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TURNING 80 |
 Yogi Berra in his youth |
Hall of Famer Yogi Berra
still draws big crowds
By MAURY ALLEN
of TheColumnists.com
So number 8 is pushing
80. Wow. Talk about time flying. Who could imagine that the funny
little guy with the silly name will celebrate his 80th birthday
on May 12, 2005?
Lawrence Peter Berra, the Hall of Fame catcher of the Yankees
and probably the most beloved personality in baseball over the
last half century or so, will get lots of attention for that
landmark birthday from the Yankees and everyone else.
It is only 65 years or so that he has been called Yogi, after
a character in a movie he saw in the Dago Hill neighborhood of
St. Louis with his pals, including one Joe Garagiola and another
guy named Bobby Hofman.
“We had gone to this movie about India and there was this
character who sat on the ground and he was called a Yogi,”
Berra recalled. “One day we were playing baseball and I
was sitting on the ground and Bobby said I looked just like that
Yogi in the movie. The other kids picked it up and I guess the
name stuck.”
After World War II service in the Navy, including time on a small
cargo boat at the Normandy invasion on D-Day, Berra returned
to baseball. He played with the Yankee farm club at Newark as
an outfielder before being called up in the final month of the
1946 season with the Yankees.
“One of the umpires, Bill McGowan, came over with a ball
for me to sign,” Berra said. “I signed it Larry Berra
as I did in those days and he said he had heard the players call
me Yogi. He told me to sign it Yogi so the fans would remember
me better. I did then and that’s how it caught on in the
big leagues.”
Berra caught and played the outfield for the Yankees and suffered
some embarrassment in the 1947 Series against Brooklyn. The Dodgers,
led by rookie Jackie Robinson, really ran on Berra. It wasn't
until Hall of Famer Bill Dickey worked with Berra that he became
an accomplished receiver.
“Dickey learned me all his experiences,” Berra once
said.
Berra became the anchor of the Yankees for the next 15 years
with 14 pennants from 1947 through 1963 with the Yankees. Then
he added one more with the Yankees as the manager of the team
in 1964.
Berra was a left handed hitter with power, a tough out with men
on bases, a three time MVP and the most reliable clutch hitter
the team had since the Old Reliable Tommy Henrich retired after
the 1950 season.
Berra was a teammate of Joe DiMaggio for the first six seasons
with the Yankees and then was a teammate and close pal of Mickey
Mantle from 1951 through 1964.
Berra moved to the Mets as a player-coach in 1965, caught four
games for them and actually made up half of the oldest battery
in baseball history when he caught Warren Spahn. Berra was 41
and Spahn was 44 years old that memorable day.
Berra celebrated his birthday in 1957 with Billy Martin and several
other Yankees at a memorable party. Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford,
Hank Bauer and rookie Johnny Kucks were at the party.
Sammy Davis was entertaining at New York’s famed Copacabana.
A New York bowling team was also celebrating and one of their
players made some racial remarks about the famed black entertainer.
When the Yankees, who had a black teammate named Elston Howard
by then, asked for quiet, the bowlers grew pugnacious.
One of them was asked to meet a Yankee in the kitchen to discuss
the fracas privately. He was soon on the floor with Bauer standing
nearby and a restaurant bouncer in their midst. History could
never resolve the issue.
“Ahh, I think the guy just walked into a door,” Berra
said.
One of the most favorite Berra memories is when he was an aging
Yankee outfielder in left field for the seventh game of the 1960
World Series with Bill Mazeroski at bat. The light hitting Mazeroski
hit a high fly off right hander Ralph Terry in a 9-9 game.
“I started back but I just ran out of space,” Berra
remembered.
The ball cleared the wall for one of the most famous home runs
in baseball history. Mazeroski became the first player to end
a Series with a home run. That one blow helped get Mazeroski
into the Hall of Fame in 2001.
Berra became the Yankee manager for one season in 1964, won a
pennant, lost the Series to St. Louis and was fired. He served
the Mets as a coach and manager with a 1973 pennant and Series
loss and then went back to the Yankees as skipper.
George Steinbrenner was in his firing mode in those days and
Yogi was fired after little more than one season at the helm
as Steinbrenner brought Billy Martin back as Yankee field leader.
Berra lives quietly now in New Jersey, appears at Yankee openers
and Old Timer Days, tears up a lot of golf courses and still
draws huge crowds at every public appearance.
Last year he stood at Yankee Stadium on Opening Day as the scoreboard
listed the names of recently deceased Yankees.
“Boy,” he said to pal Whitey Ford, “I hope I never
have to stand here and see my name on that list.”
©2005 by Maury Allen.
The Maury Allen caricature is ©2001 by Jim Hummel. This
column first posted on May 2, 2005.
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can comment on this column online. Please address your message
to either "The Editors" or Maury Allen. To send an
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