LAZZERI: PLAYER OF THE YEARS
"When the iceman cometh, it doesn't make a great deal of difference which route he takes, for the ultimate result is the same in any case. Nevertheless, there was something especially tragic in the way death came to Tony Lazzeri, finding him and leaving him all alone in a dark and silent house- a house which must, in that last moment, have seemed frighteningly silent to a man whose ears remembered the roar of a crowd the way Tony's did.
A man who knew the roar of a crowd? Shucks, Tony Lazzeri was the man who made the crowds and who made them roar. Frank Graham, in his absorbing history of the Yankees, tells about the coming of Lazzeri and about the crowds that trooped into the Stadium to see him, the noisy jubilant Italian-American crowds with their rallying cry of 'Poosh-'em up, Tony!'
'And now,' Frank wrote in effect, 'a new type of fan was coming to the stadium. A fan who didn't know where first base was. He came, and what he saw brought him back again and again until he not only knew where first base was, but second base as well.'
It was a shock to read, in the reports of Lazzeri's death, that he was not yet forty-two years old. There are at least a few right around that age still playing in the major leagues. One would have guessed Lazzeri's age a good deal higher because his name and fame are inextricably associated with an era which has already become a legend- the era that is always referred to as the time of 'the old Yankees.'
You can't think of Tony without thinking also of Babe Ruth and Bob Meusel and Herb Pennock and Waite Hoyt and Lou Gehrig and Mark Koenig and Benny Bengough and Wilcy Moore, all of whom have been gone from the playing fields for what seems like a long time.
And you think of Grover Cleveland Alexander, too, for it was Lazzeri's misfortune that although he was as great a ball player as ever lived, the most vivid memory he left in most minds concerned the day he failed.
That was, of course, in the seventh game of the 1926 World Series when the Yankees filled the bases against the leading Cardinals, drove Jess Haines from the hill and sent Rogers Hornsby from his position at second base out towards the Cardinals' bullpen where Alexander drowsed in the dusk.
Everyone knows the story, how the St. Louis manager walked out to take a look at Alexander's eyes, how he found them as clear as could be expected and sent Old Pete to save the world championship by striking out Lazzeri. Come to think of it, Alex wasn't a lot younger at that time than Lazzeri was when he died.
It was after that game that someone asked Alexander how he felt when Lazzeri struck out.
'How did I feel?' he snorted. 'Go ask Lazzeri how he felt.'
Tony never told how he felt. Not that it was necessary, anyway, but he wasn't one to be telling much, ever. He was a rookie when a baseball writer first used a line that has been worn to tatters since. 'Interviewing that guy,' the reporter grumbled, 'is like mining coal with a nail file.'
Silent and unsmiling though he was, Lazzeri wasn't entirely devoid of a taste for dugout humor. Babe Ruth, dressing in haste after one tardy arrival in the stadium, tried to pull a shoe out of his locker and found it wouldn't move. He didn't have to be told who nailed it to the floor.
When other players found cigarette butts in their foot gear or discovered their shirts tied in water-soaked knots or were unable to locate their shoelaces, they blamed only one man.
Lefty Gomez tells of the day, long after Lazzeri's experience in the 1926 World Series, when he lost control and filled the bases. Lazzeri trotted in from second base to talk to him. Lazzeri always was the man who took charge when trouble threatened the Yankees. Even in his first season when he was a rookie who'd never seen a big league game until he played in one, he was the steadying influence, the balance wheel. So after this incident, Gomez was asked what words Lazzeri had used to reassure him in the clutch.
'He said,' replied Lefty, who didn't necessarily expect to be believed, ''You put those runners on there. Now get out of the jam yourself.''
They chose Lazzeri 'Player of the Year' after one of his closing seasons. They could just as well have made it 'Player of the Years,' for in all his time with the Yankees there was no one whose hitting and fielding and hustle and fire and brilliantly swift thinking meant more to any team.
Other clubs tried to profit by those qualities of his when he was through. He went to the Cubs and the Dodgers and the Giants. None of those experiences was particularly happy; none endured for long. He managed Toronto for a while and then just before the war he went home to San Francisco. That was the last stop."
-Red Smith, condensed from the New York Herald-Tribune (Baseball Digest, October 1946)
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