Holy cow

I was six when I saw my first Yankees game in 1972 (my dad scored front row seats down the first base line at old Yankee Stadium). By the time Chris Chambliss hit a homer to beat the Royals and send the Yanks to the World Series in 1976, I bled pinstripe blue. Tortuous rituals were developed to bring the Yankees luck -- watching a game with me was like visiting an OCD clinic. When the Yanks were playing on the West Coast, I'd stay up as long as I could listening to them on a bedside radio, inevitably waking up to the languid post-game show at 2 am.

But of course, I wasn't listening to the Yankees on the radio. I was listening to the broadcast team of Frank Messer, Bill White and the incomparable Phil Rizzuto, who passed away at the age of 89 on Tuesday.

Before girls or cars or beer there was Reggie, Catfish, Thurman, Mick the Quick, Nettles, Gator, the Goose and everyone else who came and went from the Bronx Zoo; their every hit, steal, error, catch and pitch called by three guys who my childhood brain told me had always called Yankees games and always would call Yankees games.

But like all pimply teens I eventually found girls and cars and beer and Thurman got killed and Reggie went to the Angels and nine-inning torture sessions stopped and I eventually stopped watching and listening altogether. Messer left, White left, and even the Scooter left in 1996. John Sterling & Michael Kay became new fan favorites as the Yankees returned to dominance and the Yes network came along to curdle pinstriped legends into TV content. The days of fuzzy graphics on WPIX and "This is Phil Rizzuto for the Money Store" were long gone.

Sitting here in Sydney, Australia, I hear the Scooter's voice after learning of his death and it all comes back. Not the action on the field or players whose posters hung on my walls but the company he and his broadcast colleagues provided for those years when Yankee baseball was my connection to a world far more important than the dramas in my house or neighborhood or school.

Of the three, Rizzuto was the kooky uncle: gleefully calling White a 'huckleberry' at every opportunity; delivering birthday greetings to a godson's brother's former sister-in-law's daughter who lived in Paramus with a poodle named Coconut; befuddling Messer's business-like demeanor with non-baseball anecdotes about golf or his wife Cora's cooking or that thing he saw while driving over the GW bridge; devouring freshly delivered cannolis from a local Italian deli; and later engaging in conversations with Tom Seaver or Bobby Murcer that belonged in the back of a cab, not in front of a microphone.

But mostly, the Scooter was a treasure to Yankees fans and a home-calling buffoon to others (especially miserable Mets fans). If I'd ever met him, I would have thanked him for how much he added to my life by simply being himself. It's inconceivable to imagine growing up in a world without him.