Another piece if my childhood has faded away. RIP. We will miss your Yogi-isms.
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” RIP, Yogi.
“You can observe a lot just by watching”
“It ain’t over til its over”. Well, sadly, its over…
Yogi Berra’s greatest quotes:
It’s like deja-vu all over again
It ain’t the heat; it’s the humility
Baseball is 90% mental - the other half is physical
I never said most of the things I said… Take it with a grin of salt
If you don’t know where you’re going, you might end up some place else
He hits from both sides of the plate. He’s amphibious
The future ain’t what it used to be
Never answer an anonymous letter
I always thought that record would stand until it was broken
If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be
**Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t go to yours
Heard one on NPR this morning - when asked where he should be buried, he said “Just surprise me.”
[Quote]
“A lot of guys go, ‘Hey, Yog, say a Yogi-ism.’ I tell 'em, ‘I don’t know any.’ They want me to make one up. I don’t make 'em up. I don’t even know when I say it. They’re the truth. And it is the truth. I don’t know.”
@madison85, thanks for all the Yogi-isms! I’ve used “It ain’t over til its over” on numerous occasions, but didn’t know the others you posted. Now that I’ve read those, it gives me some insight into what a fun guy he was.
I don’t follow sports, but I felt a tug at my heart when I received the notification that he had passed.
RIP Yogi Berra
(I’ll be attending a playoff game in my hometown tomorrow in your honor.)
In the late 1960s, I spent my Saturday mornings watching cartoons. While I certainly knew who Yogi Bear was, I didn’t realize Yogi Berra was a real person (I thought it was a mispronunciation) until some years later.
RIP Yogi. Truly one of a kind.
A story from Matt Lauer this morning about a Bryant Gumbel interview with Yogi.
Bryant: We have a minute left in our interview, would you like to do some word association?
Yogi: Sure.
Bryant: Mickey Mantle
Yogi: What about him?
I recently read Allen Barra’s bio of Yogi (and it is a great read), and in so many ways he was an American original, to say the least. He was certainly a lot more intelligent than people gave him credit for, he may have left school at 14 (not uncommon, to help support his family), but Casey Stengal called him his assistant manager for a very good reason, and his acumen in business was something. At a time when it was uncommon, he became one of the first superstar pitchmen in the 1950’s, and interestingly, he was popular for women. He also took the very public characterizations of himself as being a neanderthal and the like with grace, and while he knew his own worth (he was a very good negotiator with his contracts, beating George Weiss, who was notoriously cheap), yet he didn’t seem to have quite the ego many players have. The book also recounts his generosity, and the fact that he was as well loved as he was is amazing (it is interesting that in 1947, the Cardinals had a Yogi Berra event, to which he replied “thanks for making this necessary”). About the only thing opposing players ever said about him was that they wished he would shut up a bit behind the plate, he loved to talk to opposing batters when they were up; some said he did it to distract them, but in reality,he simply loved to talk (Jackie Robinson was quoted as saying that it was kind of weird, that when he faced Yogi in the first several years, when he faced so much crap, that Yogi was like an excited kid when he came to the plate, that he was one of those who treated him like other opponents…but wished he would not be as chatty lol. As a side note, Yogi was pretty outspoken about the Yankee being so slow to have black players, and supposedly had some pretty intense shouting matches with George Weiss, the Yankee GM, who refused to have black players on the Yankees long after Robinson broke in.).
He will be missed, I just hope he is reunited with his wife, they had one heck of a love story, married like 65 years and Yogi always said he was the lucky one to have found such a catch:)
RIP Yogi. You’re going to a place with no Steinbrenners to ruin your day.
He gave the best bit of baseball advice ever: “If you see it, hit it. If you don’t see it, don’t hit it.”
I love his “Love is the most important thing, but baseball is pretty good too.”
Nobody goes there any more its too crowded
Is anyone familiar with the story of Yogi buying land in central Florida?
No, do tell!
“That place is so crowded, nobody goes there anymore.”
Yogi-isms, aside. He was a fantastic ball player.
Yogi was a great ballplayer, and probably could be argued to be the best that ever played, and it is one of those things where it isn’t just his stats, it is what he brought to the game, handling pitchers and so forth. One stat that is amazing is that over his long career , close to 20 years, he struck out only 440 times total. Clowns like Curtis Granderson strike out that much in a couple of seasons, that tells you how good a hitter he was. It is funny, Yogi was very humble, and always said he wasn’t in the same league with Dimaggio or Mantle, but a lot of players, probably including Mantle, would probably disagree with Yogi on that.
One of the things I read yesterday I didn’t know. Yogi truly liked people, and in turn he really wanted people to like him. For years, he got the feeling that Bob Feller didn’t like him, when then met, either when playing or later, Feller kind of gave him the cold shoulder. Years later, Yogi asked him why he didn’t like him, and Feller (who quite honestly, as great a player as he was, was also a bit of a fathead IMO) told Yogi that he, Feller, couldn’t respect anyone who hadn’t server their country. Yogi of course had served, he was in the navy in small attack support ships called rocket ships (literally fired rockets at the beach), and was there during the D Day and Italian campaigns as well if I remember correctly, and had been wounded at one point…Feller asked him why he never talked about it, and Yogi’s response was “why? I was there, did my job, and came home”, he never made a big deal about it (another funny line, someone asked him if he ever went to Normandy [after the war] and he said “why? I was there already”). Yogi was touched when on the 60th anniversary of D day the French government sent a delegation to Yogi’s museum, and they thanked him for his service there, and it was a typical yogi, describing it, he said “and yeah, they kissed me with that French kiss you know” chuckling
That time when Yogi Berra, a practicing Roman Catholic met Pope John XXIII:
[Quote]
Reporter: “I understand you had an audience with the Pope.”
Yogi: “No, but I saw him.”
Reporter: “Did you get to talk to him?”
Yogi: “I sure did. We had a nice little chat.”
Reporter: “What did he say?”
Yogi: “You know, he must read the papers a lot, because he said, ‘Hello, Yogi.’”
Reporter: “And what did you say?”
Yogi: “I said, ‘Hello, Pope.’”
Consolation the story I have heard is that several Yankees purchased acres of property in Central Florida. All of them except Yogi quickly got rid of it. Yogi held on, purchased more and ended up selling it to Walt Disney for a very nice profit.