As a Met fan, I was never a huge follower of Phil Rizzuto. I knew him at first as the incredibly annoying and unhelpful announcer for the hated Yankees -- he worked with Frank Messer and Bill White back in the late 70s, when my love of baseball hit full bloom. And I knew his voice from Meatloaf's song, Paradise by the Dashboard Lights. (Remember when it was almost rare to hear that song?!)
But I grew to appreciate that he loved his team -- a team that had offered him a chance when all the others had told him he was too small. Rizzuto repaid their confidence (or was it just a joke at first? 'Let's see what this pip-squeak can do. It might be funny') with his natural abilities -- speed and fielding prowess -- and became an important part of the Yankee dynasty of the 1940s and early '50s, winning the Most Valuable Player Award in 1950, when they defeated the Whiz Kid Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series. I would never like the Yankees, and I wouldn't be a Rizzuto fan, but I could respect him and his loyalty.
I delivered medicines to his mother when I had a job for a local pharmacy in high school, and I wondered if I'd ever see him there. Never happened. But I briefly met Rizzuto once. It's more accurate to say I nodded in his direction and he nodded back. I was attending a wake for a friend's mother about 20 years ago. And Phil Rizzuto was standing at the front of the chairs in the funeral parlor. My friends in line with me whispered "Hey, it's Phil Rizzuto," and I heard the man ask who all these guys were. We were fraternity brothers of his grand-nephew. "Oh, the boys from Lafayette," I heard him say. That's when I nodded, and he nodded back.
Not exactly a moment of greatness or epiphany, but it happened.
So, I'll say a little prayer that God has enough room in his field for the little guy who lived in New Jersey for all those years and told stories about baseball and cannolis and called the guys in the broadcast booth and down on the field "Huckleberries."
No comments:
Post a Comment