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.