Linda Cataffo/New York Daily News Don Zimmer spends a lifetime in baseball and becomes an icon in New York as Yankees bench coach for his tough but light-hearted approach to the game. He is dead at 83. <a class="a-enlarge" href="http://redirect.viglink.com?key=11fe087258b6fc0532a5ccfc924805c0&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nydailynews.com%2Fsports%2Fbaseball%2Fyankees%2Fdon-zimmer-baseball-lifer-dead-83-article-1.1817522"/>
Baseball is forever poorer today with the passing of Don Zimmer, one of the game’s all-time good will ambassadors, humorists and raconteurs. Zimmer began his travelogue career as a Dodger in Brooklyn, surviving two near-fatal beanings, and went on to be an original ’62 Met, a Washington Senator, manager of two storied franchises, the Red Sox and Cubs, and finally Joe Torre’s bench coach for four Yankee world championship teams.
Zimmer, 83, died early Wednesday evening at BayCare Alliant Hospital in Dunedin, Fla., where he had been for the past few weeks after first undergoing heart-valve surgery and then being diagnosed with fibrosis on his lungs. He had also been having dialysis treatments for the last couple of years.
“He was my best friend in life,” said former Tigers manager Jim Leyland. “I called him three or four times a day. He took a liking to me years ago when he was a coach with the Yankees and we became fast friends.
STEVE NESIUS/AP During his historic run of success managing the Yankees, Torre is never far from Zimmer. 
TONY DEJAK/AP Zimmer and Torre at the 2000 All-Star Game in Atlanta TORRIE, KEITH Zimmer and Torre laugh it up in the dugout. Torrie, Keith Torre (c.) rubs Zimmer's head as mayor Rudy Giuliani presents him with a key to the city. Torrie, Keith Zimmer sits with Joe Girardi (l.), then a Yankees catcher, back in 1999.
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“There is no better person in life than Don Zimmer was.”
“Don spent a lifetime doing what he loved. He was an original — a passionate, old-school, one-of-a-kind baseball man who contributed to a memorable era in Yankees history,” said Hal Steibrenner, Yankee managing general partner/co-chairperson. “The baseball community will certainly feel this loss. On behalf of our organization, we offer our deepest condolences to his wife, Soot, their two children and four grandchildren.”
Howard Simmons/New York Daily News Zimmer, always a character, dons an army-style helmet with the Yankees logo at the 1999 World Series victory parade down the Canyon of Heroes. <a class="a-enlarge" href="http://redirect.viglink.com?key=11fe087258b6fc0532a5ccfc924805c0&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nydailynews.com%2Fsports%2Fbaseball%2Fyankees%2Fdon-zimmer-baseball-lifer-dead-83-article-1.1817522"/>
Zimmer leaves behind his wife, Soot, whom he married at home plate on Aug. 16, 1951 before a minor-league game in Elmira, N.Y., son Tom, a daughter, Donna, four grandchildren, thousands of baseball friends and millions of racetrack tickets, cashed or otherwise.
“I hired him as a coach, and he became like a family member to me. He has certainly been a terrific credit to the game,” said Joe Torre, former Yankee manager and current MLB executive vice president. “The game was his life. And his passing is going to create a void in my life and my wife Ali’s. We loved him. The game of baseball lost a special person tonight. He was a good man.”
CHRIS FAYTOK/THE STAR-LEDGER/EPA Pedro Martinez and Zimmer get into a famous fight during a 2003 brawl between the Yankees and Red Sox which sees Boston's ace throw the elderly coach to the ground. JULIE JACOBSON/AP Roger Clemens and Jorge Posada help Zimmer off the field. CHARLES KRUPA/AP Zimmer is taken away from the field on a stretcher, but recovered. RAY STUBBLEBINE An apologetic Zimmer talks to the press after his dustup with Martinez. Gallo, Bill October 1, 2004
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“Like everyone in Major League Baseball, I am deeply saddened by the loss of my friend Don Zimmer, one of our game’s most universally beloved figures,” said baseball commissioner Bud Selig. “A memorable contributor to Baseball for more than 60 years, Don was the kind of person you could only find in the National Pastime.”
As baseball’s version of “Forrest Gump”, Zim saw it all and did it all with his self-effacing good humor, never ceasing to remind everyone that he was a lifetime .235 hitter. Zimmer’s favorite saying, “If you’re early, you’re never late” — which sounded like he borrowed it from his close pal, Yogi Berra — was something he practiced his entire life. Beginning in 1949, when he passed up a scholarship to play quarterback for Bear Bryant at the University of Kentucky to sign with the Dodgers, in his 66 years in uniform right up until these past few seasons as a special assistant with Tampa Bay Rays, he could always be counted on as being one of the first people to arrive at the ballpark. Day games, however, put a bit of a crimp on him as he was unable to spend his customary lunchtime at what Soot called “the office” — either a nearby racetrack or an off-track betting parlor.
I hired him as a coach, and he became like a family member to me.
As a player, the 5-9, 185-pound Zimmer was a power-hitting shortstop with bulging biceps, which once prompted his Dodger teammate Roy Campanella to exclaim: “Lookit him! He looks like Popeye!”— a nickname that stuck with him the rest of his life. In his second year of pro ball, he led the Class-A Pony League with 22 homers and gradually moved up the Dodger system to Triple-A St. Paul and the cusp of the big leagues at age 22 in 1953. But just when it seemed his meteoric rise was about to land him in Brooklyn, Zimmer, who was leading the American Association in homers the first week of July, suffered a fractured skull in the first game of a twi-night doubleheader when he was struck by a pitch from Columbus righthander Jim Kirk. The beaning was so severe — he subsequently suffered blood clots on the brain requiring spinal taps every 2-3 days — Zimmer was in a coma for six days, and when he woke up he had no eyesight. Doctors had to drill three holes on the left side of his skull and another on the right to relieve the pressure, and for the rest of his life, he had four tantalum buttons in his skull, about which he often joked: “People who said that I managed sometimes like I had a hole in my head were dead wrong. I actually had four holes in my head!”
At first it was feared Zimmer’s career was over, but after gradually recovering his sight, he was back at St. Paul the following year when, in midseason, an injury to Pee Wee Reese resulted in him being called to the big leagues. He never went back to the minors and, in 1955, opened the season as the Dodgers’ starting shortstop when Reese was felled by a back condition. For the rest of ’55, Zimmer served as a utility infielder, finishing with 15 homers and 50 RBI in just 88 games.
STEVE NESIUS/AP Zimmer (l.) bends George Steinbrenner's ear as the late Yankees owner stands with Torre at spring training in 2001. <a class="a-enlarge" href="http://redirect.viglink.com?key=11fe087258b6fc0532a5ccfc924805c0&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nydailynews.com%2Fsports%2Fbaseball%2Fyankees%2Fdon-zimmer-baseball-lifer-dead-83-article-1.1817522"/>
Zimmer also achieved a bit of accidental notoriety that year, in Game 7 of their first and only World Series championship in Brooklyn, when Dodger manager Walter Alston replaced him at second base with Jim Gilliam (who had been in left field), so he could insert Sandy Amoros in left for defensive purposes. Amoros subsequently made the game-saving play with a one-handed catch of Yogi Berra’s liner into Yankee Stadium’s left-field corner — prompting another much-repeated Zimmer joke at himself: “We’d have never won that Series if Alston hadn’t had the good sense to get me out of the game!”
But while it again seemed as if Zimmer was on course to be the one to finally replace Reese as the Dodgers’ shortstop, a second severe beaning, on June 23, 1956, by Cincinnati Reds pitcher Hal Jeffcoat, resulted in another setback to his career. The pitch hit Zimmer squarely in the cheekbone, and he was once more taken the hospital, this time conscious, where it was discovered he had suffered a detached retina, a shattered cheek bone and a concussion. Once again, he needed weeks of therapy to regain his eyesight and, in retrospect, he maintained the Jeffcoat beaning was more serious than the Kirk one because he was never able to see the ball that well again.
DUANE BURLESON/AP Torre holds off Zimmer as he goes after umpire Mike Reilly back in 2000. <a class="a-enlarge" href="http://redirect.viglink.com?key=11fe087258b6fc0532a5ccfc924805c0&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nydailynews.com%2Fsports%2Fbaseball%2Fyankees%2Fdon-zimmer-baseball-lifer-dead-83-article-1.1817522"/>
In 1958, Zimmer, filling in at shortstop, second and third, hit .262 with career-high home run (17) and RBI (60) totals, but after starting the ’59 season as the Dodgers’ regular shortstop, he lost the job in midseason — this time permanently — to rookie Maury Wills. Zimmer got only one at-bat in the ’59 World Series for the Dodgers and the following April, at his own request to Dodger general manager Buzzie Bavasi, was traded to the Cubs for reliever Ron Perranoski.
“That was one of the best trades Buzzie ever made,” Zimmer said, “getting rid of a humpty like me for a guy who merely went 16-3 and led the league in appearances in their 1963 championship season.”
He was my best friend in life. There is no better person in life than Don Zimmer was.
Zimmer spent two seasons with the Cubs before being selected by the Mets in the 1961 expansion draft. He opened the ’62 season as the Mets’ first third baseman, but while Zimmer was an immediate favorite of Mets manager Casey Stengel, once again his time as a regular was abbreviated by an untimely slump. After 14 games, he was 4-for-52 (.077) with no homers and one RBI and, on May 7, the Mets traded him to his hometown team, the Cincinnati Reds, for third baseman Cliff Cook.
Born in Cincinnati, Jan. 17, 1931, Zimmer attended the same Western Hills H.S. that produced Pete Rose. His lifelong friend, Jim Frey, was fond of telling a story about how Zimmer got the two of them enrolled in plane geometry their senior year because he had heard the teacher purportedly loved athletes and gave them a free ride. But the day before classes started, the teacher dropped dead, and Zimmer, without telling Frey, quickly transferred out of plane geometry into wood shop. “So I’m stuck in plane geometry trying to figure out the Pythagorean theorem while Zimmer’s down the hall making bleepin’ lamps!” Frey said.
Candido, Pat Some of the original Mets (l. to r.): Frank Thomas, Gil Hodges, Zimmer, and Roger Craig. UPI Zimmer is an original member of the New York Mets in 1962. Here he is with his son Tommy, nine years old at the time. Zimmer is hailed as 'the next Pee Wee Reese' coming up with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Zimmer manages the Chicago Cubs from 1988-91.
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Many years later, Frey and Zimmer teamed up to make one of the most memorable seasons in the Chicago Cubs’ history. At the end of the 1987 season, Frey was named general manager of the Cubs and in his first move tapped his old friend to be his manager. Zimmer had nine previous years of managerial experience, with the San Diego Padres, Texas Rangers and the Red Sox, his closest finish to the postseason being 1978 when the Red Sox won 99 games but lost the American League East playoff game to the Yankees.
The ’89 Cubs, dubbed “the Boys of Zimmer,” won the National League East with a 93-69 record despite an off-year by their best player, future Hall of Famer Andre Dawson, who was hurt much of the season. Although Chicago was beaten by the San Francisco Giants in the NLCS, Zimmer always said the Cubs’ winning the division title that year was the highlight of his career.
Torrie, Keith Whitey Ford, Yogi Berra, Zimmer and Torre line up before Game 4 of the '99 World Series against the Braves. <a class="a-enlarge" href="http://redirect.viglink.com?key=11fe087258b6fc0532a5ccfc924805c0&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.nydailynews.com%2Fsports%2Fbaseball%2Fyankees%2Fdon-zimmer-baseball-lifer-dead-83-article-1.1817522"/>
He was also proud of his ’78 Red Sox team that blew a 14½-game lead over the Yankees then lost the playoff game for the AL East title when Bucky Dent hit the key three-run homer. “People always want to say we blew it,” Zim said, “but they forget we won the last eight games in a row to force the playoff.” The one last bitter irony to that playoff loss for Zimmer was five years later when he became a coach for the Yankees and wound up renting a house in New Jersey owned by Dent, who had been traded to Texas. “Everywhere in the house there were all these different pictures of that damn home run,” Zimmer said. “I turned ’em all around and left ’em that way.”
Apparently, the Red Sox didn’t blame Zimmer for that historic collapse. In September of 2010, they inducted him into their Hall of Fame. And in all his years with the Yankees as Torre’s bench coach, he was always received warmly by Boston fans, even after his infamous brawl with Pedro Martinez in Game 3 of the 2003 Yankees-Red Sox ALCS. In what he later confessed “was not one of my prouder moments” the then-72-year-old Zimmer charged out onto the field in the middle of a melee and sought out Martinez, who proceeded to slam dunk him onto the grass.
Zimmer’s term as Yankee bench coach had a bad ending, this time over a rift with George Steinbrenner, with whom he’d been friends and Tampa race track companions for 30 years. Steinbrenner’s continual carping at Torre’s coaches, in which he referred to them on one occasion as --- holes, prompted Zimmer to storm out of the clubhouse after the 2003 ALCS Game 7 win over the Red Sox, spouting: “This is one ---hole (Steinbrenner) won’t have to worry about firing, ’cause I won’t be back. I’m a human being and I ain’t been treated like one for 11 months.”
It was Zimmer’s one regret that he never got the opportunity to mend the friendship with Steinbrenner who, in the ensuing years, became afflicted with dementia. In his first time back at Yankee Oldtimer’s Day in July of 2009, Zimmer said: “I’ve moved on from that night in 2003. I feel badly about The Boss, the shape he’s in. I’m grateful to the Yankees for inviting me back. I grew up a Dodger, had a lot of great memories with the Cubs and Red Sox, but I’ll always have a lot of Yankee in me too.”