John Amirante/Photo Courtesy of the NY Daily News
I found this interesting piece by Jesse Spector of the NY Daily News. Apparently, when John Amirante occasionally sang the National Anthem at Yankee Stadium, he used to travel to Plainview, NY (my hometown) to Licata’s and pick up some cannoli’s for Phil Rizzuto.
Touching Base:
Back in January, I was starting to gain some momentum on the Pine Tar Game project, but I got bogged down in the first inning when the next bit of commentary from Bobby Murcer and Bill White went as follows…
MURCER: Well, you know what happens when John Amirante sings the National Anthem.
WHITE: Yeah, we get cannolis.
MURCER: Five pounds’ worth. (White laughs.) You gotta work out another week.
Stymied in my initial attempts to get in touch with Amirante, I put the project on the back burner until Tuesday night, when I went to the Rangers game and he sang the national anthems of both Canada and the U.S., brilliantly as usual. Michael Obernauer, our Rangers beat writer here at the Daily News, got me Amirante’s business card, and I talked to him today.
The cannolis were probably long gone by then. Now, so is the place where Amirante got them – Licata’s in Plainview, L.I.
“I would bring those cannolis for (Phil) Rizzuto every time I sang there,” said Amirante, who split anthem duties with Robert Merrill in the Bronx in the 1980s. “(In 1984), the Yankees arranged for me to sing in Baltimore on his birthday, and I went down with a close friend of Phil Rizzuto’s and I brought cannolis and they put them in the refrigerator until I was done singing. When I got out there to sing the anthem, Rizzuto almost fell out of the booth – he was screaming and waving his arms, and I thought he was going to fall. And I have a great picture of him and me and the cannoli box with the whole park behind us from the booth.”
Amirante had some other good memories of his time singing in the Bronx, and it wasn’t just doing the anthem.“I performed – they had an Italian-American day at the Stadium, and I did the pregame show about 15-20 minutes before the game and performed,” Amirante said. “They wanted to get Vic Damone, but he turned it down because he was afraid of the delay in the sound system. They knew I sang Italian songs, and I went there the day before with my arranger and a small combo, and went through the whole thing, and after that, I had to run around the bases and slide into home plate, feel like I did something.
“The next day, Rizzuto again couldn’t believe it – he hadn’t heard me sing anything other than the Star Spangled Banner. Vic Damone even complimented me on it. Another great day was when they had a tribute to Phil Rizzuto – the Rizzuto family requested me to do that because I had become close with the family, and that was wonderful to be there. And meeting Robert Merrill for the first time was exciting. He treated me as an equal, there was no animosity even though we were singing at the same time. He did most of the games, but I did my share.”
“I remember the day,” Amirante said of the Pine Tar Game. “I remember Brett comes flying out of the dugout screaming like a maniac when his home run was disallowed.”
M. B. Rozell
Kevin Rozell
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