In 1949, early in Berra’s Yankees career, his manager assessed him this way in an interview in The Sporting News: “Mr Berra, ” Casey Stengel said, “is a very unusual fellow of very remarkable abilities”.
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“It was fun”, he reminisced at the opening of the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center in New Jersey. Though slight in stature, he was a giant in the most significant of ways through his service to his country, compassion for others and genuine enthusiasm for the game he loved. I said, ‘What the hell you swinging at that ball for?
One afternoon, after attending a movie that had a short piece on India, a friend Jack McGuire Jr. noticed a resemblance between him and the “yogi”, or person who practiced yoga, on the screen.
And then, in what sounded too good to be true, Berra hit Rodriguez with a Yogi-ism. He quit school to help his family during the Depression and played baseball in local leagues. That was Yogi. He made everyone smile in his own special way. You were truly one of a kind.
“Yogi’s been an inspiration to me”, George W. Bush once said.
Yogi Berra died Tuesday at the age of 90.
How many players in baseball are identified by just their first name other than players like Yogi or Kirby or Mickey?
Berra also managed in the majors, compiling a.522 winning percentage in seven seasons leading the Yankees (1964, 1984 and part of 1985) and Mets (1972-75). He was a three time MVP in the American League and was a 15 time all star.
Jeter offered his condolence message at the Players Tribune site he started that allows athletes to send fans messages unfiltered by the media.
The gesture is a fitting tribute to a man who experienced incredible success on the field, and was regarded as one of the biggest personalities away from the game.
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Yogi is supposed to have said “It ain’t over ’til it’s over”, and maybe he did, now it is, except it ain’t, ’cause it maybe never is if you get remembered a lot, which is what he will be. “He’s just going to be missed”. All the stuff you’ve read about that he’s said, he says.
