Voices of Summer: Ranking Baseball's 101 All-Time Best Announcers (53 page)

The '84ers finished last. Next year a flailing franchise rehired an ailing
god. "I never call myself the `Voice of the Pirates,'" Lanny said on the
Gunner's KDKA return, "because Bob always will be," even after his death in
June. Frattare still hears pleas to sound, well, like Prince.

Bob roared, "We had 'em all the way!" Lanny wags, "There was no doubt
about it!" George H. W Bush once said, "I'm not Ronald Reagan. I couldn't
be if I wanted to." Ultimately, Lanny less persuaded than gentled ambiguity.

The 1990 Bucs rallied on Memorial Day to beat Los Angeles. A year later
to the day, they edged the Cubs. "It's Memorial Day all over again!" Frattare
whooped. Assets: Pittsburgh made three straight L.C.S. Twice Barry Bonds
became MVP. Debits: The late-'90ers lost audience and attendance.

In 2000, Stargell threw out the confluence's last first pitch. Sister Sledge
sang two Anthems America's, and "We Are Fam-i-lee." Three Rivers
imploded in 2001. Lanny took its digital-timer box to 38,365-seat PNC Park. Light towers, corner pens, and a flat-green roof conjured Forbes.
Downtown rose across the Allegheny River. Behind right field, homers
flowed slowly to the Mississippi.

LANNY RRATFARB

"I've waited all my career for a real baseball park," Frattare pined. Lady
MacBeth cried, "Out, out damn spot." Lanny's had.

In 1941, a first-year Yankees shortstop entered the General Manager's office.
"I didn't know Ed Barrow," said Phil Rizzuto. "I did know that the man being
shaved by a guy whom he kept calling Goulash was Barrow."

Rizzuto waited silently. "Young man," Barrow snapped, "what is your
trouble?"

Phil's was money. "I give you this, and no more!" the G.M. flushed. "If
okay, sign! If not, get the hell out of here!" Goulash applied talcum powder.
Rizzuto signed.

Red Ruffing, Bill Dickey, and Joe DiMaggio gave Phil the cold shoulder.
Hurt, the 5-foot-6 new kid on the block approached another star. "Relax,
they're not snubbing you," Lefty Gomez said. "They just haven't seen you yet."

Later, DiMag became a friend. "If you forget Phil was so tiny as a player,
it's because his reputation was so huge."

You gotta be kiddin' ! What a huckleberry! Smaller than the game, Rizzuto made baseball larger than it was.

Leave it to the Scooter-Fiero Francis Rizzuto, a trolley car conductor's
son-to be born in Brooklyn. At 16, he tried out for the Giants and Dodgers.
"Go get a shoe box," sniffed Brooklyn's Casey Stengel. "That's the only way
you'll make a living." Phil then phoned the Yanks. Signing, he went to Bassett,
Virginia.

"Bassett!" said Rizzuto. "Sounds like I'm swearing at somebody." Holy
cow! Cows draped its hill. "The players told me that the front legs of the
cows were shorter than the back because they were always on the hill. And I
believed them. With my short legs, I've always had an affinity with cows."
Billy Hitchcock named him "Scooter": "Man, you're not runnin', you're
,"
scootin.

In 1941, the rookie reached the Bronx. Hitting .307, he replaced Joe
DiMaggio at a Newark firemen communion breakfast. "Joe had a family illness, but they were still expecting him. So I get booed-at a communion breakfast!"
Embarrassed, a fireman asked him home for coffee. Daughter Cora Esselborn
then entered the room. Half a century later, Phil's blood ran, not scooted:
"Those legs, her red sweater, those blue eyes." They married June 2 3, 1943.

By then, Rizzuto, in the Navy, had served or would in the Philippines and
Australia, anchor Pee Wee Reese's team, and get malaria. Released in
December 1945, he saw "a seminal American invention," Ron Fimrite wrote
of Babe Ruth, break down. In June 1948, the Stripes retired No. 3. Said Phil:
"He was so sick [of cancer], it took two men to lift him."

Ruth leaned on Bob Feller's bat like a cane. "Any time you want me to
come to your house for Holy Communion, I'd be glad to do it," said His Eminence Cardinal Spellman.

Babe smiled. "Thank you, but I'd rather come to your place."

Rizzuto's place was pressure: "It didn't take long," said Ted Williams, "to see
that in big games he was at his best." Phil hit a 1942 Series-high .381. His
1949 last-day triple eluded Williams to help win a pennant. A year later he
got 200 hits, scored 125 runs, and was named MVP. "My best pitch," said Vic
Raschi, "is anything the batter grounds, lines, or pops in his direction."

Scooter knew how to field, bunt (Joe D.: "the greatest I ever saw"), hit
behind the runner, and win (four All-Star teams, nine flags, and six titles).
"Those years I made more money from Series cuts than I did from my salary
for the whole year." 1953: now-skipper Stengel benched him. 1954: Phil hit
.195. 1955: theYanks held his Day. 1956: the Stripes hung a noose.

"We've got a chance to get Enos Slaughter. What do you think?" said
George Weiss.

"Boy, getting him would be a help," said Rizzuto, taking cyanide. Enos
replaced him on the roster. Holy cow! Released on Old Timers' Day, the
Scooter, 39, was unemployed. "From a damn good living, suddenly I didn't
have anything." Mel Allen had him call a half-inning here or there. The Orioles offered radio. Phil was torn, not wanting to leave New York.

As Richard Reeves writes of politics, broadcasting magnifies charm and
institutionalizes seduction. By late 1956, Rizzuto had charmed Ballantine Beer
head Carl Badenhausen, who told Weiss to hire him. "Can you picture a thorn
between two roses [Mel and Red Barber]? I wouldn't have hired myself!" he
laughed. The joke was on them: stomaching each other, they resented Scooter.

"They were pros," said axed-for-Phil Jim Woods. "Rizzuto'd write down
stories in the dugout, go on the air, and hide the paper." Interrupting, he stole one sign"Oh, my God! He's going to steal home!"-as Allen called a pitch.
Another game Mel and Red left the booth, forcing Phil not to halt, stumble,
and brook dead air.

"Kansas City Ath-a-letics," he would say.

"No, Phil, it's Athletics," Mel corrected him on air. Scooter accepted it.
Mother Rose detested it. Gradually, the two pros warmed. In 1957, the
thorn caught a bouquet: CBS Radio's thrice-weekly five-minute "Phil Rizzuto
On Sports." On October 1, 1961, he got another.

"Fastball, hit deep to right!" Scooter yapped. "This could be it! Way back
there! Holy cow, he did it! Sixty-one for Maris! Look at 'em fight for that ball
out there! Holy cow! What a shot!" Maris had expunged a ghost. "And they're
still fighting for that ball out there! People are climbing over each other's
backs. One of the greatest sights I've seen here atYankee Stadium!"

Mel called the Series vs. Cincinnati. Phil called upon aspirin. "I screamed
so loud on Maris's homer, I had a headache for a week!"

At first he did two innings daily. "He'd leave in the seventh or eighth," said
Allen. "Red and I'd finish." One game went overtime. "And now to take you
into the tenth, here is ... here is": Rizzuto was already on the George Washington Bridge. "He became famed for leaving early," added Bob Costas. "Even
when he stuck around, you'd hear him hooking the mike into the stand
announcing the final score."

June 24, 1962:Yanks at Detroit. Inhaled by 35,638: 32,000 hot dogs and
41,000 and 34,500 bottles of beer and pop, respectively, during 600 pitches,
three seventh-inning stretches, and a seven-hour game: New York, 9-7, on
Jack Reed's 22nd-inning blast.

"I've got to leave," an Ontario writer said two innings earlier.

"Where are you going?" said a colleague.

"My visa just expired."

Leaving in the seventh, Phil flew to LaGuardia Airport, headed to Jersey,
and turned on the radio. Time: 7 P.M. The 1:30 game should have ended by
4. "I drop my jaw. Red's starting the 19th": Mel has TV; neither can take a
leak. "I'm on the bridge and say, `What am I gonna do? Should I turn around
and fly back to Detroit? No, that doesn't make sense."'

He arrives home, kisses "my bride" Cora, and turns on WPIX TV. Allen's
warm-voweled lilt never seemed so cold.

The 1964 Yanks won the pennant. Next year's flunked .500. Mel and Red both left. "They had Jerry Coleman, Joe Garagiola came, but Rizzuto was the
guy," said Phil Mushnick. "Homework? Stick around? He's the Scooter!"-increasingly, his own best subject matter. An inning, George Vecsey wrote,
might link "birthday greetings, movie reviews, golf tips, war memories, frequent psychosomatic broodings, fearsome predictions of rain, sleet, snow,
thunder, lightning, tornadoes, waterspouts," and allergies and insects: one
dragonfly drove Scooter from the booth.

In 1974, The Stadium began a $100 million facelift. Slumming at Shea,
the 1976 Stripes returned to win a flag. NBC aired the Series. "Under its new
pact, local Voices couldn't broadcast," said Costas. Phil broke the rule, in his
artful, artless way.

Later Bob probed Rizzuto's scorecard. A slash bespoke a K. "WW"
seemed to mean a single and sacrifice. Puzzled, he said, "I've seen a lot of
ways to keep score. What's WW?"

"Wasn't watching?"

A 90-year-old woman writes a letter. "Before it gets too late," Phil
replies, "she might not be with us the whole game"-going to bed or the
great beyond, he doesn't say.

The camera spots a lovely teenage girl.

Rizzuto: "She reminds me of that old song, `A Pretty Girl Is Like a
Memory."'

Partner Bill White: "Scooter, I think that's `Melody."'

"Really. How do you know her name is Melody?" Cora says that everyone
has a trap door at the back of the head. "When a thought reaches the door,
the brain asks if I should say this. My door is always open."

In 1985, the Yanks marked Phil's birthday by presenting a convertible,
golf clubs, and a cow named Huckleberry, who stepped on Rizzuto's foot,
decking him. Later he begins waving from the second deck. "You know, Mussolini used to do this." A visitor arrives from San Jose. "San Jose? I love San
Jose. What's that song?" Someone begins Dionne Warwick's tune, "Do you
know the way ... ?" Phil amends: "No, it isn't San Jose. It's Phoenix."

A grounder finds the hole. "They'll never get him! They got him! I changed
my mind before he got there, so that doesn't count as an error."AtThe Stadium,
he vows to drive north to Philadelphia, then recalls Benjamin Franklin inventing
lightning. A sidekick starts laughing. "You know what I meant," Rizzuto says. "I
didn't mean that Franklin invented lightning. I meant he discovered it."Among
other things, he describes putting grits in his pocket on visiting the South. "My
first time there. It looked like oatmeal. I didn't know what to do."

A Hindu "or Indian or something" wrote a letter "beefing about that holy
cow," said Scooter. "He said in India the cow is sacred, and I shouldn't say such
a thing."

Love that Phil. If it's sacred, he answered, what's wrong with "Holy cow"?

In 1987, Rizzuto cut lyrics for Meat Loaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light."
He didn't know that it hailed teenage sex.

"Meat Loaf said, `I've got this song for you.' I thought it was a singing
part-all Italians love to sing." Phil attended the recording session. Meat Loaf
says: "It's a talking part."

"Where's the band to accompany me?"

Meat Loaf: "We'll put it in later."

By and by his son said, "Dad, you're a rock star!" Six times pop reran the
album, finally grasping its core. "I never knew, so help me. My priest gave me
hell"-Scooter amusing, diverting: a character, not drone.

"Any idiot can call a great game," the Cubs' Jack Quinlan claimed. "It
takes a different tack tell a joke, explain making moonshine, anything
with a game that's dull."

Was Phil a professional? He never feigned to be, said columnist Will
Grimsley, "[attracting] a broader spectrum of the audience, nonbaseball
people who might overwise be watching," say, A&E-the most popular
broadcaster to ever darn the Stripes.

In 1994, the Veterans Committee belatedly drove him into Cooperstown.
"For years baseball wanted me to sing the Anthem the day players were
inducted," said the Metropolitan Opera's Robert Merrill. "I said, `Not till
Rizzuto's in."'

Scooter's daughter phoned Induction Eve. "Mr. Merrill, Dad's so
nervous, he's losing his voice." Merrill gave her lozenges. Later, Phil: "Where
do I get those drops?" The Rizzutos got a trip to Europe that fall from the
Yanks. At the Vatican, Pope John Paul II changed his schedule for an audience.
"I'll tell you," said Phil, 76, "that's as close to God as you can get."

Next August roused another sense of time running out. Mickey
Mantle's death of alcohol-induced cancer "just hit me. I started thinking of
my family." The funeral was in Dallas. Phil aired a game from Boston.
"When I saw the [TV] service, I realized what a big mistake I had made
[not going]." Distraught, he left in the fifth inning, retired, returned in
1996, and retired again.

In 1997, Richard Sandomir wrote, "Where are you, Scooter? The MSG Network's Phil-free games miss his mirth." Bad game, good game, Scooter meant a
fun game: more playactor than play-by-playman, baseball's paisan with pizazz.