New Pride of the Yankees

Fifteen years ago Casey Stengel, then manager of the Brooklyn Dodgers, took a quick look at a skinny little kid who claimed to be a shortstop. Casey gave the youngster a blunt piece of advice: "Go peddle your papers, Shorty, you're too small ever to become a major-leaguer."

Little Phil Rizzuto was short on size, long on determination. He was not much of a hitter, but he taught himself to be the best bunter in the business. As a shortstop, he had none of the easy, fluid grace of the Cardinals' Marty Marion, nor the rifle arm of the Red Sox's Vern Stephens. But Rizzuto learned to scoot around his short-field like a hopped-up water bug, to make throws from any position short of standing on his head. Within five years after Stengel's blunt advice, the "Scooter" had nailed down the shortstop job with the New York Yankees.

Last season, at the advanced shortstop age of 32, the Scooter was still teaching himself a few new tricks. To get a little more power out of his 5-ft.-6-in. frame, he borrowed Heavyweight John Mize's big 36-oz. bat. It worked just fine; he finished the season with a .324 batting average, highest of his major-league career, and 50 extra-base hits.

While Rizzuto was reveling in his new role as a menace at the plate he was doing pretty well afield too. In one stretch of 59 games he handled 288 consecutive chances without an error, an American League record.* Little Phil was the only man durable enough (and irreplaceable enough) to play in every one of his team's games. More than any other player, he sparked the Yankees to their 1950 World Championship.

Yankee Manager Casey Stengel, who long ago ate his old Rizzuto words, got another reminder last week of how they tasted going down. Phil Rizzuto, to nobody's surprise, was voted the Most Valuable Player in the American League.

* Old record: 226 chances in 43 games set by the Athletics' Eddie Joost in 1948.

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