Victory at last: Phil Rizzuto and Leo Durocher finally have their place among baseball's elite

Sporting News, The, August 1, 1994 by Mark Newman, Joe Gergen

They wanted to be associated with winners when it was all said and done, and Phil Rizzuto and Leo Durocher will be given that final confirmation this weekend as Hall of Fame inductees.

Rizzuto, 75 and still broadcasting Yankees games, finally will see his plaque hung in the same hallowed, low-it room as that of former teammates Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford. It will be in the same room as the plaque of Pee Wee Reese, his shortstop counterpart in so many of those Yankees-Dodgers World Series.

It will be right there beside the plaque of Casey Stengel, who initially suggested that the 5-foot-6 youngster trade his mitt for a shoeshine box before reaching the majors. That was the same manager who shook Rizzuto's hand on the player's last day in uniform. "If I were a retired gentleman," the Old Perfessor said, "I would follow the Yankees around just to see Rizzuto work those miracles every day."

Rizzuto was voted in by the Veterans Committee, probably because Reese, Berra and former broadcasting partner Bill White were newcomers to the 18-member panel. It had been argued for years that, despite being the American League's MVP in 1950, Rizzuto didn't have Hall of Fame career numbers: .273 average, 38 home runs and 562 RBIs. "My stats don't shout" he once said. "They kind of whisper." The focus this weekend will be on the Scooter's overall worth to that Yankees dynasty. He played 13 seasons, all for the Yankees, and three of the years were lost to military service. Rizzuto appeared in nine World Series and 52 Series games, and he went 21 of those games without an error - all records for a shortstop.

"You want to know the key to our team," third baseman Billy Johnson once told Ted Williams, "it's that little guy there. Without him we're just another team. You have to be with us to know, because what you see once in a while we see every day." Williams contended for years that if his team had Rizzuto at shortstop, the Red Sox would have beaten the Yankees in those magnificent pennant races during the late 1940s.

In donating his glove to the Hall for an exhibit, Rizzuto recalls how he decided to retire after the 1956 season: "A little Italian shoemaker right up the street from Yankee Stadium used to love sewing this glove. Finally he said, |no more, no more, it wouldn't work,' so he wouldn't fix it anymore. It got so bad I had to hang the glove up and that's when I hung my spikes up. The glove and I got out together."

Durocher's last game as a player was in 1945, and he went on to bigger and better things. Durocher, who died in 1991 at the age of 86, will be remembered this weekend as a fiery manager who had a boundless and sometimes successful obsession with first place. He became famous for the constantly misquoted phrase: "Nice guys finish last."

On July 5, 1946, in a conversation with radio great Red Barber, Durocher responded to the assertion that Giants Manager Mel Ott was a "nice guy." Durocher said, "A nice guy! I've been in baseball a long time. Do you know a nicer guy in the world than Mel Ott? He's a nice guy. In last place. Where am I? In first place.... The nice guys are over there in last place, not in this dugout." The misquoted phrase was used so many times that it was granted inclusion in "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations" and became the title to Durocher's autobiography.

Durocher's colorful career encompassed almost the entire modern history of the sport. He was Babe Ruth's teammate with the Yankees and once precipitated a fight with Ty Cobb. He gave the Cardinals' legendary Gas House Gang its name - and some of its feistiness. He managed Brooklyn's first pennant-winner in two decades and then watched his Giants overcome the Dodgers' 13 1/2-game lead in 1951 in what became known as The Miracle of Coogan's Bluff. "We couldn't have done it without him," says Hall of Famer Monte Irvin, one of the offensive stars on that team. "He was the architect of that club. He said the right thing at the right time. But I think the real tribute to him is the class of managers he graduated from that 1951 team: Alvin Dark, Eddie Stanky, Whitey Lockman, Wes Westrum and Bill Rigney. That showed you the type of impact he had. A lot of players hated him.... But you'd wind up loving him, period."

Durocher finished his managerial career with the Astros, retiring with a record of 2,008-1,731. He was as renowned for his entanglements as his victories. Against the backdrop of feuds with umpires and brawls with fans, he was suspended by Commissioner Happy Chandler for the entire 1947 season "as a result of the accumulation of unpleasant incidents ... detrimental to baseball." The assumption is that it was his association with noted gamblers. After the Dodgers won the pennant under caretaker Burt Shotton, Branch Rickey reluctantly accepted him back in 1948.

That is worth mentioning today, as Pete Rose, the all-time hits leader, remains banished for allegedly gambling on baseball games. If Durocher can make it to Cooperstown, can Rose be far behind? The Lip left a legacy of controversy, but no one ever doubted his will to win. "If I was playing third and my mother was rounding the base with the run that was going to beat us," Durocher said, "I'd trip her. I'd pick her up and brush her off, and then I'd say, |Sorry, Mom, but nobody beats me.'"