O Holy Cow!: The Selected Verse of Phil Rizzuto (Expanded)

Some people are good at laying down sacrifice bunts, and some people are good at poetry. But nowadays so few people excel at both. Phil Rizzuto is that rare double-threat, and that's why this book is essential for anyone who likes bunts or poems. My only complaint is that the editors have left out my all-time favorite Rizzuto moment, which was the time circa 1980 when Rizzuto and Frank Messer spent part of a day game discussing whether or not gorillas can swim. The answer proved elusive, but I have since learned that they can.

In the late 1970s, when the Mets really hit the skids and the Yankees got good again, it became necessary, if you were a kid in the Tri- State area, to at least watch the Yankees, perhaps even to grudgingly root for them.  Forced into this spiritually untenable position, I chose to only root for the scrubs, which made Cliff Johnson my favorite player.  I'll never forget the game where he tagged a pitch and Phil Rizzuto started screaming that : "That one's outta here", bringing joy to the heart of every Heatchliff fan, only to have his towering popup caught by the second baseman.  "The Scooter" was easy to laugh at, with his myriad phobias, his propensity for saying unintentionally offensive things about minorities, his tendency to leave the ballpark early when the Yankees were home, etc. But then there began appearing in The Village Voice a most remarkable feature : verbatim text from Scooter's broadcasts rendered as poetry. We were suddenly confronted with the frightening prospect that Scooter was not only making sense, but serving up literature, even profundity. Consider the wisdom, about baseball and about life [....] As it turns out, this kind of exercise even has a name, it's called "found poetry." The Rizzuto poems are as good as any I've seen[...]. At any rate, this book is a hoot and once you read it you'll never again think of Rizzuto as just a good glove man, nor listen to a baseball broadcast without noticing the frequently poetic nature of the announcer's line of patter.GRADE : A

For me, nothing better epitomizes my age of baseball innocence than falling in love with the WPIX broadcasts of Phil Rizzuto, Frank Messer and Bill White during the late 1970s. This offbeat collection of the Scooter's unintentional poetry in his broadcasts is a graphic illustration of why Rizzuto was a true joy in the broadcast booth even if he wasn't a professional in the Mel Allen-Red Barber mold. I loved the format so much that I've actually reviewed the hundreds of old Yankee radio and telecast tapes in my collection searching for supplements to the collected verse of the Scooter and have found enough that could fill a sequel volume. Thanks to Seely and Pyer for this wonderful collection that no Yankee fan should be without.

Anyone who has ever heard the wisdon of Phil Rizzuto being broadcast from a Yankee game must buy this book. It is the epitome of the Scooter. It will make you laugh so hard it brings tears to your eyes while the "Poem" about Thurman Munson will bring tears to your eyes for a whole other reason.

I grew up in Binghamton, New York listening to the Scooter do Yankee games on WPIX out of New York. If you've heard him do more than two or three games, you will LITERALLY laugh out loud while reading this book, and you will sometimes believe that the guy is just remarkably profound. Even if he isn't. This book has actual Rizzuto dialogue and play-by-play stuff merely laid out on the page as poetry, and it is just some of the coolest stuff I've ever seen. And no, I don't know the authors or work for the publisher. The "poem" about Thurman Munson's death is incredible. Get the book