By Yours Truly
http://throneberryfields.com/2017/01/01/chris-cannizzaro-rip-from-stengelese-foil-to-teaching-as-winning/“The first major league pitch I ever called . . . a curve ball to Wally Moon,” Chris Cannizzaro once said. “I didn’t catch it.”
That’s because Moon, then with the Dodgers, hit it far over the infamous Chinese Screen in left field in the old Los Angeles
Coliseum, where the Dodgers were shoehorned into playing baseball until Dodger Stadium was ready in 1962.
Cannizzaro was then enjoying one of a couple of cups of coffee with the Cardinals. If he didn’t get to catch his first major
league called pitch, he didn’t have any better luck in his first major league at-bat: he grounded out to second base against
Sandy Koufax.
But Cannizzaro, who died 30 December at 78 after a long battle with COPD, would figure only too large in a classic
Stengelese
schpritz as an Original Met, after he was recalled from Syracuse because of his strong throwing arm and
manager Casey Stengel’s frustrations against other teams’ running games.
The
schpritz I have in mind was delivered on a Met road trip stop in St. Louis, where Stengel attended a private party
for his 73rd birthday, at the Chase Hotel. Sitting in a large leather armchair, handed a tall Manhattan, and with Jimmy
Breslin in attendance, the Ol’ Perfesser let fly.
We’re going into Los Angeles the first time, and, well, I don’t want to go in there to that
big new ballpark in front of all them people and have to see the other fellas running
around those bases the way they figured to on my pitchers and my catchers too. [Maury]
Wills and those fellows, they start running in circles and they don’t stop and so forth,
and it could be embarrassing, which I don’t want to be.
Well, we have this catcher Canzoneri [he meant Cannizzaro, of course] at Syracuse, and
he catches good and throws real good and he should be able to stop them. I don’t want
to be embarrassed. So we bring him and he is going to throw out these runners.
We come in there and you never seen anything like it in your life. I find I got a defensive
catcher only who can’t catch the ball. The pitcher throws. Wild pitch. Throws again. Passed
ball. Throws again. Oops! The ball drops out of the glove. And all the time I am dizzy on
account of these runners running around in circles on me and so forth.
Makes a man think. You look up and down the bench and you have to say to yourself, “Can’t
anybody play this here game?”
Which was, of course, contorted into, “Can’t anybody here play this game?” Ultimately, the contortion became the title
of Breslin’s classic book recap of the 1962 Mets, subtitled,
The Improbable Saga of the New York Mets’ First Year.
Cannizzaro was plagued by a combination of injury, illness, and sometimes plain bad luck tied to one of the foregoing.
In 1964, he looked like he’d lock down the Mets’s number one catching job when he began hitting with a little authority,
too, after the All-Star break. (He also caught every last inning of the 23-inning marathon the Mets played against the
Giants on 31 May 1964—the second game of a doubleheader.) Then he pulled a hamstring during a 12 September game
against the Dodgers.
He didn’t hit well when he returned for 1965, forgetting the key his roommate Frank Lary (the longtime Detroit pitching
bellwether known for his particular success against the Yankees) had given him in ’64: be patient at the plate. The Mets
finally dealt him to the Braves for Don Dillard, an infielder/outfielder known best for being part of the deal that made
an Indian out of veteran slugger Joe Adcock.
Neither Cannizzaro with the Braves nor Dillard with the Mets saw one inning of major league service over the next couple
of years. The Braves sent Cannizzaro to the Red Sox after the 1966 season; he bounced from the Red Sox to the Tigers
to the Pirates in 1967-68, getting into a few games with the Pirates before being dealt to the Padres in spring 1969,
with veteran pitcher Tommie Sisk, for a pair of spare parts named Ron Davis (no known relation to the eventual relief
pitcher) and former Met middle infielder Bobby Klaus.
Improbably, Cannizzaro was picked for the 1969 National League All-Star team. He came out of spring training having
won the Padres’ top catching job and caught all but seven of their first 74 games. He also had a solid May and June at
the plate. After returning from the All-Star Game in Washington (he didn’t play in the game), Cannizzaro collapsed at
the plate while remaining solid enough behind it. He had another fine year in 1970, but with the Padres having eyes
for a kid named Mike Ivie as their catcher of the future, the 32-year-old Cannizzaro was considered a marketable trade
prospect.
A student of the game considered invaluable as a mentor to younger players, Cannizzaro went to the Cubs, the Dodgers,
and back to the Padres, at each stop of which he was seen as managerial material. Upon retiring as a player Cannizzaro
became a coach with the Braves, then a manager in the Angels’ systems. He was credited with mentoring Bruce Benedict,
Mike Witt, Tom Brunansky, and Dick Schofield, Jr. toward major league success.
Retiring to the San Diego home he made with his wife and children, Cannizzaro became involved in a number of charities
including Big Brothers, and becoming a staffer with high school and college baseball teams, including the University of
San Diego when Rich Hill (not to be confused with the Dodgers’ pitcher) was its head coach.
“It was an unreal experience for our players to have a veteran of major league baseball and a true ‘baseball guy’ around
them all the time,” said Hill, “In this day and age in our game we’re surrounded by young assistant coaches all the time
and he provided that elder leadership, that wisdom, that grandfatherly guy who was invaluable. And he was a true
character of the game, believe me.”
Cannizzaro, who kept the telegram commissioner Bowie Kuhn sent him to tell him he’d been named an All-Star and was
invited to the commissioner’s reception and Centennial dinner, loved to teach. For years he was one of the coaches at
former Padre teammate Randy Jones’s baseball camps.
“It is so special to be able to teach kids how to win and to me teaching is winning,” he once told MLB.com. “As long as you
have a reason to learn, you will love baseball, and I always will ’til the day I die.”
As an Original Met . . .
As an Original Padre . . .
With Stengel (left) and pitcher Roger Craig (right) on the Polo Grounds mound, 1962 . . .
