(An October 2015 column from the late editor Mike Brown combining two of his favorite things: baseball and humor.)
Lawrence Peter Berra’s final gift to the world of columnists and compilers of quotes came last week when he passed away at the age of 90.
Yogi—he will forever be one of those one-name celebrities— was celebrated for his baseball abilities.
But to the larger world of people who couldn’t tell a slider from an infield fly he was that cuddly little man who came up with all those funny one-liners.
Because he passed away last week it gave every columnist in America a free column. Not hard to fill up the rest of this one, or anyone else’s, with Yogisims.
But I want to argue something deeper and it’s this. Yogi was an astute and gifted observer of life and humanity with the insight of a philosopher and the wit of a sage.
If you analyze him, he made a lot of sense and he could pack a lot of truth into a few words.
• Yogi, the coach, with the correct analysis of every loss in every game of every sport: “We made too many wrong mistakes.”
• Yogi, the economist, summing up inflation, nicely: “A nickel ain’t worth a dime, anymore.”
• Yogi, the linguist, infusing new meanings into old words: “It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility.”
“He hits from both sides of the plate, he’s amphibious.”
“I’m not buying my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.”
• Yogi, the realist, reminding us fame is temporary: “I thought that record would stand until it was broken.”
• Yogi the historian, arguing that conclusions change as the people who make them change: “The future ain’t what it used to be.”
Yogi, the financial advisor, with a point that would make Dave Ramsey (see this page) proud: “Why buy good luggage? You only use it when you travel.”
Yogi, the spokesman for parents in summer: “I think Little League is wonderful. It keeps the kids out of the house.”
Yogi, the mystic, living up to his nickname, and teaching his “disciples” a truth they, and we, are still working on: “It was deja vu, all over again.”
• Yogi, the setter of goals, saying in 14 words, what every school guidance counselor tries to say in four years: “If you don’t know where you are going, you might end up somewhere else.”
• Yogi, the meteorologist, explaining why he dropped a pop foul in the shadows of an October game: “It gets late early out there.”
• Yogi, the realist, noting that life’s true choices may not be apparent until years later: “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
• Yogi, the restaurant critic, beating online reviewers to the punch by 40 years, with t his o bservation o f a trendy eatery: “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded.”
• Yogi, the mathematician, proposing new theorems they’ll still be working on in centuries yet to come.
“Baseball is 90 percent physical. The other half is mental.”
“I usually take a two-hour nap from 1 to 4.”
• Yogi, the honest man: “I didn’t say a lot of the things I said.”
There’s always been the nagging thought that many of Yogi’s Yogisims were manufactured by his friend Joe Garagiola.
Garagiola always denied it, pleading “you couldn’t make up a Yogi Berra.”
Indeed. Good-bye Yogi, you’ll be missed. And that’s no joke.
- Log in or Subscribe to post comments.