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Phil Rizzuto Was Cora’s Prince

By Joe Guzzardi

When New York Yankees’ Hall of Famer and long-time broadcaster died at age 90, his wife Cora said, “I’ve lost my beautiful prince.” The Rizzutos had been married for 64 gloriously happy years.

Rizzuto married Cora Anne Ellenborn on June 23, 1943; the two first met the previous year when Rizzuto substituted for Joe DiMaggio as a speaker at a Newark Holy Communion breakfast. “I fell in love so hard I didn’t go home”, Rizzuto recalled. “Scooter,” as Rizzuto was universally referred to, rented a nearby hotel room for a month to be as close as possible to his beloved Cora.

Cora was often part of Rizzuto’s patter. He often left the game early, and said over the air, “I’ll be home soon, Cora!” or “Cora, I gotta get over that bridge!” referring to the congested George Washington Bridge that Yankee fans had to cross to get to New Jersey.

In later years, Rizzuto would announce the first six innings of Yankee games; the TV director would often playfully show a shot of the bridge, which can be seen from the top of Yankee Stadium, after Rizzuto had departed. Rizzuto was also very phobic about lightning, and sometimes left the booth following violent thunderclaps.

During his post-playing career, Rizzuto broadcasted Yankees’ games for 40 years. Listeners heard not only about the on field action but assorted other subjects. His popular catchphrase was “Holy cow.” Rizzuto also became known for saying “Unbelievable!” or “Did you see that?” to describe a great play and would call somebody a “huckleberry” if he did something Rizzuto did not like. During game broadcasts, “Scooter” would frequently wish listeners a happy birthday or anniversary, give cooking lessons, send get-well wishes to fans in hospitals, and give good reviews to restaurants he liked, or hype the cannoli he ate between innings. His chatter sometimes distracted the speaker himself; Rizzuto devised the unique scoring notation “WW” for his scorecard; it stood for “Wasn’t Watching.”

Rizzuto’s peak as a player was 1949–50, when he was moved into the leadoff spot. In 1950, his MVP season, he hit .324 with 200 hits and 92 walks and scored 125 runs. While leading the league in fielding percentage, Rizzuto handled 238 consecutive chances without an error, setting the single-season record for shortstops. In all, Rizzuto played in five All-Star games, on 10 AL championship teams that appeared in seven World Series. Rizzuto ended up among the top 10 in World Series games played, at bats, runs scored and steals.

His broadcasting partners were Frank Messer and Bill White, a former St. Louis Cardinals first baseman and baseball’s first black play-by-play announcer. Rizzuto, who broke in with broadcasting legends Red Barber and Mel Allen, and later worked with Tom Seaver, Bobby Mercer, Joe Garagiola, and Whitey Ford, said that in 18 years working with White, a cross word was never exchanged between them. Their rain delay chatter was classic, analytic free, baseball-exclusive talk.

In 1995, at age 77, Rizzuto decided to retire to spend more time with the love of his life, Cora. He said, “I hadn’t been fair to my family. Fifty-seven, 58 years, I missed half of every year. All the things had accumulated. The Mantle thing [Mantle’s death that year] brought it to a head. I could see myself in the same position. I’m lucky to be as old as I am without anything happening to me.”

At the end of Rizzuto’s life, he was in an assisted living facility. Every day, his teammate Yogi Berra drove over to play cards and to hold Rizzuto’s hand until his friend fell asleep. Yogi and Cora sat by Scooter’s bed to comfort the dying Rizzuto until he passed. Both Hall of Famers played their entire careers with the Yankees. Cora died in 2010; Berra, in 2015. White, who served as National League president from 1989 to 1994, was instrumental in Rizzuto’s Hall of Fame election. Age 92, White lives in Bucks County, Pennsylvania.

Joe Guzzardi is a Society for American Baseball Research member. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com

Birth Hotels For Chinese Could be Shuttered

By Joe Guzzardi

Peter Schweizer’s new best selling book, “The Invisible Coup: How American Elites and Foreign Powers Use Immigration as a Weapon,”contained a bombshell exposé. Among the 750,000 to 1.5 million Chinese who have been granted birthright citizenship, illegally cross the southern border during the Biden non-enforcement era, or overstayed their F-1 student visas of which roughly 277,000 were admitted in 2023/2024, are potential 2030 voters.

Schweizer’s shocker came only to people who haven’t paid attention to how immigration has radically altered the nation during the last half of a century. Immigration advocates, NGOs, Congress, the legacy media, religious institutions have relentlessly pressed for and, by and large, successfully gained higher levels of new permanent lawful residents, refugees, asylees, and temporary visa holders. “Auto-Pen” Joe delivered the nearly fatal blow to enforcement advocates when he opened the border wide and admitted all comers including Venezuelan criminals, escaped mental patients, Tren de Aragua gangbangers, and Middle Eastern terrorists.

Nowhere, however, has the U.S. laid down more passively on immigration than it has to China, our nation’s most powerful and determined adversary. Several administrations have allowed China to buy up precious farmland—adjacent to military compounds, no less— commercial real estate, and build bio-labs right under our nose. Except for Arkansas Senator Tom Cotton’s common-sense suggestion that Chinese F-1 student visa holders be admitted to U.S. university only under the condition that they study the Constitution and the Founding Fathers, there’s been little pushback. Thomas Jefferson, yes; STEM, no.

Even when U.S. Rep. Eric Swalwell’s (D) affair with infamous Chinese spy Fang Fang was made public, he only got a slap on the wrist. No one knows what secrets Fang Fang might have extracted from Swalwell during their pillow talk. A Chinese national chauffeured California Senator Diane Feinstein (D) for two decades. When the FBI exposed the scandal, the chauffer disappeared back to China and Feinstein—still in her lucid years—lamely said that she was as surprised as anyone that a spy was driving her around town and functioning as her gofer. At the time, Feinstein was Chair of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

Nowhere has the U.S. laid down so completely than on the in-your-face birth hotel scam. Starting about two decades ago, hundreds of Chinese mothers traveled to the U. S. while they were pregnant to give birth on American soil so that their kids became automatic citizens. When such children turn twenty-one, they can also apply for resident status for both of their parents. Of course, illegal aliens from China continue to cross the southern border as they have for years. A pregnant illegal alien comes across the border, has a baby, and suddenly not only that baby but the entire family comes to the country to stay. Since 2018, birth tourism has created anywhere from 150,000-250,000 U.S. citizens.

The Department of Homeland Security is passive on birth citizenship hotels, low hanging fruit that it could easily end. On a specific day, enforcement officers could target specific hotels in major cities like Los Angeles, New York, send personnel to the cities and demand to see the registered guests’ visas which will quickly be identified as fraudulent. The foreign nationals are not, as they declared, tourists but women in advanced pregnancy, present to give birth. Visa fraud is a federal felony, punishable by, in part, deportation. If a medical doctor declares the expectant scamsters medically eligible to travel, deport them. If their pregnancy is too advanced to risk travel, confine them under DHS supervision, and post-partum, deport them. Once the word gets out that DHS is cracking down on the birth hotel rip-off, business will soon dry up—bad news for the hotel operators who have been found in previous raids, guilty of sex trafficking and money laundering. The criminals immediately absconded.

During Trump 45, the federal government tried to limit birth tourism. The U.S. Department of State announced in January of 2020, “[T]he Department is amending its B nonimmigrant visa regulation to address birth tourism. Under this amended regulation, U.S. consular officers overseas will deny any B visa application from an applicant whom the consular officer has reason to believe is traveling for the primary purpose of giving birth in the United States to obtain U.S. citizenship for their child.” This lame effort went nowhere, and now Trump 47 is trying to eliminate birthright citizenship as it is currently practiced through a Supreme Court ruling. The Supreme Court is moving at glacier speed to avoid hearing the sovereignty determining issue.

Without immediate America first action, Schweizer’s grim prediction that Chinese nationals will determine the 2030’s election fate will come true.

Joe Guzzardi is a nationally syndicated columnist who has written about immigration for more than 30 years. Contact him at guzzjoe@yahoo.com