Yes, I know that if you wanted to read a story about Yogi Berra today, there are a lot of high-powered places on the Internet you could surf.  So to justify my story of Yogi here in ye local Beacon, I will try to share my unique personal impression when I met him in 1973.  That was the year in which Yogi Berra was the manager of the National League pennant-winning New York Mets and incidentally a special consultant to an early American software company.  It was when Yogi was playing this unlikely role of a computer software specialist that I ran into him at a business convention in New York City. 

In 1973 Yogi Berra was still so famous that you could stick his picture on a bottle of Yoo-hoo Chocolate Drink and everyone in America would know that the nation’s most personable hero had thrown in his winning cards with this new chocolate drink with a rather watery texture. 

But when I met Yogi that year, he was dressed in an unfamiliar dark business suit and surrounded by somber men in his company wearing matching somber suits.

Yogi’s suit disguised many of his strengths, including putting away his massive Popeye forearms that made him one of greatest home-run hitters on the home-run crazy Yankees.  Yogi’s business suit over his open shirt also disguised his massive legs that overcame his constant crouching at the plate for almost two decades and as a young man impressing spectators as one of America’s most promising young soccer players. 

The one thing that Yogi’s suit could not disguise was his 5’8’ height, which made him look a little modest among his business colleagues but – standing next to the massive Yankees in the field at Yankee Stadium – had him appear almost like a muscular midget in his playing days. 

Still, the most distinctive thing I noted about standing in front of Yogi Berra is that he did not have the overwhelming personal power of a super athlete, which was the kind of impression I received when I once met with the Hall of Fame NFL quarterback Fran Tarkenton.  Tarkenton overflowed with the colors and the energies of a popular superstar. In contrast with his fellow sports Hall of Famer, even when Yogi Berra smiled, he looked a little pale and worried.  

Yogi was right about computers 

I remember just one thing Yogi told me.  “These computers are going to be all over the place in a few years,” he more or less said, as I remember he used the word “these” maybe five or six times.  It was a colloquialism he had probably learned from the tough St. Louis neighborhood where he was brought up.  In fact, eighty-five years ago – which was all the way back to 1925 – Yogi was hardly able to learn much English from his Italian immigrant parents, who had just recently arrived on Ellis Island to join so many other many other Italian immigrants then in St. Louis. 

In 1973, computers were mostly thought of as big machines by which you controlled payrolls and tabulated what you paid for versus what you received.  Today, it would seem that anyone investing in something called computer software in 1973 might seem as out of time balance as a venture in 1873 to build airplanes.  But Yogi Berra wasn’t about to explain to me why he liked “these computer software developments.”  He deferred the explanation to one of his associates, who peppered me with technical words. 

I am sure that Yogi Berra was the only 8^th grade dropout in this group.  Like a lot of poor immigrant families, the Berra’s were forced to put their children to work during their school age to put food on the table.  Berra in fact never even got a chance to play baseball in high school.  His father had never even heard of baseball.  But young Yogi discovered the game in the city that then boasted two major league baseball teams – the St. Louis Cardinals and the St. Louis Browns.   

There were also semi-pro teams around St. Louis. With the mind that later made Yogi one of only four major league managers to win both the American League and National League pennants, Berra paired down all the things baseball players do until he concluded that the two most indispensable positions  were pitcher and catcher. He also saw that coaches were widely prejudiced against playing 5’8” pitchers, so Yogi set out hanging around semi-pro players and learning day by day how to become the greatest catcher who ever lived.   

He got so good that by the time World War II was in full fling he was about ready to become a major league catcher.  But he felt the duty to his nation first and joined the U.S. Navy at a time — after Pearl Harbor — there was an enormous need to rebuild a U.S. Navy to fight a war that was taking place around both oceans. 

By the time the 19-year-old Berra received his training, the new Navy was bring rolled out to be used in the invasion of Normandy.  There was an especially new boat invented just for this invasion and never used afterwards called the “jet boat.”  The “jet boat” was a tiny suicidal sea-craft small enough to sail practically right up into the sand of the beach so that its crews could clear the beaches of Nazis before the main invasion came ashore. 

Because the jet boat literally puts its crews into the valley of death with no mechanism for anything but forward maneuver, the Navy could do nothing but ask for volunteers to man this dangerous and untested boat.  The teenage Berra was one of the first volunteers. 

While so many died around him, Berra managed to survive with only a dangerous wound.  At that point, his most outspoken concern was that his mother not hear about his battle experience — not even that he had received a Purple Heart – because he didn’t want her to worry about him. 

After serving on the most important winning team in world history – these General Eisenhower’s allied forces – Yogi’s life was devoted to creating more playful winning teams.  Whether he was a play-calling catcher, or a play-calling coach, or a play-calling manager – or whether he wore the uniform of the New York Yankees, or the New York Mets, or the Houston Astros – he would always eventually guide his team to a division title, or a pennant, or a world champion.  While becoming only one of six players to win the American League Most Valuable Player three times, he never gave his teams anything less. 

The year I met Yogi, he had become the only major league baseball managers in history to win pennants for two different teams within the same city, when he won the pennant for the New York Yankees in 1964 and the New York Mets in 1973. 

Strangely enough, both the Yankees and the Mets fired Yogi shortly after he managed the teams into pennant-winners. Then both teams took a dog’s lifetime to win another pennant after he was ousted. 

The problem wasn’t that Yogi wasn’t winning.  He was always winning.  The problem was that he was such a soft-spoken manager that his bosses didn’t really believe he was really managing.  They thought he was only winning because of his lifetime good luck.  Nor did these baseball bosses understand that in tough Italian-American neighborhoods like “The Hill” in St. Louis, where Yogi grew up, being soft-spoken like Yogi Berra was a mark of strength. 

Anyway, to celebrate his birthday and his 85 years of good luck, I would like to quote from wise-guy All-Star Yankee third-baseman Graig Nettles, whom Yogi helped coach to back-to-back world championships in 1977 and 1978:  “It’s far better to be lucky than to be good.” 

Most of the salient information in this piece was gleaned from the marvelous W.W. Norton biography of Yogi that is coming out later this year in paperback, and was written by Allen Barra: “Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee.”  I heartily recommend this very nice book to any young person in the Santa Clarita Valley – and in every valley – to show how great Americans can remain good Americans throughout their lives. 

And although 85 years may seem like a very long time, in the end it is the most famous quote by Yogi Berra that rules: 

“It ain’t over till it’s over.” 

Chris Sharp- Commentary

Chris Sharp is an Educator and a prize-winning professional writer. His commentaries represent his own opinions and not necessarily the views of any organization he may be affiliated with or those of the West Ranch Beacon.