Rizzuto's legacy of friendship
"Jim, I'm here for you," Phil Rizzuto kept whispering to him. The old Yankee was closing fast on 90 years of age, and he was the one holding Brozzetti's hand for the entire hour, the worst hour of his good friend's life.
Brozzetti turned 60 on that wretched February day last year, the day he buried his son, Jimmy, a 20-year-old Lycoming College student who had perished in a car wreck on his way back to school. Rizzuto was the one who sat next to Brozzetti, the one who gave him a birthday gift he'd never forget.
This was likely the last service Rizzuto attended before he died last week in his sleep.
Brozzetti couldn't ever pay him back for that hour of grace, but damn it if he didn't try. A lifelong Yankee fan in the vending business and current employee of the Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, Brozzetti attended more than 900 consecutive home games across the Eighties and Nineties, making the two-hour drive from his Scranton, Pa., home each and every time. He grew close to Rizzuto because nobody could visit the Stadium that often without growing close to Rizzuto, everyone's favorite Uncle Phil.
Brozzetti was a frequent visitor to Rizzuto's West Orange nursing home in the final months of the Scooter's life. When Rizzuto wasn't watching Clark Gable movies, he was watching the Yanks.
"Gee, I wished they'd pick it up," Rizzuto would say. "Too bad we have so many injuries. I hope Mariano gets back to being the old Mariano."
Before he passed away, Rizzuto was aware the Yankees were playing a better brand of ball. "Glad to see it," he told Brozzetti. He wasn't up to saying much more than that.
Rizzuto held fast to his pinstriped roots. Within the last year of his life, he was still strong enough to mimic Derek Jeter's option pitch to the plate to get Oakland's Jeremy Giambi in the 2001 playoffs.
Rizzuto would take a few steps across his nursing home room and flick an invisible ball from his right hand toward Brozzetti, the old shortstop recalling the cheers he inspired when he performed Jeter's toss after his ceremonial first pitches.
Jeter was his favorite subject in conversations with Brozzetti. Rizzuto had won seven World Series championships, had been named American League MVP, and had established himself as the face and voice of the franchise for generations of fans. And yet he told anyone who would listen that he didn't belong in Jeter's league.
"I couldn't carry Derek Jeter's glove or jockstrap," Rizzuto once said. "He's the best shortstop I've ever seen. I've seen Pee Wee Reese, Luis Aparicio, Dave Concepcion and Ozzie Smith, and I wouldn't take anybody over Derek."
Rizzuto would compare Jeter's glide to Joe DiMaggio's. He would compare Jeter to all Yankee heroes, but never to Phil Rizzuto, even though DiMaggio had assured the Scooter he was an indispensable Yankee.
"Derek is 10 times the player I was," Rizzuto insisted. In '95, the Scooter told Buck Showalter that the kid should have already been promoted to the position of full-time shortstop. The manager ripped into Rizzuto for offering this unsolicited advice.
"Buck never forgave me for that one," Rizzuto would say.
That was OK: Not including the pitchers he bunted on, you only needed two or three fingers to count the number of people Phil Rizzuto annoyed in his 90 years on the planet.
"He was the perfect human being," Brozzetti said. "Finest man I ever met."
Brozzetti befriended Roy White and Don Mattingly on his pilgrimages to the Stadium. He was given a 1996 championship ring by George Steinbrenner for being such a hopelessly devoted fan.
But his time with Rizzuto was the gift he valued above all. At 5 feet 6, the Scooter was a champion of the people. He always looked more comfortable mingling with the cheap-seat fans than he did mingling with the larger-than-life ballplaying greats.
So the Garwood residents who were on the streets Friday waiting for a procession of celebrities leading into St. Anne's Catholic Church might have been disappointed. This wasn't Mickey Mantle's funeral. White and Yogi Berra were the only Yankees among the 50 or so mourners to attend.
Rizzuto never cared to be fussed over, so his wife, Cora, kept it simple and short. The church wasn't full, and the service didn't last much more than an hour. There was a nice touch at the luncheon afterward: a painting of Rizzuto looking up in his Yankee uniform, rising to the sky.
Before Brozzetti left, the Rizzutos thanked him for being such a dear friend. "Every time I told Phil you were coming," Cora said, "he had a big smile on his face."
The visits, the phone calls, the expressions of love and support - these acts represented the least Brozzetti could do. "Phil got me through my hour of greatest need," he said.
No, Phil Rizzuto wasn't just reading off birthday greetings to everyone's Aunt Sally and Cousin Bob all those years on TV. In his eyes, every day at the ballpark was another day to make a friend.
The Ian O'Connor Show is every Sunday, 9-10 a.m