RIP, “Scooter”

Sad news today — Phil Rizzuto, “The Scooter,” has died at 89. Yeah, he was a great shortstop who helped the Yankees to 8 World Series titles, but that all happened before I was born. For my generation, he was the voice of the Yankees radio broadcasts, the guy who could paint a picture of what was going on on the field hundreds of miles away and make it seem like it was right in front of you. (My daughter asked earlier, “Like the guys you wish would shut up when you’re trying to watch a game?” I had to explain that without those guys talking, on the radio, you couldn’t even know there was a game.) And if in his later years he was better remembered for not being entirely coherent in the late innings, leaving Bill White to paint the clearer picture, he was never anything less than entertaining and distinctive. An earlier era had Red Barber and the Dodgers, but we had Scooter and the Yanks. Any summer evening in Syracuse when I wasn’t out at a Chiefs game, chances were I was listening to Scooter call the Yankees game. I was never even that great a baseball fan, but I liked the rhythm of the announcing, the flow of the game, and that great, lost feeling of connectedness that listening to a live ballgame at night always brought.

As primitive as that would sound to my kids, I still get a little bit of that thrill on days when I read the commentary on the Tour de France or some other great race on Velonews. If you can’t watch it, and you can’t listen to it, I’ve gotta say that reading the liveblog can still capture some of that excitement.

But it’s nothing like hearing the voice of the Scooter coming through the tinny AM radio while you sit in your apartment of a summer evening, waiting for a breeze and that final out.