PHIL RIZZUTO. Just as White Sox fans and Cub fans enjoy watching games together, I always enjoyed following a baseball game with Phil Rizzuto. He was dismissed as a homer, and he certainly loved the Yankees, but I have always been suspicious of announcers who broadcast 162 games a year for a team and yet profess to be neutral. If they are actually neutral, something is very wrong. I loved Rizzuto’s evident kindness, enthusiasm for life, keen observation and openness to new experience. This Wikipedia article credits Rizzuto with inventing the scorecard notation “ww” for “wasn’t watching.” A book of poetry was published with quotations from his broadcasts rearranged into poetic lines. This joint review (from the Society of Baseball Research) of the Rizzuto book and a book by the fine poet Donald Hall has the following poem from Rizzuto:
Fly ball right field
It’s gonna drop in.
No it’s not gonna drop in,
Happy 46th wedding anniversary
Thomas and Mary Anne Clearwater.
That’s it.
The last three, six, nine, twelve Yankees
Went down in order.
So that’s it.
The game is over.