Go Get a Shoeshine Box

When Phil Rizzuto was sixteen he tried out for the Brooklyn Dodgers. The manager took one look at him, all five foot six of him, and told him to go get a shoeshine box. That manager was Casey Stengel.

Fifteen years later Stengel was managing him, and after Rizzuto laid down that squeeze against Cleveland with the pennant hanging on it, Stengel called it the greatest play he ever saw. Same man. Same eyes. It just took him a decade and a half to see it.

Everyone took a while. Rizzuto won the MVP in 1950 hitting .324 with 200 hits and 125 runs, and he still spent his whole career as the small guy in a lineup with DiMaggio, Berra, and Mantle. The writers passed on him for the Hall of Fame fifteen times. The Veterans Committee passed on him eleven more. It took Ted Williams, of all people, a man who spent a decade losing pennants to him, standing up and telling the committee what Rizzuto had actually been worth. He got in at 76 years old.

He never argued for himself. He always said Cooperstown was for the big guys, the ones who threw a hundred and hit the ball out. He was wrong about that, and he was the only one in the room who thought so by the end.