WWW.QNS.COM RIDGEWOOD TIMES JULY 26, 2018 25
OUR NEIGHBORHOOD: THE WAY IT WAS
Babe Ruth’s single season home run
record.
“Fastball, hit deep to right, this could
be it! Way back there ... holy cow, he did
it! Sixty-one for Maris!”
Rizzuto had plenty of family in Glendale
long aft er he left the neighborhood.
The Ridgewood Times profi led
a cousin of the Scooter, Ernest Furone,
in the Aug. 23, 2007, issue, a week aft er
Rizzuto’s death.
“In recalling the New York Yankees
baseball player and announcer known
as ‘The Scooter,’ who died at the age of
89 on Aug. 13, Furone noted that his
fi rst real meeting with Phil Rizzuto
occurred ‘sometime in the late thirties,’
before Phil began his 13-year career
with the Yankees in 1941.
“The occasion was a wedding reception
for Phil’s sister Rose in the
basement of the Rizzuto family’s Liberty
Park home at 64th Street and 78th
Avenue, just south of Cooper Avenue. ...
“‘When Philly became famous, naturally,
I realized that he was related to
me—and I always rooted for him and
the Yankees,’ said Furone. ...
“Of the original photos of Phil Rizzuto
that his second cousin does possess,
the most recent was taken in 1988,
when Phil came back to the Glendale
area to make a personal appearance on
Ridgewood Times archives
Myrtle Avenue at the since-departed
Hamilton Federal Savings Bank (now a
Ridgewood Savings Bank branch). Ernest
Furone went and presented Phil
with a scrapbook — an exchange that
was photographed by Ernest’s daughter,
Diane Shendler, also of Glendale.”
As it happened, Rizzuto wasn’t the
only Yankee legend who grew up in
Our Neighborhood. Bob Sheppard,
the legendary, god-like public address
announcer of the old Yankee Stadium,
grew up in Ridgewood but eventually
relocated to Richmond Hill. Sheppard
would call more than 4,500 games,
with his last game occurring in the
2007 playoff s, just two years before
his death at the age of 99.
Sheppard had started his career
with the Yankees in 1951, and Rizzuto
was one of the fi rst Yankees players
that he called to the plate on Opening
Day of that season.
***
Share your history with us by
emailing editorial@ridgewoodtimes.
com (subject: Our Neighborhood: The
Way it Was) or write to The Old Timer,
℅ Ridgewood Times, 38-15 Bell Blvd.,
Bayside, NY 11361. Any mailed pictures
will be carefully returned to you upon
request.
Phil Rizzuto with his cousin, Ernest Furano, during an appearance in Glendale in 1988