Yogi Berra

Lawrence Peter Berra played 19 seasons, won three American League MVP awards, appeared in 14 World Series, and won 10 of them. He hit 358 home runs, drove in 1,430 runs, and caught more World Series games than anyone in baseball history. He also managed pennant winners in both leagues, spent 14 years refusing to enter Yankee Stadium because George Steinbrenner broke a promise, and produced a body of quotations so perfectly illogical that an entire category of American speech bears his name. When the Empire State Building was lit in blue-and-white pinstripes the night after he died, nobody needed to ask who it was for.

The Hill

Berra was born on May 12, 1925, in St. Louis, Missouri, and grew up on The Hill, the city's Italian neighborhood. His father, Pietro, had emigrated from Robecchetto, a village about 25 miles west of Milan, in 1909. His mother, Paolina Longoni, arrived in 1912 and married Pietro nine days later. The family lived at 5447 Elizabeth Avenue, directly across the street from the Garagiolas. Young Lawrence and Joe Garagiola grew up playing ball on the same sandlots, and both became major league catchers.

His friends on The Hill gave him the nickname "Yogi" after seeing a Hindu fakir in a movie who reminded them of the way Lawrence sat with his arms and legs crossed. He quit school after eighth grade despite his father's objections. Pietro Berra wanted his sons to work at Johansen Shoe Company, not chase baseballs. The boy who became baseball's most quotable philosopher had an eighth-grade education.

The Navy

Berra enlisted in the Navy after the 1943 minor league season. He served as a machine gunner aboard a 36-foot rocket boat during the D-Day invasion at Normandy on June 6, 1944, spending 10 days on the boat off the coast. He was later stationed at the submarine base in Groton, Connecticut, where he played for a base team managed by Lieutenant Commander James Gleeson, a former major league outfielder. He rarely spoke about the war in public.

The Yankees

He debuted on September 22, 1946, going 2-for-4 with a home run off Jesse Flores in his second at-bat. Casey Stengel became manager in 1949 and immediately recognized what Berra could become. Stengel assigned Hall of Famer Bill Dickey as a personal tutor to improve Berra's catching mechanics and game-calling. Stengel called Berra "my assistant manager" and shielded him from the press corps, which had spent years mocking his appearance and intelligence. Mel Ott had seen Berra play in a 1945 exhibition game between the Groton Navy team and the Giants and tried to buy him for $50,000. "He isn't much to look at," Ott said, "and he looks like he's doing everything wrong, but he can hit."

From 1950 through 1957, Berra never finished lower than fourth in the MVP voting. He won the award in 1951, 1954, and 1955, becoming the first catcher in major league history to win back-to-back MVPs. His best offensive season came in 1950, when he hit .322 with 28 home runs and 124 RBI. In 1952 he became the first AL catcher to hit 30 home runs in a season.

On October 8, 1956, he caught Don Larsen's perfect game in Game 5 of the World Series against the Brooklyn Dodgers. Larsen never shook off a Berra sign. The photograph of Berra leaping into Larsen's arms became one of the most reproduced images in baseball history.

In 14 World Series as a player, Berra hit .274 with 12 home runs and 39 RBI across 75 games. In 1947, he hit the first pinch-hit home run in World Series history. The Yankees won 10 of those 14 Series, including five consecutive championships from 1949 through 1953. Nobody else has won that many.

He married Carmen Short on January 26, 1949, with Garagiola as best man. They stayed married 65 years until her death in March 2014. All three of their sons became professional athletes. Dale played 11 seasons in the major leagues, Tim played for the NFL's Baltimore Colts, and Larry caught in the minor leagues.

Managing

The Yankees named Berra manager after the 1963 season. He won the 1964 pennant, pushing for the early August callup of rookie pitcher Mel Stottlemyre, who went 9-3 and likely saved the race. The Yankees lost the World Series to the Cardinals in seven games, and the front office fired him anyway.

He crossed town to the Mets as a player-coach in 1965, appeared in four games at age 39, and stayed as a coach under Casey Stengel and Gil Hodges. When Hodges died of a heart attack on April 2, 1972, Berra became manager. In 1973, with the Mets in last place in August, he told reporters, "It ain't over till it's over." The Mets won the pennant with just 82 victories and took the Oakland A's to seven games in the World Series. Berra became the second manager (after Joe McCarthy) to win pennants in both leagues. The Mets fired him during the 1975 season.

Steinbrenner hired him to manage the Yankees again in 1984 and promised he would have the job for the full 1985 season. Sixteen games into that season, with the team at 6-10, Steinbrenner sent GM Clyde King to fire him rather than delivering the news himself. Berra refused to set foot in Yankee Stadium for 14 years.

The reconciliation came on January 5, 1999, at the Yogi Berra Museum on the campus of Montclair State University, which had opened a month earlier. Joe DiMaggio, calling from his hospital room in Florida, had urged Steinbrenner to end the feud. "It's over," Berra told Steinbrenner. "Fourteen years is long enough. I forgive you, George." On July 18, 1999, "Yogi Berra Day" at Yankee Stadium, Larsen threw the ceremonial first pitch to Berra. That afternoon, David Cone pitched a perfect game.

Yogi-isms

His paradoxical observations entered the language so thoroughly that entire books were written to catalog them. "Baseball is 90 percent mental and the other half is physical." "When you come to a fork in the road, take it." (He was giving directions to his house, where either fork led to the same place.) "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." "The future ain't what it used to be." "A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore."

Some of the lines may have been polished or invented by Jackie Farrell, the Yankees' public relations man. Berra acknowledged the problem with characteristic precision. "I really didn't say everything I said."

At a ceremony in his honor in St. Louis in 1947, he said, "I want to thank everyone for making this night necessary." He repeated nearly the same line at his Hall of Fame induction 25 years later.

The Numbers

In 19 seasons he accumulated 2,120 games, 2,150 hits, 358 home runs, 1,430 RBI, and a .285 batting average. He struck out only 414 times across 7,555 at-bats. He spent 44 years in professional baseball as a player, coach, and manager, collecting 13 championship rings in various roles.

The BBWAA elected him to the Hall of Fame in 1972 with 85.6 percent of the vote, his second year on the ballot. He died on September 22, 2015, at his home in West Caldwell, New Jersey, at 90, of natural causes. Carmen had died 18 months earlier. The family's statement noted, "He is at peace with Mom."