Yogi Berra

I was too young to see Yogi Berra play.  My first real memory of him is as manager of the 1964 Yankees.  New York came to town in the middle of August for a four-game series.  The White Sox swept their way into first place while the Yankees had a meltdown on the bus to the airport.  Phil Linz was playing Mary Had a Little Lamb on his harmonica, Berra told Linz to stop, and Mickey Mantle supposedly told Linz that Berra wanted him to play it louder.  Unfortunately for the Sox, an unexpectedly flying harmonica helped spark New York to its last Golden Age pennant, by all of one game over the White Sox.

For me, Berra belonged to the black-and-white era of pictures and film; I look at the players shown and can’t believe they were ever young, that Berra was a 21-year old rookie in 1946, barely two years removed from service at Omaha Beach on D-Day.  I can better believe that he and his wife Carmen were married for 65 years or that he refused to set foot in Yankee Stadium because George Steinbrenner couldn’t be bothered to fire him in person as manager after the Yankees got off to a 6-10 start in 1985.  I can believe that people belittled Berra for his looks and lack of education.  He made it through eighth grade, one year more than my father.

Clare likes certain of the various Yogiisms, especially on the mental aspects of the game.  At some point, I must have pointed out that Berra wasn’t even two inches taller than she is, though I probably kept his penchant for swinging at—and hitting—pitches outside the strike zone.  That was one habit I did not want my daughter picking up from a Hall of Famer.

Berra loved his family and the game of baseball.  He lent his name to a museum that does all sorts of outreach with kids in and around Montclair, New Jersey.  Patrick Kane would do well to study Berra’s life and ask himself if anyone will react the same way to his passing seventy or so years from now.