Bill White was vacationing in Canada when he got the sad phone call Tuesday from Phil Rizzuto’s family.
“Well, I had seen Phil 10 days ago,” White told The Post yesterday by phone in an exclusive interview from Gananoque, Ontario. “Let’s just say Phil’s in a better place now. He was a good man, a good guy. He’s in a better place.”
For 18 years White shared the Yankees broadcast booth with Rizzuto, who died late Monday night at the age of 90 from complications due to pneumonia.
White, now 73 years old, was the first African-American to do play-by-play regularly for a major-league team, and he was a member of baseball’s old “veterans committee” that voted The Scooter into the Hall of Fame in 1994.
“He was unique, a great broadcaster who was extremely popular,” White said. “If he hadn’t made it into the Hall of Fame as a player, he would have made it as a broadcaster.
“Nobody wanted ballplayers in the broadcast booth when he got hired. That’s one reason he made it so easy for me.”
Before he accepted the Yankees job in 1971, White said he called Larry Doby, the Cleveland Hall of Famer who in 1947 became the first African-American to play in the American League.
“I called him and Elston Howard to ask about Phil,” White said. “Larry told me about how Phil went out of his way to make him feel welcome even though he played for another team. Some of his own teammates wouldn’t shake Larry’s hand, but Phil encouraged Larry, and he did the same with Elston.
“I came [to New York] with a good feeling, and Phil made me feel welcome. He helped me in my broadcasting.”
White is fondly remembered by Yankees fans for the way he often would play straight man for Rizzuto’s broadcast-booth antics.
“When I took the job the Yankees weren’t playing well,” White recalled. “We had to get a schtick to keep things entertaining, and it just carried over when the Yankees got good around the time they signed Reggie Jackson. When they had those good teams, with Lou Piniella and Thurman Munson, we had to do baseball.”
White, who left the Yankees broadcast booth in 1989 to serve as National League president, said his most memorable moment on the air was the time in Milwaukee when The Scooter introduced himself at the start of the broadcast as “Bill White.”
Also, there was the time in Boston just moments after Bucky Dent hit the home run in the 1978 playoff game against the Red Sox.
“Don’t ask me to say anything, I’ve been holding my breath, Bill White,” Rizzuto said.
“What did you think about that ball up there on the screen?” White asked.
“I was in the press room with all those Red Sox fans, and when Bucky hit it, I let out three ‘holy cows!’ and I thought [former Red Sox third baseman] Frank Malzone was gonna bite me on the ankle.”
“There’s so many things we had fun with,” White said yesterday. “The rapport was genuine.”
rwimbish@nypost.com