Daily Archives: August 31, 2007

The Boston Red Sox are the best team in baseball, and the Yankees just swept them in a series in which the Sox threw their three best starting pitchers. The Tampa Bay Devil Rays are the worst team in baseball and the Yankees took six of eight from them after the All-Star break. This weekend the Yankees will once again miss not only Scott Kazmir, but James Shields as as well. Can you say extended winning streak?

The catch, of course, is that the Yankees will have Ian Kennedy making his major league debut on Saturday. Kennedy’s tremendously talented, but so is Phil Hughes, and he’s been experiencing some growing pains thus far this season despite the fact that, as a man in his third full professional season and with seven major league starts under his belt, he’s a veteran compared to first-year pro Kennedy. Hughes, who starts tonight, has just two quality starts in those seven major league outings and is coming off a pair of similarly frustrating outings in which he allowed just eight hits in 12 1/3 innings and struck out ten, but also allowed ten runs due to five walks in the first game and three homers in the latter.

Opposing Hughes will be Andrew Sonnanstine, who, as a fourth-year pro with 16 major league starts under his belt, is of similar vintage to Hughes (though, as a Kent State product, he’s three years older). Sonnanstine’s only career start against the Yankees was his first following the All-Star break. He allowed five runs on a walk and nine hits, including homers by Jorge Posada and Hideki Matsui, in 6 1/3 innings in that game and hasn’t been much better since, posting a 7.28 second-half ERA despite allowing just three more homers in his last eight starts and posting a solid 2.49 BB/9. The Yankees swept the Red Sox on the strength of their pitching. There’s no reason they can’t sweep the Devil Rays by preying on their pitching, just as they did the last time the Rays came to town and the Yankees scored 45 runs in the process of winning the final three games of that four-game set (the loser in game one, incidentally, was Mike Mussina).

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Baseball has lost some good people during the middle of the summer, including a pinstriped icon and a onetime Yankee from the late 1960s. With details of those deaths, along with some other baseball losses, here is the latest edition of Pastime Passings.

Phil Rizzuto: (Died on August 13 in West Orange, New Jersey; age 89; pneumonia and effects of Alzheimer’s disease): Considered one of the lynchpins to Yankee success throughout the 1940s and fifties, Rizzuto helped New York to seven World Series wins—in 1941, ’47, and ’49, and from 1950 to 1953. Regarded as a slick fielding shortstop and a top-flight bunter, the five-time All-Star provided both stability to the middle infield and to the top of the Yankee batting order. In 1950, Rizzuto batted .324 and drew 92 walks to earn American League MVP honors. After his playing days, "The Scooter" became a Yankee institution as a broadcaster. Anchoring WPIX, cable, and radio broadcasts for 40 years, the colorful and charismatic Rizzuto emerged as the centerpiece to television and radio coverage of the Yankees, replete with trademark catch phrases like "Huckleberry" and "Holy Cow!" In 1994, Rizzuto earned baseball’s ultimate honor—after being passed over 26 times—when he was finally elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Commentary: Phil Rizzuto broke almost all of the rules of broadcasting. He often failed to follow the play, botched home run calls, interspersed his broadcasts with "Happy Birthdays" and personal notes, and sometimes even failed to take note that a no-hitter was in progress. Yet, none of that mattered. "The Scooter" was so personable, so charming, so completely entertaining that most Yankee fans loved listening to him, regardless of whether the Yankees were winning, tied, or being blown out.

There were also times that Rizzuto could be say, shall we say, somewhat risqué on the air. For example, during the 1969 season, the Yankees made one of their first trips into Seattle’s Sicks Stadium to play the expansion Pilots. (Rizzuto, by the way, hated Sicks Stadium, in part because it required climbing a ladder to reach the broadcast booth.) While on the air, Rizzuto made mention of the fact that his Seattle hotel room had only rounded walls. "There will be no cornering of Cora tonight," Rizzuto exclaimed, referring to his longtime wife. Perhaps the Scooter thought no one was listening since it was so late on the East Coast.

Steve Lombardi of waswatching.com recalls another one of Rizzuto’s less than politically correct moments. Late in the 1975 season, Rizzuto was announcing a game on the radio with longtime broadcast partner Bill White. Noting that the fans at Yankee Stadium had started to cheer loudly, Rizzuto announced that Bobby Bonds was coming into the game as a pinch-hitter. White then corrected him, saying that the pinch-hitter was actually Rich Coggins, who like Bonds was African-American, but wore No. 26, as opposed to Bonds’ No. 25. Rizzuto then tried to defend his error. "Well, you know, they all look alike to me," said Rizzuto, drawing loud laughs from White, also an African American. Only someone as well liked as Rizzuto could get away with such a statement on live radio.

Because of The Scooter, Yankee broadcasts in the seventies and eighties transcended sports; they became a mix of situation comedy, talk show, and baseball. Thanks, Rizzuto.

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