There are certain baseball personalities that just make you smile when you think about them. New York Yankees legend Phil Rizzuto is one of those personalities. The 5’6″ Rizzuto, known as the Scooter, was a slick-fielding shortstop, a member of 7 World Championship teams with the Bronx Bombers and then a mainstay in the Yankees’ broadcast booth for 40 years.

Rizzuto spent 13 years wearing the Yankee pinstripes, interrupted by 3 years of military service with the U.S. Navy in World War II.  The Scooter was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1994 at the age of 76.

Cooperstown Cred: Phil Rizzuto (1941-42, 1946-56, all with New York Yankees)

  • Inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1994 (by Veterans Committee)
  • Career: .273 BA, 38 HR, 563 RBI, 1,588 Hits
  • Career: 93 OPS+, 40.8 WAR (Wins Above Replacement)
  • 5-time A.L. All-Star
  • Won the 1950 A.L. MVP (.324 BA, .418 OBP, 125 Runs, 200 Hits, 6.7 WAR)
  • Led A.L. shortstops in double plays turned 3 times
  • Starting shortstop for 7 World Championship teams

(cover photo: Yankees Room)

Phil Rizzuto: Career Highlights

Philip Francis Rizzuto was born in Brooklyn, New York on September 25, 1917. His father Fiore was born in the U.S., his mother Rose in Italy. Young Phil always had to fight the perception that he was too small to be a baseball player.

In 1936, the 18-year old Rizzuto tried out for his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers, only to be told by manager Casey Stengel, “go peddle your papers, little boy. You’re too small ever to become a major leaguer.” The young Rizzuto didn’t get any farther with the New York Giants but Yankees scout Paul Krichell gave the diminutive shortstop a chance.

“I still don’t know what I saw in him,” Krich has since confessed, “unless it was that he had quick hands and the reflexes of a cat. What probably convinced me was that Phil hit one ball into the stands.” Rizzuto received as his “bonus” the munificent reward of one container of milk and a couple of sandwiches. Krich… offered Rizzuto a fountain pen and contract. The Scooter practically broke an arm in his eagerness to sign.

— Arthur Daley, New York Times (February 5, 1950)

Rizzuto’s first minor league assignment was with the Bassett Furnituremakers in Class D ball. Bassett is a tiny town in Virginia, about 45 miles south of Roanoke.

“There was a drugstore, a post office, and a diner. They had only thirteen hundred people in the whole town. The people were so nice, but they couldn’t understand me with my Brooklyn accent, and I couldn’t understand them with their Southern accent.”

— Phil Rizzuto, biography from the Society of American Baseball Research

The Scooter spent four years in the minor leagues before replacing Frankie Crosetti as the Yankees’ shortstop in 1941. During spring training, star pitcher Lefty Gomez wondered why the team had summoned a “Lilliputian.”

Rizzuto established himself immediately as a rookie, hitting .307 while providing superb defense. His average dropped to .284 in 1942 but made his first All-Star team regardless.

In both of his first two seasons with the Bronx Bombers, Rizzuto led all A.L. shortstops in double plays turned and, using modern sabermetrics, led the league both years in Defensive WAR. Unfortunately, the young star’s career was interrupted by a real war, the Second World War. The Scooter lost three prime years of his career due to his service with the Navy.

Rizzuto did enjoy playing October baseball in his first two MLB seasons, with the Yankees winning the ’41 World Series against Brooklyn while losing to St. Louis in ’42.

He (Rizzuto) developed into an eccentric — funny, superstitious, afraid of thunder and the target of pranks. When the tradition was for fielders to leave their gloves in the field when they came in to bat, Rizzuto would often return to the field to find a mouse, a snake or a rat wedged in the glove fingers.

— Richard Sandomir, New York Times, August 14, 2007

After the War

Phil Rizzuto rejoined the Yankees in 1946; it took him a year to recover his star form; he hit .257 in his first year back with a .315 OBP. The same was true for his double-play mate, Joe Gordon, who hit .210 in his first year back from the war. Even the great Joe DiMaggio had an off-year, setting career “lows” (by his standards) in many offensive categories.

The Scooter had a rebound season in 1947 as did DiMaggio; the Yankees returned to the Fall Classic and prevailed over the Dodgers in 7 games. Rizzuto played a key role in the decisive Game 7, driving in the Yanks’ first run in the 2nd with a RBI single. In the 4th, Rizzuto scored the go-ahead run three batters after his two-out single.

Later, with the Yankees up 3-2, he led off the sixth with a bunt single, stole second base and scored the key insurance run in New York’s 5-2 victory.

After an average 1948 campaign for Rizzuto and the team (the Yankees failed to win the pennant), manager Bucky Harris was replaced by Casey Stengel, the former Dodgers’ skipper who had told the Yankees’ popular shortstop that he was too small to play professional baseball.

“Mister Stengel, sir,” he (Rizzuto) said, a deadpan expression masking his face. “Do you think I’m too small to become a major leaguer?” Casey chased him right out the door with a baseball bat. 

Arthur Daley, New York Times (February 5, 1950)

The Yankees’ Glory Years

In 1949 Phil Rizzuto finished second to Ted Williams in the A.L. MVP voting. Today, when looking at the numbers, it’s hard to understand why. The Scooter hit just .275 with a .352 OBP although he did score 110 runs. WAR listed Rizzuto as just the 6th best player on the Yankees, much less the league. Regardless, he was the starting shortstop on another pennant-winning team. The Yankees reeled off 5 straight World Series wins from 1949-53.

In 1950, Rizzuto did win the A.L. MVP and he deserved it. The Yankee shortstop set career highs with a .324 BA, .418 OBP, .439 SLG, 7 home runs, 36 doubles, 200 hits and 125 runs scored. Using modern metrics, Rizzuto’s WAR was 6.7, his OPS+ 122.

Phil followed 1950 with three more solid but less superb campaigns, providing a little less with the bat but maintaining superb defense at shortstop. He finished 11th, 14th and 6th in the 1951-53 MVP votes. From 1954-56, Stengel started reducing the playing time for the aging shortstop. On August 25, 1966, after Rizzuto had appeared in just 31 games, he was released.

Phil Rizzuto the Broadcaster

Almost immediately after his playing career was over, Phil Rizzuto became a broadcaster for the Yankees and he would spend 40 years on radio and television calling games for the Bronx Bombers. As a serious announcer, the Scooter’s most memorable call came in 1961 when he called Roger Maris‘ 61st home run, breaking Babe Ruth‘s single-season record.

On the not-so-serious side, Rizzuto was famous for announcing viewers birthdays, for talking about Italian food, for being the ultimate homer for the team in Pinstripes, and for leaving home games early so he could beat the traffic on the George Washington Bridge back to his home in New Jersey.

Rizzuto would call his broadcast partners by their last name. It was “White” (not Bill), “Messer” (not Frank), and “Murcer” (not Bobby). His signature line, “Holy Cow,” shared with another broadcasting legend (Harry Caray), was a phrase he adopted at the urging of his high school baseball coach to avoid using profanity.

When it came to keeping a scorecard in the announcer’s booth, Rizzuto had a game log unique to himself, mentioning on the air occasionally that his scorecard said “WW,” short-hand for “Wasn’t Watching.”

Maybe somebody ought to write a poem about Rizzuto, except what rhymes with huckleberry? That’s his favorite word for anybody who displeases him. Nobody knows what it means, but it’s part of his mystique. Let’s face it, Rizzuto is one of a kind. People either love him or hate him.

Some people think he’s like a lovable uncle, the life of the Thanksgiving dinner, and other people think he’s off the deep end, out of touch with the current players, plugging products and wishing people happy birthday, and talking about all his fears.

— George Vecsey, New York Times, August 5, 1985

Rizzuto retired from broadcasting in 1996, two years after being inducted into the Hall of Fame, and died of pneumonia in 2007 at the age of 89.

The Legacy of Phil Rizzuto

I was born in New York City in 1967, 50 years after Phil Rizzuto’s birth; that makes me currently 51 years old. When I was a young fan starting to watch and listen to baseball in the mid 1970’s, the only version of the Scooter that I knew was the Yankees’ broadcaster who shared a booth with Frank Messer and Bill White. To me, Rizzuto was a funny old man with thick glasses and a penchant for blue suits.

As time passed, and I studied the history of the game, I learned about Phil Rizzuto the player. His broadcast mates would often tout the Scooter’s bunting ability when the Yankees they were covering failed to properly execute a sacrifice. I discovered that Rizzuto was close to three other famous Italian players who played for the Yankees in the 1940’s and 1950’s: DiMaggio, Yogi Berra and Billy Martin.

The day I’ll remember more than any other was August 5, 1985, Phil Rizzuto day at Yankee Stadium. It was on this day that Rizzuto’s uniform #10 was retired and a plaque erected in Monument Park in his honor. As part of the festivities, the Scooter was presented with a holy cow (yes, an actual cow with a halo attached to its head). Of course, the the Holy Cow knocked him over.

Incidentally, my friend David Glatstein and I weren’t really there for Phil Rizzuto day. We were there because the Yankees were playing the Chicago White Sox and Tom Seaver was going for his 300th career victory (which he got with a complete game victory).

Phil Rizzuto’s Journey to Cooperstown

Phil Rizzuto was on the BBWAA ballot for the Hall of Fame from 1962-76. He maxed out at 38.4% of the vote in 1976, far short of the 75% needed for induction. For most of the time Rizzuto was on the ballot, longtime Brooklyn Dodgers shortstop Pee Wee Reese was on the ballot with him. Reese, although four inches taller at 5’10”, was also a fairly light-hitting, defensive oriented shortstop.

Reese retired 2 years after Rizzuto so he first showed up on the writers’ ballot in 1964. The Little Colonel didn’t get much closer to Cooperstown than Scooter but he did get more votes every year, maxing out at 47.9% in ’76. Pee Wee’s last year on the ballot was in 1978. Six years later, Reese was inducted into the Hall in 1984 by the Veterans Committee.

There were many Yankees fans who felt that it would have been appropriate for the two shortstops to enter the Hall together. For the next decade, the Hall of Fame “snub” of Phil Rizzuto became somewhat of a cause celebre, especially for Yankees’ owner George Steinbrenner. The Boss vowed he would not let his Yankees play in the annual Hall of Fame game in Cooperstown until they put Rizzuto in there.

Anyway, in 1994, the Veterans Committee (which featured both Berra and Reese on its panel) made the call and elected Rizzuto into the Hall of Fame.

If you look at some of his career statistics, it’s fair to say that perhaps Phil Rizzuto is a little lacking compared to the other shortstops of his era. It’s also fair, however, to note that Rizzuto lost three of his prime years (his age 25-to-27 seasons) to his service in the Navy. To me, this is not the same as losing three years due to injury or ineffectiveness.

If Rizzuto had been able to duplicate his first two campaigns (1941-42) from 1943 to ’45, he would have finished his career with 2,062 hits instead of 1,588. He would have had a 56.1 career WAR instead of 40.8. Those are not overwhelming numbers but they’re within range of the Hall of Fame standards for players who debuted in the first half of the 20th century.

When you add in the fact that he played a key defensive position on a team that won 7 World Series titles, you have a very reasonable case. I for one am pleased that Phil Rizzuto is in the Hall of Fame.

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