Lawrence Baldassaro - Tony Lazzeri: Yankees Legend and Baseball Pioneer

Cheers to Mr. Baldassaro for mining this terrific story.

Ira Berkow, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of How Life Imitates Sports

Tony Lazzeri was one of the first Italan American sports stars, a key player of the famed Murderers Row Yankees lineup, and an underappreciated American success story who overcame poverty and epilepsy. He is a worthy subject for this closer look at a Hall of Famer.

Tom Verducci, senior baseball writer for Sports Illustrated and commentator

In real life as in baseball, how one perfoms in a climactic moment may unfairly obscure a multitude of other feats; Larry Baldassaros book reveals its subject to have been not only a wonderful ballplayer but also a great pioneer on behalf of Italian Americans forevermore.

John Thorn, official historian of Major League Baseball

Whos the greatest second baseman in Yankee history? All too often, Tony Lazzeri, the Murderers Row Hall of Famer, is left out of the debate. Lawrence Baldassaros biography properly elevates Lazzeris status in such discussions. This is an important contribution to Yankees literature.

Marty Appel, New York Yankees historian and author of Pinstripe Empire and Casey Stengel

Lawrence Baldassaro

University of Nebraska Press | Lincoln

2021 by Lawrence Baldassaro

Cover designed by University of Nebraska Press; cover image courtesy of the National Baseball Hall of Fame.

All rights reserved.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Baldassaro, Lawrence, author.

Title: Tony Lazzeri: Yankees legend and baseball pioneer / Lawrence Baldassaro.

Description: Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, [2021] | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2020037024

ISBN 9781496216755 (hardback)

ISBN 9781496226181 (epub)

ISBN 9781496226204 (pdf)

Subjects: LCSH : Lazzeri, Tony, 19031946. | Baseball playersUnited StatesBiography. | Italian American baseball playersBiography. | New York Yankees (Baseball team)History20th century.

Classification: LCC GV 865. L 34 B 35 2021 | DDC 796.357092 [B]dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020037024

The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

In memory of my parents,

Gerald and Olive Baldassaro,

who ignited my love for the game,

and to my son, Jim

Before there was Joe DiMaggio, there was Tony Lazzeri. A decade before the Yankee Clipper began his legendary career in 1936, Lazzeri paved the way for the man who would become an iconic American hero. At a time when baseball ruled the world of sports and was a major social institution, Lazzeri was one of the games biggest stars, the de facto captain of the famed Yankees Murderers Row lineup and second in popularity on that team only to Babe Ruth. From 1926 through 1937 he was the second baseman for teams that won six pennants and five World Series on their way to becoming the most storied American sports franchise. He was also a mentor to DiMaggio and fellow Californians Frank Crosetti and Lefty Gomez, both of whom later joined him in the Yankees lineup.

An unwitting baseball pioneer, in 1925 the twenty-one-year-old Lazzeri became the first ballplayer to hit sixty home runs in organized baseball while playing for the Salt Lake City Bees in the Pacific Coast League. He then became one of the first middle infielders to hit with power in the big leagues. In fact his home run and RBI production in his years with the Yankees put him in the company of the most elite sluggers of that period. He was also the first major star of Italian descent in the national pastime and one of the games first ethnic heroes. His success not only drew large numbers of first- and second-generation Italian Americans to the ballpark for the first time, but it also gave them a newfound sense of pride at a time when the stereotypical image of their group within the American consciousness was that of the bootleg mobster. Blessed with a keen baseball mind, Lazzeri was regarded as one of the smartest and most respected players in the game. In 1991 he was enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Yet in spite of all that he achieved, Lazzeri has been largely forgotten. Over time his achievements and records were overshadowed by fellow Yankees Ruth, DiMaggio, and Lou Gehrig. And his early death in 1946 at the age of forty-two means that except at the moment of his entry into the Hall of Fame, he has been out of the public awareness for more than seven decades. Worse yet, when he is remembered, it is mainly for one moment in a fourteen-year career: his strikeout against future Hall of Fame pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander at a crucial moment in the seventh game of the 1926 World Series, when he was a twenty-two-year-old rookie. As if to rub salt in the wound, that strikeout is even mentioned on Alexanders Hall of Fame plaque. Consequently Tony Lazzeri has become one of those ballplayers who, in spite of a career that earned him a place in baseballs shrine, is essentially relegated to the dustbin of baseball history, remembered by only the most devoted followers of the game.

Lazzeris was an unlikely success story. Born in San Francisco to Italian immigrants, he left school at the age of fifteen to work in the same boiler factory as his father, while briefly considering a career as a professional fighter. But he beat the odds and found a way to realize the American Dream by excelling in baseball. While that in itself is a major challenge for anyone, for Lazzeri there were two additional obstacles. For one thing, he was part of an ethnic group that had been widely disparaged for decades and was not welcomed with open arms by the baseball establishment. The other obstacle was one the public was never aware of: he played his entire career while afflicted with epilepsy. A neurological disorder that not only presented the daily possibility of ones suffering a seizure, epilepsy was also so stigmatized at the time that it was best kept secret. Knowing that stress is a common trigger for seizures, a New York doctor specializing in epilepsy said of Lazzeri: Think of a ballplayer in front of all those people, and in those times. I cant believe he played.

I got a better understanding of what the doctor meant when, for a few weeks in 1992, I had the opportunity to pitch batting practice for the Milwaukee Brewers. (My pitching career began when I was ten and ended after one year of semi-pro ball.) I have loved the game for as long as I can remember and thought I understood it rather well. But I quickly discovered that when youre on the field with some of the best players in the world, even the relatively slow-motion activity of batting practice is an eye-opening revelation. Everything happens much faster than it looks from the stands or on television. You realize just how hard these athletes hit the ball and how quickly fielders need to react.

I learned about speed firsthand when, on one of my earliest pitches, before I got the hang of drifting behind the protective screen at the bottom of the mound as the ball is released, a batter hit a line drive straight at my head. Luckily, given my relative youth at the time, I was able to avoid the ball by flopping onto my back, much to the hilarity of the guys around the batting cage. That lesson was reinforced when I later went to the outfield to shag balls and realized how fast a baseball gets out to you, leaving little time to adjust. I came away from that experience with a much better understanding of the difficulty of playing the game at the Major League level and a much greater respect for even the average player. Such knowledge makes it all the more remarkable to me that Lazzeri was able to perform at such a high level while coping with the daily uncertainty of epilepsy.