most everyone who will read this will know that yogi berra died tuesday, september 22, at age 90, in new jersey. he died in an assisted living facility in caldwell,
not far from his home in montclair.

that's a loss for everyone who loves baseball, and for those of us older players and fans who actually saw yogi play. he was a marvelous and a smart player
(casey stengel thought of him as his assistant manager) who knew how to get the best out of himself and his teammates. he knew too, instinctively,
that joy was always a part of the game.

yogi was never afraid to speak or show that joy.

two cases in point there: much was made of the fact that yogi was a rather homely fellow. once a reporter asked him about a story in a magazine that discussed
yogi's less-than-marquee features. to which yogi replied: "i never saw nobody hit a home run with his face."

that retort fell in line with the many witticisms, renamed "yogi-isms" that yogi created over the years. the journalist in me loves this one: a woman once asked
yogi if the chocolate drink for which he did commercials, yoo-hoo, were hyphenated, and yogi responded, "no m'am. it's not even carbonated."

the physical joy that yogi showed occurred vividly in one his most famous moments, when he leapt into don larsen's arms after larsen threw what has become the
only no-hitter and perfect game in world series history, as the yanks beat the dodgers at that stadium, 2-0. that moment is imprinted in my brain because i saw
the game on tv.

i was in fourth grade and the game was to be played on a monday, october 8, 1956, to be exact. that was the first time i ever faked being sick so i could stay
home from school and watch a series game. (my cousin david, the family's near juvenile delinquent, was a big help in that. he showed me how you could fake
being sick by swishing crackers and water in your mouth and expelling the mix over the bowl with gagging noises just as your mother walked by. it worked.
my mother said, "get on the couch, young man. you're staying home this afternoon." sweet words for a delinquent in the making.)

the game puzzled me: i mean, i liked it. a lot. i was a yankees fan. and i especially liked the fact that my favorite player, mantle, homered and made a great running
catch, a snow-cone catch, of gil hodges' slicing liner to left center, snagging a sure double in mid-air, but i didn't understand until sometime after the game, when
the announcer explained it, why yogi ran and leapt into larsen's arms. together, larsen and yogi had done something that had never been done, may never be
done again, and the joy of that lifted yogi off the ground.

the other great thing about yogi is that he did so much with apparently so little. yogi's one-liners, his yogi-isms, for example, have entered the culture and in some
measure reworked the way we think and feel about everyday events. so, when we hear "you can observe a lot by watching," or "it ain't over till
it's over," we stop in our tracks, and think that's true, and, feel, perhaps, a little hopeful. all this came from the mind of someone who only graduated from
eighth grade, and whose apparent destiny then, the fourth of five children born to italian immigrants in st. louis, was likely to be a day laborer like his father.

equally impressive is that this immigrant's son with a limited education would go on to win the highest honor in his profession, earn millions of dollars from the
game and from advertisements, create a baseball museum with, notably, a learning center, have a children's cartoon series bear his name, and, after babe ruth,
have sports' most recognizable name. and, not for small measure, as a member of the u.s. navy in 1944, yogi participated in the D-Day invasion of Normandy;
shortly after that, he won the purple heart for being shot and wounded in battle.

the other remarkable thing about yogi, along with his mind, was his stature. at 5-foot-7 and a pudgy 185 pounds, he hardly had the promising physique of a
future major league catcher. but he excelled at the position, winning three american league mvp awards, and playing and managing in and winning more world series
games than any other player in major league history.

some called him a "bad ball hitter," and he was. he was also a clutch hitter. i remember one world series game against the dodgers when yogi, a lefty hitter, stroked
a double on a pitch that had to have been five or six inches outside and below the knees. the pitcher had to have been thinking, "what do i have to throw to get this guy out?"

and though he was only a .285 career hitter, he was a hitter.

how good was he? here's a comparison: i always thought that joe dimaggio's 1941 season was one of the game's best individual efforts not only for his 56-game
hitting streak but for this stat: in 622 plate appearances, dimaggio, very much a home-run hitter who would belt 30 that year, struck out only 13 times. but
nine years later, in 1950, yogi had 656 plate appearances and struck out only 12 times, while belting 28 homers.

a further note, from david cone on tv today: only two players in major league history have more than 350 home runs and less than 30 strike outs a year for their
careers. one was dimaggio (13 years, 361 homers, 369 strikeouts, for an average of 28.1 whiffs per year); the other was berra (19 years, 358 homers, 414 strikeouts,
for an average of 21.7 strikeouts per year.)

so the next time you feel down at a game, or at life in general, remember that yogi would tell you to keep watching, you could observe something that could
lift you up a bit.

today, things are over for the physical yogi. but for the force that was yogi, that will last as long as baseball and our culture last. that's a long time for a poor
kid from st. louis.

-mike

the ny times has a nice obituary and, as just as good, if not better, some fine photos at this site: http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2013/01/03/obituaries/yogi-berra-baseball-catcher-and-character-dies-at-90.html#1



-- Edited by mhart on Wednesday 23rd of September 2015 05:45:09 PM