The Essential Yogi Berra - Michael's essay

Autumn comes in with its show-offy flash of colour and bracing air and the games dwindle down, as the song would have it, to a precious few. And in autumn, the boys of summer grow older and grayer and perhaps slower by a step or two. Sometimes they disappear altogether. 

Lawrence Peter Berra died in his sleep on Tuesday in a nursing home in New Jersey. He was 90. Mr. Berra was a professional baseball player. His death came 69 years to the day when he began his career.

There are baseball players we have admired since boyhood for their abilities to do what few people on the planet can, in 162 games a year. There are baseball players whose talent we can admire for a lifetime despite their obnoxious personalities; Ted Williams springs to mind. But there aren't many baseball players who are loved by other baseball players and by fans. Yogi Berra is one of only two I can think of in my lifetime; Stan Musial, who died two years ago, being the other.

Berra was a catcher, to my mind the best who ever played the game. He had the ideal catcher's build: short, chunky through the middle, quick hands and the stamina to squat behind thousands of batters for decades. In the years from 1957 through 1959, he went 148 consecutive games behind the plate without making an error. He won all the glory prizes. In 19 years with the Yankees and 8,300 plate appearances, he struck out a miniscule 414 times. He was named an all-star every year for 15 consecutive years. He was the American League's most valuable player three times. He never finished lower than fourth in the voting. He played in 21 World Series, more than any player in history and helped win 13 of them. He was probably the best clutch hitter of his time and was known as a bad pitch hitter. But as he once said, "If I can hit it, it's a good pitch."

Early in his career, his boss, Casey Stengel, told the press, "Mr. Berra is a very strange fellow of very remarkable abilities." He was always, Casey said, "My man." 

He was often ridiculed for his looks, made fun of for his Grade 8 dropout education and characterized as a buffoon for his Yogi-isms. He was, in fact, very intelligent, canny, and funny. And as his former teammate, the pitcher Jim Bouton, once said of him, "There is an essential sweetness about him; he is without guile."  

The New York Yankees were the team of my youth. This was the team of Mantle, Ford, DiMaggio, Reynolds, Martin. And Yogi Berra. These heady days we have to condemn the Yankees to eternal hell fire so our Blue Jays might triumph. Despite that, Yogi still holds a big part of our heart.

I was never a huge fan of the so-called Yogi-isms which now pepper every obituary; I thought they were a bit contrived. But the one I treasure involved his wife, Carmen, whom he married in 1949. She once asked him that should he die first, where would he want to be buried? 

"After all," she said, "You're from St. Louis, I'm from New Jersey, and you played in New York."  

"I don't know," said the aging catcher. "Surprise me."