Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Remembering the Scooter
Growing up, I wasn’t a big baseball fan. My dad and mom immigrated here and neither had any interest in the sport. I was more into playing football and basketball and had an arm like Johnny Damon’s so I didn’t really play it all that much.
That all changed one day. I came home from school like I did most days and turned on WPIX to watch Woody Woodpecker and Buzz Buzzard. Instead of getting that, the Yankees were on, playing a day game. This was sometime in the early or mid 80s, but I can’t for the life of me remember the specific game.
I was initially really annoyed that baseball was intruding on my cartoons, but for some reason I started watching. The fact that Bill White and Phil Rizzuto seemed to be having such fun hooked me in, and the excitment that Rizzuto was announcing these strange events with got my interest up and I started to try and understand the game on the field. I really had no clue what was happening. Balls, strikes, outs, hits, etc., but I could tell good vs bad because of the reactions of the Scooter. Dave Winfield was the big hero that day and he became my favorite player, and the Yankees became my favorite team. Just like that.
That was the thing about Rizzuto. He had fun, and he was fun. The way he raved about Dan Pasqua had to be heard to be believed. His love of Alvaro Espinosa still remains in my head to this day. To hear the Scooter talk about Oscar Azocar and Bob Geren, you’d have thought you were watching two future Hall of Famers. The late 80s and early 90s Yankees weren’t great, but I still watched them, because the Scooter made it fun to watch them.
I credit Rizzuto and Winfield as the reasons I am a Yankee fan today. I’m sad that one of those reasons is gone, but I’m happy that I stumbled onto that game on WPIX many years ago. R.I.P Scooter.
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