[Yogi: The most famous quotes from the most quotable American]. It was pure Yogi – at once blindingly obvious, yet beyond that a call to courage, an exhortation never to give up until the ballgame’s final out.
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The 10-time World Series champion and New York Yankees legend was one of the greatest characters in baseball history, known as much for his Yogisms as his winning on-field play.
Lawrence Peter Berra was born May 12, 1925, in St. Louis, one of five children of immigrants from northern Italy. One version has it that he earned the nickname “Yogi” from a childhood friend who said the snake charmer in a movie looked like Berra.
Berra was forced to drop out of school in the eighth grade and go to work to help support his family. The glove I used in that game is the only thing I saved from my career. “It was the most excited I ever saw him, ” Larsen told Newsday in 1996 on the 40th anniversary of that epic performance. Major League Baseball columnist Marty Noble said on the league’s online news page that “a loss that unquestionably transcends the game has sent all of baseball into deep mourning”.
The New York Yankees and Major League Baseball both described him an an “American hero”.
“I don’t know”, he said. “Not only because of his baseball skills but because of the enduring mark he left in the English language”.
On travel directions: “When you come to a fork in the road take it”. He undoubtedly would be reminding people of what he once said: “You should always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise, they won’t come to yours”. “It just comes out”. She asked him if he figured he had to sign his last name so that she wouldn’t confuse him with somebody else named “Yogi”.
He only appeared in four games for those ’65 Mets after spending 1964 managing the Yankees.
Berra went across town to the Mets, where he coached and managed for a few years before returning home to the Yankees where he was a part of the organization off and on until a falling out with George Steinbrenner in the mid-80s.
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When he was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1972, Berra opened with a kidding reference to one of his Yogi-Isms: “I guess the first thing I should do is thank everybody who made this day necessary”. He and a teammate, Rizzuto, owned a bowling alley in New Jersey, and Berra became wealthy from early investments in the Yoo-Hoo soft drink company.
