Damn Yankees by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Damn Yankees

Page 219

Player of the Year Award in 1940 while playing with the Kansas City Blues, he played his first major league game on April 14, 1941. Taking over for the well liked Frank Crosetti, whose batting average had dropped to .194 after several strong seasons, Rizzuto quickly fit into the Yankees lineup to form an outstanding middle infield with second baseman Joe Gordon. In his syndicated column on October 1, Grantland Rice compared the pair favorably to the middle infield of the crosstown Brooklyn Dodgers; "Billy Herman and Pee Wee Reese around the highly important keystone spot don't measure up, over a season anyway, with Joe Gordon and Phil Rizzuto, a pair of light footed, quick handed operatives who can turn seeming base hits into double plays often enough to save many a close scrap."

Rizzuto's rookie season ended in the World Series, and though he hit poorly, the Yankees beat the Dodgers. The following year,

Rizzuto led all hitters, for both the Yankees and the opposing St. Louis Cardinals, with 8 hits and a .381 average in the 1942 World Series; the light hitting shortstop even added a home run after hitting just 4 in the regular season.

Like many players of the era, he found his career interrupted by a stint in the military, serving in the United States Navy

during World War II. From 1943 through 1945, he played on a Navy