Crosetti was with the Yankees
for 37 years, 17 as player, and 20 as coach.
Crosetti played for eight teams that won World
Series titles, coached on
teams that took part in 15 World Series. He was
teammates with Yankee legends
such as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio,
and coached Yankee greats
such as Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris.
I found amusing and telling, the description of
the drive from San Francisco to the
Yankees St Petersberg training camp, of Croscetti,
Hall of Famer Tony Lazzeri,
and Joe DiMaggio.
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OBITUARIES
FRANK CROSETTI, 91; YANKEE PLAYER, THIRD -BASE COACH
By Gary Klein
Staff Writer
Los Angeles Times
February 13 2002
Frank Crosetti, one of the last links to the great New York Yankee baseball
teams of the 1930s and early '40s, has died. He was 91.
Crosetti, who played with the Yankees from 1932 to 1948 and was the
team's
third-base coach for the next 20 years, died Monday night in Stockton
of
complications from a fall in early January, said Norma Crosetti, his
wife of
63 years.
Nicknamed ''the Crow,'' Crosetti played for eight teams that won World
Series
titles and was teammates with Yankee legends such as Babe Ruth, Lou
Gehrig
and Joe DiMaggio. The 5-foot, 10-inch Crosetti batted .245, hit 98
home runs
and drove in 649 runs in 1,682 games in 17 seasons. He was an All-Star
in
1936 and 1939, but his best season might have been 1938, when his 757
plate
appearances set a major league record for a 154-game season. He also
led the
American League with 27 stolen bases. He was the team's starting shortstop
from 1932 through 1940, when Phil Rizzuto replaced him.
After retiring as a player, Crosetti coached Yankee greats such as Mickey
Mantle and Roger Maris on teams that took part in 15 World Series.
''I couldn't rank Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mantle, Maris
and
other great Yankee hitters,'' Crosetti told The Times in 1961. ''They
played
at different times, had different styles...." He said he had ''been
asked to
pick the best Yankee teams since I came up in 1932, but that can't
be done
either.''
Born Oct. 4, 1910, in San Francisco, Frank Peter Joseph Crosetti spent
many
of his formative years in Los Gatos near San Jose.
His father raised vegetables on a 12-acre plot, while Crosetti and his
brother spent their free time playing one-a-cat, a baseball-style game.
''We used the big end of the corncob as a ball,'' he said. ''We had
a bunch
of corncobs and when they dried they'd get hard, and we'd chop the
big end
off. For a bat, we'd get a board and whittle it down on one end to
make a
handle.''
Crosetti's family moved to the North Beach area of San Francisco when
he was
in high school, but Crosetti was not a good student. He once skipped
classes
at Lowell High for two consecutive weeks and spent most of those days
watching ballgames played by the San Francisco Seals of the Pacific
Coast
League.
After dropping out of high school at the age of 16, Crosetti worked
at a
produce market before a friend asked if he was interested in going
to Butte,
Mont., to play semipro baseball. The two worked for a Montana power
company
by day and played baseball at night through the summer, then returned
to San
Francisco, where Crosetti played in several games a day at various
parks in
the region.
The Seals signed Crosetti in 1928 and he played three seasons for the
team
before joining the Yankees, a club that featured San Francisco native
and
future Hall of Famer Tony Lazzeri at second base.
DiMaggio, who was also from San Francisco and played for the Seals,
had his
contract purchased by the Yankees in 1935.
The three players, all of whom were of Italian origin and none of whom
were
particularly loquacious, forged a friendship that began when a team
executive
instructed Lazzeri and Crosetti to drive DiMaggio down to spring training
in
St. Petersburg, Fla.
''Tony didn't talk much and DiMag didn't say a word. He just sat in
the
backseat and looked out the window,'' Crosetti told Newsday in 1991.
''Tony
and I shared the driving. We would go two or three hours and then look
at the
other guy and say, 'Wanna drive?' and then we'd shift places. Sometimes
that
was all the conversation in the car.
''Finally, on about the third day, I said to Tony: 'Let's let the kid
drive.'
So he turned to him in the backseat and said, 'Wanna drive, kid?' And
DiMag
said, 'I don't know how.' I don't know if he was pulling our legs or
not.''
After Crosetti retired as a player, he became a fixture in the third-base
coaching box. He once was reportedly about to succeed the legendary
Casey
Stengel as manager of the Yankees, but denied the story.
''I wouldn't manage a ballclub for any amount of money," he said. "I
have the
best job in baseball right here and my only ambition is to remain as
third-base coach of the Yankees. Anyone who says different is nuts.''
Crosetti did coach with the expansion Seattle Pilots in 1969, but was
released after one season when manager Joe Schultz was fired.
In retirement, Crosetti was a frequent visitor to the Yankee clubhouse
when
the team made trips to Oakland. Last May, during one of his visits,
he told a
New York Daily News reporter that Babe Ruth's legendary "called shot"
home
run against the Chicago Cubs in the 1932 World Series never happened.
Legend
has it that Ruth pointed to the outfield fence before he hit the homer.
''I've been asked this a million times and he did not point,'' Crosetti
said.
"The next day, it was all in the papers. He sat next to me in the dugout
and
said, 'If the writers want to say I pointed, let 'em.'
''That was the tip-off, right there. What happened was, the Cubs were
getting
on him and he had two strikes on him. So he put his finger up in front
of his
face and what he meant was, 'I have one strike left.'
''And then it happened that on the next pitch, he hit a home run. But
he
didn't point.''
In addition to his wife, Crosetti is survived by his son, John D. Crosetti
of
San Diego; daughter, Ellen Biggs of Menlo Park; three grandsons; and
two
great-grandchildren.
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