,
Bob Considine '33.
United Press: Leo H. Petersen * '39, Jack Cuddy '32, Steve Snider
'37, Oscar Fraley '40, Carl W. Lunquist '42, Milton Richman '46,
Fred Down '47, Norman Miller '48, Stan Optowsky '48.
Newspaper Enterprise Association: Harry Grayson* '33, Al Ver-
meer '45, Edward Mills '47.
La Prensa: Carlos F. Ferro '40.
// Progresso: Joseph Arrata II '48, John Billi '48.
Daily Worker: Lester Rodney * '39, Charles Dexter '37, William
Mardo '46.
Jewish Daily Forward: Jay Grayson '30.
Ellas Baseball Bureau: Lester Goodman '19.
Baseball Magazine: Clifford Bloodgood '23.
George Mathew Adams Service: Frank Leonard '18.
North American Newspaper Alliance: John Wheeler '09, Grandand
Rice '12, Lawrence Perry '45.
Renters: Harry J. Hennessy '41.
APPENDIX 177
Christy Walsh Syndicate: Christy Walsh '20.
United Features: John Plerottd '44.
National League Service Bureau: Charles Segar '20.
PHILADELPHIA
Bulletin: Edwin J. Pollock '18, Donald Donaghey '27, Franklin W.
Yeutter '38, Jerome Carson '43, Raymond Kelly '46, Hugh Brown
'50, Dick Cresap '50.
Daily News: Lansing McCurley * '25, Edward Delaney '30, Grant
Doherty '49.
Inquirer: S. O. Grauley '09, John Webster '27, Stan Baumgartner
'28, David E. Wilson '29, Arthur H. Morrow '44, Allen Lewis '50.
Associated Press: Orlo Robertson '44, Charles G. Welsh, Jr. '44,
Ralph Bernstein '50.
United Press: Russ Green '47, Albert Stees '50.
PITTSBURGH
Post-Gazette: Albert W. Abrams * '28, Ed F. Baffinger '09, Gilbert
Remley '25, Jack Sell '28, Jack Hernon '42, James H. Jordan '44,
Vince Johnson '46, Dan McGibbeny, Jr. '48.
Press: Chester L. Smith* '21, Jack Berger '25, Fred W. Landucci
'32, Lester J. Biederman '33, Paul A. R. Kurtz '36, Harry Fairfield
'42, Albert H. Tederstrom '46, Robert F. X. Drum '47.
Sun-Telegraph: Harry Keck* '15, Charles J. Doyle '15, Thomas
Birks '29, James Miller '35, Philip Grabowski '39, Jack Henry
'42, Jack Burnley '48.
Tri-State News: John L. Hernon * '21.
Associated Press: Robert W. Temple '50, James Holton '50.
International News Service: Troy Gordon '48.
United Press: Rudolph Cernkovic '45.
Daily News: Merril Granger '44.
ST. Louis
Globe Democrat: Robert L. Burnes * '37, Willis E. Johnson '09,
Glen L. Wallar *io, Martin J. Haley '21, Raymond V. Smith '26,
William Fairbairn '41, Reno Hahn '44, Harry Mitauer '46, John
Rice '47, William Kerch '50.
Post-Dispatch: J. Roy Stockton* '22, J. Ed Wray '09, Herman
Wecke '12, Dick Farrington '25, William J. McGoogan '27, Dent
McSkimming '27, Lloyd A. McMaster '35, Robert C. Morrison
'37, Harold W. Flachsbart '39, Robert W. Broeg '42* Harold J.
Tuthill '45, Amadee Wohlschlaeger '47, Neal Russo '50.
178 PHIL RIZZUTO
Star-Times: Sid C. Keener* '13, Ray J. Gillesple '23, W. Vemon
TIetjen '38, Raymond Nelson '39, Alvin T. Barnes, Jr. '47, Marion
O. Milton '47, William J. Fleischman '49, Robert Devore '50.
The Sporting News: Edgar G. Brands * '28, Ernest J. Lanigan '08,
Paul A. Rickart '31, Arthur Plainbeck '36, Carl T. Felker '37,
Franz J. Wippold '38, Oscar Kahn '43, Clifford Kachline '44,
Oscar Ruhl '45, Charles C. Spink '46, Lowell Reidenbaugh '48,
Leonard Gettelson '48.
East St. Louis Journal: Ellis J. Veech * '35, A. Edward Hagan '49.
Associated Press: Thomas Yarbrough '46, Allan Merritt '47, Nello
Cassai '50.
International News Service: Joseph Oppenhekner '50.
United Press: Stanton G. Mockler '44, Paul T. Dix '47.
WASHINGTON
Daily News: Everett G. Gardner* '48, David Reque '45, David
Slattery '50.
Post: Bus Ham* '45, Shirley Povich '25, William Ahlberg '47,
Morris Siegel '48.
Star: Charles M. Egan * '50, John B. Keller '19, Francis E. Stann
'33, Lewis F. Atcbuson '35, Burton Hawkins '37, Merrill W. Whit-
tlesey, Jr. '47, George S. Clark '49.
Times-Herald: Al Costello '36, Robert R. Addie '42, Charles W.
Barbour '49, Robert J. Wentworth '49.
Associated Press: Arthur L. Edson '47, Joseph Ives '49.
International News Service: William J. Kerwin '50.
United Press: Ernest Barcella '37.
Gazette: Jack Tulloch '30.
ASSOCIATE MEMBERS
Fred J. Bendel "25, Hy Goldberg '30, Paul Horowitz '49, William
Dougherty '50, Ed Friel '50, Newark-Evening News; James L.
Ogle '32, Newark Star-Ledger; Joseph Knack '50, Toledo Blade.
FOREIGN
Pedro Gailiana, Habana El Crisol; Humberto B. O'Byrne, Diario de
la Costa (Colombia)*
HONORARY MEMBERS
Boston: Victor O. Jones '33, A. J. Rooney '21, Ford Sawyer '21,
Les Stout '24.
Brooklyn: Frank C. Ferguson, Clinton Hoard '18, William McCul-
lough '29, Harold Parrott '34, Joseph L. Roberts '28, Murray
Robinson '23, Lee Scott '27, Len F. Wooster '09.
APPENDIX 179
Chicago: Will Harridge, Ralph W. Cannon '27, James Crusinberry
'08, James T. Gallagher '33, William P. Hayes '20, Harold John-
son *io, Marvin W. McCarthy '30, Harry McNamara '24, Steward
Owen '32, Oscar Reichow '10, Thomas Siler '39.
Cincinnati: Bob Newhall '19, Charles O'Connor 'n Frank W.
Rostock '09, Bob Saxton '37,
Cleveland: Stuart M. Bell '20, WilHam G. Evans '23, Howard Pres-
ton '39, Dan Taylor '22, Eugene J. Whitney '32, Thomas L. Ter-
rell *io, Alex Zirin '39.
Detroit: Malcolm Bingay, W. W. Edgar '24, Doc Hoist '30, Charles
A. Hughes '08, J. W. Kenney '39, H. A. Montgomery '22.
New York: John A. Hydler, Ford C Frick '23, Jose Aixala, Jr. '38,
Christie Bohnsack '21, William E. Brandt '12, Edward T. Bran-
nick '36, George W. Daley '13, Stanley Frank '32, Earl H. Ferris
'22, Nat Fleischer 'n, Harry Forbes '37, Alan J. Gould '23, James
M. Kahn '25, William Kane '32, John F. Keiran '22, George KJrk-
sey '28, F. C. Lane '14, John Lardner '35, Frederick G. Lieb *n,
Fred Linder, Stanley Lomax '26, Henry P. McLemore '35, Wil-
liam J. Manley '20, Arthur Mann '27, Tom Meany '24, Paul
Mickelson '29, Arthur E. Patterson '39, Arthur Perrin '34, George
E. Phair '19, Quentin Reynolds '31, Garry Schumacher '23, Jack
Smith '36, Frank Wallace '26, Will Wedge '21, Wilbur Wood
'13, Stanley Woodward '34, Richards Vidmer '22, Edward Zelt-
ner '34.
'Philadelphia: Joseph C. Dey '28, Bill Dooly '25, William Duncan
'30, James Gantz '10, J* Herbert Good '32, Clair Hare '26, Al
Horwits '26, Ross Kaufman 'n, James F. Keirans *io, John L
Kolbmann '18, Joseph Labrum '22, Connie Mack, Robert T* Paul
'25, Cy Peterman '23, Harry Robert '24, Stoney McLinn *o8,
Thomas D. Richter '10, Frank Ryan '25, A. E. P. Sensenderfer
'18, Joseph Tumelty '27, WilHam G. Weart '37.
Pittsburgh: Fred P. Alger '23, Claire M. Burcky '30, Dr. A. R,
Cratty '09, D. E. Benjamin '28, Ray H. Gallivan '35, Richard Guy
'09, George S. Jennings '24, James J. Long '09, James M. McAfee
'16, James F. Murray '26, WilHam P. Schragen '27, Carl Shatto
'24, Fred S. Wertenbach '30, WilHam A. White '17.
St. Lows: Cullen Cain '21, George Henger '16, Damon Kerby '27,
Clarence F. Lloyd '10, San Muchnick '26, Leighton Rudedge '29*
Maurice O. ShevHn '30, J. G. Taylor Spink '12.
Washington: H. C. Byrd '16, Kirk Miller '23, Frank F. O'Neill '11,
Denman Thompson '15, Frank H. Young '22.
Gus Falzer, Newark, N. J.; Joseph McGlone, Providence, R. 1^
Al Lang, St. Petersburg, Florida.
Index
(Baseball clubs are indexed by their locations* Ex.: Ne<w York
Yankees)
Aleman, Miguel, 109
Angotti, Dominick (uncle), 3,
4> 9^ I2 > 2 9
Angotti, Rose, see Rizzuto,
Rose
Barrow, Ed, 25, 36, 37, 42, 48,
49* I2 7
Baseball Writers' Association
of America, 143-44, 158
Bassett, E. D., 27
Bassett, Va., 24-30
Belloise, Steve, 91
Bennett, Dr. G. E., 131, 135
Benzenberg, Ralph, 16, 20
Berra, Yogi, 122, 158-60
Bevens, Bill, 101, 125,, 129
Bodie, Gary, 71-73
Bonham, Ernie, 63, 105
Boston Braves, 135-36
Boston Red Sox,, 1013, I2 9?
137, 142
Boudreau, Lou, 142, 150, 160
Brooklyn Dodgers, 56-64, 143
180
Brown, Bobby, 99 IOI T 106,
1 1 8, 122, 140
Candini, Milo, 31
Casey, Hugh, 57, 59, 61, 62, 84
Castrataro, Jimmy, 16
Ceres, Jim, 67, 68
Chandler, Happy, 57, 112
Chandler, Spud, 60, 101, 122,
129
Chapman, Sam, 84
Christofordis, Anton^ 90-91
Cleveland Indians, 129, 15253
Coff ey, Jack, 2 1
Coleman, Jerry, 137, 140, 152
Corbitt, Claude, 30-31
Corriden, Johnny, 120, 124-
25, 126
Coscarart, Pete, 59
Cronin, Joe, 147
Crosetti, Frank, 36, 41, 45, 52,
54, 105, 134
INDEX
181
Daily News, New York, 150
Davis, Curt, 60
DePhillips, Tony, 2 1
Detroit Tigers, 151
Dickey, Bill, 52, 63, 89-90, 95,
ioiff., 105, 119, 134
DiMaggio, Dominick, 72-76,
88-89, 9
DiMaggio, Joe, 52, 53, 59-60,
62, 63, 82, 88, 95, 103,
106, in, 119, 121 ff., 129,
131, 136, 140, 144, 146,
147, 157, 1 60, 163-64
Donald, Atley, 61, 105
Doerr, Bobby, 137
Dressen, Chuck, 120
Dresser, Betty, 66
Durocher, Leo, 56-58, 60, 62-
63, 124
Edwards, Bruce, 126
Egan (Red Sox scout), 19
Embree, Red, 129
Esselborn, Cora, see Rizzuto,
Cora
Esselborn, Emil, 67-68
Essick, Bill, 32
Etten,, Nick, 101
Feller, Bob, 78-79, 104
Ferrick, Tom, 152
Fitzsimmons, Fred, 61
Fletcher, Art, 23, 24, 49, 62
Floral Park, L. L, 17-19
FrickjFord, 57, 158
Furey, Ralph, 20
Garcia, Mike, 148
Gehrig, Lou, 53, 147
Glendale Browns, 17
Gomez, Lefty, 43, 59, 70
Goodman, Billy, 158-60
Gordon, Joe, 36, 41, 44, 46-
47, 49, 51 ff., 58, 59, 63,
88, 95, 96, 101, 106, 118,
121
Graham, Jack, 3 r
Greenberg, Hank, 150-51
Grieve, BUI, 59
Halas, George, 87
Hamilton, Tom, 81
Harris, Bucky, 120-21, 123-
24, 127-28, 129, 130, 133,
134
Hassett, Buddy, 83
Henrich, Tommy, 52, 55, 59,
62, 101, n8ff., 124, 126,
146, 147, 157, 160, 163
Herman, Billy, 59
Hermanski, Gene, 3-4
Hitchcock, Billy, 53, 80
Honolulu Stadium, 88-90
HubbeU, Carl, 56
Hudson, Sid, 153
Hutchlnson, Freddy, 78-79,
84-85, 86
Jenkins, Cap, 91-92
Johnson, Billy, 31, 119, 122,
140
Johnson, Bob, 85
Johnson, Doctor, 28-29
Johnson, Don, 123
Joost, Eddie, 141-42, 148, 149
Kansas City team, 33-39
Karpel, Herb, 27, 112, 113
Kell, George, 151
Keller, Charley, 52, 59, 62-63,
95, 101, 102, 119, 121,
122-23, 146
Kinder, Ellis, 137
Knott, Jack, 154
182
INDEX
KricheB, Pad, 20, 22-25, 26,
28
Kryfaoski, Dick, 140
Kunitz, AI, 15-22,24
Landis, K. M., 57^
Lavagetto, Cookie, 125
Lemon, Bob, 152
Leonard, Dutch, 153
Lesnevich, Gus, 91
Undell, Johnny, 119, 122-23,
Logan, Fred, 43
Long Island Press, 17, 18
McCarthy, Joe, 36, 44, 46-47,
49-52, 60, 61, 79, 8 1, 94,
97, 98, iooff., 120
McCormick, Frank, 4-5
McCosky, Barney, 90
McCoy, Benny, 73-76, 84, 86
McGowan, Bill, 59
Mack, Connie, 84
Mack, George, 20
MacPhail, Larry, 56, 94-95,
99, 102, 106, 113, 115-16,
118, 122-23, 127,, 128
McQuinn, George, 121-22,
123, 124
Magerkurth, George, 57
MajesM, Hank* 112
Malone, Pat, 56
Marion, Marty? 3 8 ~39* IO -
101, 149
Marshall, Cuddles, 137
Mauch,, Gus, 148
Mercer Memorial Plaque, 144
Metheny, Bud, 3 1
Mexican League, 109-15
Meyer, Billy, 35, 39, 44
Miller, Otto,, 2, 3
Mize, Johnny, 90, 154-55
Most Valuable Player Award,
143, 144-45. 15^-59
Murphy, Johnny, 6i t 63, ioi f
105, 119
Murray, Ray, 148
Musial, Stan, 83, 1 10
New York Giants, 56
New York Yankees,, 22, 41-
42, 129
Panama training, 94-98
try outs, 23-24
World Series, see World
Series
Newhouser, Hal, 151
Norfolk Naval Training Sta-
tion, 71-73, 79
Norfolk team, Piedmont
League, 30-33
Owen, Mickey, 55, 59, 61-62,
64, no, 114
Padgett, Don, 73-76, 84
Page, Joe, 12 2 if., 129
Pasquel, Bernardo, 109 ff^
113-14, 115
Pasquel, Jorge, 103, 109, 110-
ii
Passeau, Claude, 92
Pesky, Johnny, 137, 138-39
Philadelphia Athletics, 80, 157
Phillips, Jack, 140
Piedmont League, 30, 33-34
Pinelli, Babe, 59
Potter, Nelson, 103-4
Priddy, Jerry, 3 2 ~39> 4-4 I
46, 49, 88
Raschi, Vic, 151
Reese, Pee Wee, t 58, 64, 84, 90,
124-25, 126, 143, 149
INDEX
183
Reiser, Pete, 60
Reynolds, Allie, 118
Richmond Hill High School.,
14-22
Rickey, Branch, 120
Ridgewood Robins, 11-13
Rizzuto, Alfred (brother), 7,
10
Rizzuto, Cora (wife), 68-71,
81, 82, 88, 92,97, 114-16,
118, 159, 161
Rizzuto, Cynthia Ann (daugh-
ter), 119
Rizzuto, Mary (sister), 7, 10
Rizzuto, Patricia Ann (daugh-
ter), 88, 97, 164
Rizzuto, Penelope Ann
(daughter), 159
Rizzuto, Phil, childhood, 9-13
clothing business, 161-62
concussion, 80-8 1
deferment, 45-46, 77
engagement, 65-73
family, 6-10
head injury, 103-5
high school, 14-22
Kansas City, 33-39
leg injury, 27-29
major-league tryouts, 1-5,
22
malaria, 87-88, 97-98
Navy career, 78-86, 87-93
Norfolk team, 30-33
Panama, 95-98
wedding, 73-76
World Series, see World
Series
Rizzuto, Philip, Sr. (father),
6-10, 45, 132
Rizzuto, Rose (mother), 7-10,
15, 24-27, 29, 33-34, 65-
66, 103-4, "5> *3 2
Rizzuto, Rose (sister), 7, 10
Robinson, Aaron, 3 1
Robinson, Eddie, 84
Robinson, Jackie, 120
Rolfe, Red, 47, 61
Roosevelt, F. EX, 47
Rowe, Schoolboy, 90
Ruffing, Red, 60, 101, 119
Ruppert, Jacob, 94
Russo, Marius, 16-17, 61
Ruth, Babe, 53, 147, 160
St. Louis Cardinals, 79
Saturday Evening Post, 42
Schumacher, Hal, 56
Seidel, Jerry, 87
Shea, Frank, 112, 122, 129
Sheehan, Tom, 37-38
Siegal, Morris, 73-76
Sisler, Dick, 83
Slocum Memorial Plaque, 144
Smith, Ken, 143, 158
Smith, Vinnie, 84-85
Snyder, Pancho, 5
Souchock, Steve, 112
Stadium Club, 95
Stengel, Casey, 1-2, 4, 133-36,
138, 141, 146, 148, 149-
50, 1 60-6 1, 162-63
Stephens, Vernon, no, 137,
141-42, 149
Stirnweiss, George, 101, in,
121, 126
Sturm, Johnny, 49, 54, 61
Suder, Pete, 154
Swift, Bob, 151
Taylor, Zach, 2
Terry, Bill, 4-5
Topping, Dan, 94, 127, 133
Trucks, Virgil, 90
Tunney, Gene, 81
184 INDEX
Turklii, Hy, 150
Turner, Jim, 1 34
Valo, Elmer, 139
Vander Meer, Johnny, 90
Vecsey, George, 20
Wagner, Charley, 84
Walker, Hub, 37-38
Walsh, Dr. Eminett, 80-8 1
Webb, Del, 94, 127, 133
Wedge, Will, 99-100
Weiss, George, 30, 33, 36, 42,
116, 127, 128, 131, 133,
134, 160, 161, 163, 164
White, Ray, 27, 28-31, 44
Willenbucher, Mr., u, 12
Williams, Ted, 83, 86, in,
142-43, 144
World Series, 1941, 55-64
1941, 125-26
*949> 143
1950, 157
Wyatt, Whitlow, 59-60, 63
Young, Babe, 2 1
Zimmerlich, Johnny, 15
130333
