Editor’s note: Originally published September 20, 2017. Updated August 12, 2021.

They called him “Razz,” short for “Razzamatazz.” 

He was always cutting up, doing a Charleston dance as he walked down the streets of the coal mining town. 

Anything to get a laugh. 

He was the youngest of seven kids, a son of Italian immigrants.

All his siblings worked in the mines of the Pacific Northwest. He started bucking coal at age 14.

Razz was a natural at baseball.

Workers had cleared the fields outside the mining town with dynamite to make a diamond, blowing up stumps and playing ball among fallen cedars. The pitching mound was made of compacted ashes. 

This is where Razz cut his teeth on the ball field. He’d do catches and throws under his legs, behind his back. He’d chase ground balls into mountain gopher holes. He had a real knack for showmanship. 

People liked him.

Baseball gear was hard to come by. If a lathed ball bat broke or someone hit a homer too deep into the tree line that was it, game over. The mitts were slabs of leather with holes cut in them.

But the mines were not for Razz. He saw the older workers as they came out of the caverns, their faces covered in soot. Blacklung fatalities.

The final straw was an explosion in the Ravensdale mines where he worked, killed 33 men. 

So Razz Canonica packed a rucksack and moved to Everett, Washington. The year was 1920.

He wanted to get a job at any of the businesses that competed in the city’s Industrial League. 

The Great Northern Railroad had a ball team. Sumner Iron Works had a team. The paper mills and egg cooperatives had teams. Baseball was hot in Everett.

Razz played for the mills first. His on field antics quickly drew attention. He was a fan favorite.

Baseball games often drew over a thousand spectators in the early 1920s. Often on a given day all three diamonds in the city would have matches going. 

Baseball games were the social event to be at. Families would pack picnics. Fans would come up the river from Snohomish on ferries to watch the games, bringing lemonade and sandwiches (women rode for free on the ferries in a sort of early “ladies’ night/no cover” situation. Good for business). 

Razz was recruited by the Everett Fire Department. They offered him a job so that he would play on the their team.

He spent his days putting out fires. Fires were common enough in the mill town, almost a daily occurrence. A kiln overheated or sawdust caught a spark and up she went.

The fire trucks were primitive. No windshields. Razz would ride out with the boys to the waterfront, snow and rain whipping his face, to extinguish a blaze.

In the late afternoons he’d play baseball.

Razz played third base, the hot corner. He’d do trick throws, catch the ball and spin around, just for laughs. Sometimes he would take off his eight panel wool cap to nab a pop fly. That would really get the crowd going. 

Some of the best players he competed against were Coast Salish. They had been playing a stickball game in the region since prehistoric times, and their on field skills shone.

Razz played well into his thirties. He was a firefighter until his fifties, made captain. He coached Babe Ruth little league for years, imparting his passion for the game to another generation. 

In 1954 the Everett Herald named Angelo “Razz” Canonica the Man of the Year in Sports.

A folk hero is someone who imprints of his or her name, personality, and deeds in the popular consciousness of a people.

Everyone who remembered Razz Canonica seemed to remember him fondly. His charisma. 

What could you say bad about the guy? He was a regular churchgoer at Our Lady of Perpetual Help, a life member in good standing at the Everett Elks Lodge 479, and the Everett Eagles Aerie 13. He was the president of the Sons of Italy.

A folk hero begins life as a normal person, but is transformed into someone extraordinary by significant life events. Sometimes this is in response to natural disasters (i.e. combusting pockets of gas in coal mines, mill fires on a waterfront).

How extraordinary was the life of A. Razz Cononica? 

Even by the day’s standards he had a rough start in this world. Mining, milling, and firefighting were tough enough jobs to make a grizzled pessimist out of anyone, wear them down over time.  

Hardscrabble circumstances can also forge you into something better, something that outlives yourself. 

What shines through in the interviews with Razz, conducted when he was in his late eighties, is his humor and grace. There’s a lightheartedness in the old man’s creaky voice that is in keeping with a young third baseman who caught pop flies in his hat while the crowd cheered.

That Razz embraced his workaday tasks and played comical, lighthearted baseball on top of it, purely for the pleasure of others—that’s something we could all emulate.

That’s the spirit of Everett.

Richard Porter is a writer for Live in Everett. He lives here and drinks coffee.