There are a million stories, and you will hear all of them, and you will want to hear more of them, because when a quintessential American such as Yogi Berra reaches his final reward, there are simply not enough hours in the days that follow to properly celebrate, and commemorate.
This was always my favorite, because it says so much about who Lawrence Peter Berra, who died late Tuesday at age 90 — precisely 69 years to the day after making his debut for the Yankees with two hits and a home run — was. And will remain, in memory, for as long as good men are remembered.
For years, Berra could never understand why fellow baseball immortal Bob Feller never seemed to like him. It placed Feller in a distinct minority, of course. You might have been a Red Sox or a Dodgers fan, and never cared for how Berra used to batter your pitchers one bad ball at a time. Maybe you were a Mets fan, and never much appreciated Yogi’s unorthodox ways as the manager of your club.
But who didn’t LIKE Yogi Berra?
Feller, it turns out. And Yogi, who liked being liked, finally asked him one day, point-blank: “Bob, why don’t you like me?”
Feller, maybe one of the bluntest men ever born, said: “You never served your country. I can’t respect a man like that.”
And all Yogi could do was laugh, before telling Feller he was wrong. Not only had Yogi served, he had been a gunner’s mate in the English Channel on the morning of June 6, 1944. He didn’t storm Omaha Beach, but he could sure see it. He wasn’t close enough to see the blue German uniforms, but he could sure hear the damage they were inflicting.
“Good thing,” he would tell me 59 years later, “or else I guess even a kid like me woulda had to be frightened.”
Berra was 19 years old that day. He’d batted .253 for the Norfolk Tars of the Class B Piedmont League the year before. It was hard to even call him a prospect yet. Or, as Yogi himself would put it: “I guess you could say I hadn’t become who I became.”
“I was just a young guy doing what he was supposed to do back then, joining the Navy, serving my country, fighting the war. I wasn’t a baseball player on that boat. I was a sailor.”
Feller was stunned. He’d never been shy about relating his own experiences in the war. Why had Yogi never expounded on his? Yogi told him more: about the 15 days he spent on that 36-foot-long Landing Craft Support Small rocket boat; about how his base ship, the USS Hayfield, was Dwight Eisenhower’s nautical headquarters during the invasion.
When the shooting started, he’d stood straight up in the boat like he was blocking home plate, only to have an officer ask him in the nicest possible way if he wanted to keep his squat body free of holes, just as his throwing hand was grazed by a machine-gunner’s bullet.
“Me and Bob,” Berra grinned, “we were good after that.”
That is what we will remember most about Yogi: his modesty, his humility, his willingness — his desire — to remain one of us even as he lived the final 65 or so years of his life as one of the most famous names, faces and personalities on Planet Earth. He liked things on this side of life’s velvet rope, a visible member of the Montclair, NJ, community, blending in at his sons’ high school football and baseball games, occasionally thrilling visitors to his museum with a handshake and a hello.
He was that rare Yankee who was also beloved by Mets fans, the only man to manage both teams to the World Series, losing Game 7 both times. He was that rare Yankee who was unmoved by George Steinbrenner’s whims and wealth, staying away from Yankee Stadium for 14 years after Steinbrenner fired him 16 games into the 1985 season after promising him a full year.
Steinbrenner lacked the courage to fire Berra himself, and that was a cowardice Yogi couldn’t brook. So he stayed away. For a while, it looked like it might be a permanent boycott, until Steinbrenner made the pilgrimage to the Yogi Berra Museum in early January 1999, extended a hand and an apology, and Yogi shook it and took it.
“People all over the world know him,” Steinbrenner said that day. “And few guys can say, ‘I was a Yankee and I was Yogi Berra.’ He belongs with us.”
And Yogi remained, as always, Yogi. Joe DiMaggio would die a few weeks later, so when Berra arrived for Opening Day, a rainy, raw day, it was pointed out to him that he was now, by acclamation, the Greatest Living Yankee, a title DiMaggio had always worn like an emperor’s sash.
“No,” Yogi said. “I was just a ballplayer. Not a legend or anything like that, like Joe or Mickey. I just played ball.”
He played ball. He sold millions of gallons of Yoo-Hoo. He owned a bowling alley with his fellow Jersey Yankee, Phil Rizzuto. He won 10 championships as a player, was a coach on the ’69 Mets and the ’77-’78 Yankees, even brought a playoff berth to Houston during a brief foray with the Astros working for his friend, John McMullen, who called Yogi “the greatest good luck charm ever.”
Hanna-Barbera insisted it did not name the character Yogi Bear for Yogi Berra, as implausible as that seems. For a time, Yogi asked for a hearing in court, but ultimately withdrew because the cartoonists insisted it was mere coincidence. And he believed them.
He was a baseball Zelig in so many ways, for so many moments: for Jackie Robinson’s steal of home in the ’55 World Series (into eternity, Yogi will swear he was out); for Bill Mazeroski’s forever blast five years later (as the left fielder, he had the best — or worst — view). He jumped into Don Larsen’s arms, and 43 years later, he stood and cheered when David Cone threw his own perfecto — on Yogi Berra Day, of course.
Once, with Allie Reynolds about to pitch his second no-hitter of the 1951 season, Yogi circled under a Ted Williams pop-up that would’ve been the 27th out. He dropped it, and he was crestfallen.
“Jeez, Allie,” Yogi said, “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t worry, Yogi,” Reynolds said. “We’ll get him again.”
And damned if they didn’t do just that, popping Williams up again. Yogi caught it that time. Because even on those days when things didn’t go just right for him, there always seemed to be someone looking out for the kid from The Hill in St. Louis. On the field. In the dugout. All the way back to the USS Hayfield on June 6, 1944.
Let’s finish this with the day I got my very own Yogi-ism. He was telling so many of the stories he’d told almost nobody until Bob Feller dragged them out of him. And it turns out that in 2004, on the 60th anniversary of D-Day, France sent a delegation to the Yogi Berra Museum in Montclair to say thank you for his small part.
“Have you ever been to Normandy?” I’d asked.
“Why?” Yogi said, shrugging his shoulders. “I was already there.”
Anyway, on the special day, speeches were given, wreaths presented, hugs exchanged.
“And then the leader of the delegation, he kissed me,” Yogi said. “He gave me one of those French kisses.”
Godspeed, Yogi
No comments:
Post a Comment