
As Seattle Mariners chairman John Stanton spoke fondly of Rick Rizzs on Wednesday morning, the longtime play-by-play broadcaster pulled a box of tissues close and looked around the team’s interview room in anticipation of the inevitable.
Rizzs, who will retire at the end of the 2026 season after his 41st year in the booth in Seattle, could only hold back tears for so long while manager Dan Wilson, superstar Cal Raleigh and dozens of others looked on. And as the 72-year-old Rizzs recollected stories of both listening and writing to former Cubs broadcaster Jack Brickhouse as a kid while growing up on Chicago’s South Side, he finally let the waterworks flow.