“Everyone was pretty much in agreement that Rizzuto was a sweet, funny, lovable little guy who said enough nutty things to fill a shelf of books,” wrote sportswriter and journalist Allan Barra. “Phil Rizzuto was tough, feisty, sharp, and opinionated; he took shots, both verbal and physical, and gave back as good as he got. He held grudges. He was a hard-headed businessman.” And that’s where this comprehensive and definitive biography begins.
From youth to young adulthood, Phil Rizzuto was told he was too short, too small, and too delicate to play baseball at the next level – no matter what level that was. He instantly rejected by his beloved Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants. He was famously told by Casey Stengel to forget baseball, and go home, and get a shoeshine box. He persevered, even after suffering a devastating leg injury in his first year of the minors, when he was told he would never play again.
But play he did. The Scooter became one of the most beloved Yankees in the history of the organization. As DiMaggio once said, “They come to see me play, the come to see Phil because they love him.”
The Scooter, Phil Rizzuto, went on to be come one of the all-time great defensive shortstops in the history of the game. During the Yankees five-year stretch, from 1949 to 1954, when they won five straight World Series, Rizzuto was the glue that held the team together – the one name that, ironically, Casey Stengel would pencil in first before every game. He played more games than any other Yankee in that period, won an MVP award, and was robbed of another. Simply put, he was one of the greatest defensive short stops ever to play the game.
Even as he slipped into the broadcast booth, Rizzuto found rancor and dissention confronting him, as he worked alongside legendary broadcasters Red Barber and Mel Allen, who ostracized and berated him both on and off the air. But he prevailed.
Sifting through more than 5,000 newspaper, magazine, television, and internet interviews, profiles, articles and essays, as well as hundreds of books, highly acclaimed historian Carlo DeVito sheds new light on a baseball legend, showing Scooter’s uncanny ability to make money, and exposing Scooter’s moxie and drive as never before. From world-class athlete to legendary announcer, from recording with the rockstar Meatloaf, to everlasting fame as the face of The Money Store, Phil Rizzuto was one of the most beloved personalities in all of baseball.
Carlo DeVito is a writer and publishing executive. He is the author of Yogi: The Life and Times of an American Original; Wellington: The Maras, The Giants, and the City of New York; D. Wayne: The High-Rolling and Fast Times of America's Premiere Horse Trainer; and The Ultimate Dictionary of Sports Quotations. He and his wife, Dominique, along with their two sons, their Dalmatian, and their cat, live on their farm, the Hudson-Chatham Winery, in Ghent, New York.
