Tony Lazzeri: Yankees Legend and Baseball Pioneer by Lawrence Baldassaro

Author:Lawrence Baldassaro [Baldassaro, Lawrence]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Sports & Recreation, Biography & Autobiography, Baseball, SPO003030 Sports & Recreation / Baseball / History, General, history, BIO016000 Biography & Autobiography / Sports, Sports
ISBN: 9781496216755
Google: uqEdEAAAQBAJ
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
Published: 2021-04-15T23:49:45.374811+00:00

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When the 1932 season opened on April 12 at Philadelphia, Lazzeri was still wearing a Yankees uniform. The prevailing opinion was that while several teams were interested in acquiring him, none was willing to give up the front-line pitcher the Yankees were looking for. However, Lazzeri was not in the starting lineup. McCarthy had settled on Saltzgaver at second, Crosetti at third, and Lary at short. But Saltzgaver failed to get a hit in his first four games, and by April 19 Lazzeri was starting at second. Saltzgaver played sparingly thereafter, never hitting higher than .132, and after appearing in twenty games, he was sent down to the Yankees’ Double AA affiliate in Newark. Lazzeri, meanwhile, hit .303 in April, then took off in May, hitting .397. By the end of May the man few expected to see in a Yankees uniform was second in the AL in average (.368) and on-base percentage (.481) and fourth in slugging average (.613).

Another shift in the infield alignment occurred in the second game of a doubleheader on June 1. Lary was removed from the shortstop spot, and Crosetti, who had been starting at third, took his place, while Sewell—a thirty-one-year-old veteran infielder who had hit .320 in eleven years with the Indians—stepped in at third. From that moment Crosetti and Lazzeri—the first Major Leaguers of Italian descent to form a double-play combination in the big leagues—began the Yankees’ keystone combo that, with few interruptions, would last through the 1937 season, Lazzeri’s last with the Yankees. Crosetti, who would be in the Yankees lineup for another eleven years after Lazzeri left, was a player-coach in his final two seasons, then spent another nineteen years as the third base coach. He ended up wearing a Yankees uniform for thirty-seven years, longer than anyone in franchise history.

A mid-September story noted that the two middle infielders would communicate in Italian while on the field: “Both come from San Francisco and often jabber away in their native tongue in the infield to the discomfiture of the enemy on the bags. Lazzeri was Crosetti’s boyhood hero, and Tony from Telegraph Hill has taught him many tricks in English and Italian.”17 Lazzeri was indeed a mentor to his fellow San Franciscan, as he later would be to Joe DiMaggio. “When I was called up by the Yankees, I looked up Tony at his home, and he took me under his wing,” said Crosetti. “He told me what to expect when I joined the team. He was a big help to me.”18

On June 30 Lazzeri and Crosetti were initiated into the Orient Heights Lodge of the Sons of Italy at East Boston High School, and the following day, “Sons of Italy Day” at Fenway Park, they were honored prior to the game. Or as Marshall Hunt described the scene: “Members of the Sons of Italy Society indigenous to South Boston left their vermicelli vats, raviola [sic] foundries and shoe shine stalls long enough to bestow emblems, bouquets and other symbols of esteem upon two of their illustrious countrymen.

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