Phil Rizzutos Sports Caravan 2 Mel Allen 1954

Phil Resutos Sports, Caravan. And now let's climb aboard the Sports Caravan again for a news-packed feature-filled quarter-hour with Baseball's number one shortstop, star of the world champion New York Yankees, and in 1950, voted the American League's most valuable player, Phil Resutos.

Thanks, Bob, and hello again, fans. Just recently, around the batting cage before a ball game, we were swapping baseball anecdotes, and one came up about our old friend Lefty Gomez that I thought was worth passing on.

Gomez was a great picture for the Yankees, but everybody knew he was also nuts about airplanes. He'd even stop in the middle of a game and gape at a passing plane, and Lefty's manager Joe McCarthy was always warning him not to ever go up in one.

Well one day during spring training, McCarthy saw planes stunning and doing all kinds of flip-flops right over the field. He looked for Gomez to tell him about it, but couldn't find him. Next day McCarthy found Lefty and told him about the plane he missed.

You mean that red plane go mezzess? That's right, Macarpey answer. Did you see it too? See it was Lefty's ready reply. I was in it. They sure don't have so many colorful ballplayers around the majors these days, do they Phil?

No sir Bob, but we still get plenty of kicks out of recalling all Lefty's gags and wits. Now what do you say we dip into our mailbag and see what some of our listeners want you to comment on this week Phil?

Good idea Bob, do you have our first letter? Yes Phil, I do and it's from David Battleino of Reading Pennsylvania. He wants to know how batters and base runners get their signals, and the dugout, the coaches, or by some pre-arranged method.