Legendary Yankee shortstop Phil "Scooter" Rizzuto died Tuesday at 89. I've never been a huge baseball fan, and Rizzuto's playing days ended well before I was born, but as an announcer and pitchman, he was an absolute fixture of my childhood.
(Obligatory Celebrity Dead Pool: If famous people's deaths come in threes, who completes the set with Alpher and Rizzuto?)
Rizzuto's best days as an announcer were probably also behind him when I used to hear him doing Yankee games-- by the 80's, he was mostly just charmingly addled, offering rambling anecdotes that he sometimes lost track of-- but he was an absolute institution. It's still weird to flip past a Yankee game and not hear his nasally voice telling complicated stories about Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra.
These days, of course, he's probably best known as the "Holy cow, I think he's gonna make it!" guy from "Paradise by the Dashboard Light." Charles Kuffner has the story about the recording, which is pretty entertaining.
Anyway, as the really lengthy obituary linked above makes clear, he was an interesting guy who led a pretty amazing life. He'll be missed.
- Log in to post comments
Personal connection to that particular aspect of Phil Rizzuto... when my wife was on "Who Wants to Be a Millionaire", the question of who did the voiceover on the Meatloaf song was her $64,000 question. She basically had to guess, but we owe quite a bit to Phil Rizzuto as a result. :)
Although I was primarily a Brooklyn Dodgers fan, I did watch Phil Rizzuto play, as did my father and two of my grandfathers.
Then I heard him on the radio, and later on TV, and always appreciated his ideosyncratic sincerity.
As was was one of the shortest, usually the 2nd shortest kid in my classes in elementary school and junior high school, I appreciated as well the little guy who played with heart, and made a difference. I liked the image of the little guy who, by sheer audacity and verve and practice, was a colleague with whom superstar colleagues enjoyed being on the team.
Harlan Ellison. Isaac Asimov. Phil Rizzuto.
Even today, when I correspond with, converse with, or coauthor with a superstar scientist or author, I figure that The Scooter had been part of my motivation.
Thank you for this thread.