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The 2015 All-Star Game is
at the Great American Ball Park in Cincinnati,
and I am watching it with my grandfather.
The opening ceremony features
the four greatest living baseball players,
as determined by 25 million fan votes.
These four men were selected by fans
across all of Major League Baseball.
- So out comes Hank Aaron... - Hank Aaron.
-...Johnny Bench... - Johnny Bench.
-...Sandy Koufax... - Sandy Koufax.
...and Willie Mays.
Who were all absolutely amazing players in their own right,
but I'm in the room sitting next to my grandfather,
Yogi Berra.
And I'm thinking:
"Wait a second. He's got more MVPs than any of these guys.
He's won more World Series rings than all four of them combined."
And I look at him and I said, "Are you dead?"
And he said, "Not yet."
Objectively speaking,
I don't know how 25 million baseball fans could leave him off of that list.
You know who he is. He's Yogi.
To have Yogi not included in the greatest living players of 2015...
That makes no sense to me whatsoever. I don't quite understand that.
He's pounded out 67 World Series hits.
Come on.
He's in his 68th World Series game.
- There's one. It is going... Gone!
Come on. Come on.
Yogi Berra...
There are only two people with more than 350 home runs
and fewer than 500 strikeouts
in the whole history of Major League Baseball,
and their names are Joe DiMaggio and Yogi Berra.
It just really kind of cemented home in my mind
how overlooked he became as a player
and how much that personality of his,
that became so much bigger than baseball...
- Mr. Yogi Berra. Yogi!
...actually served to take away from his legacy as a baseball player.
A high drive. That's trouble.
- Do you ever hit home runs? - Sometimes.
I realize that I'm inherently biased
because Yogi Berra is, after all, my grandfather,
but I believe, as the years went by, Yogi Berra became a cultural icon.
Maybe it's that punching bag of a face.
Maybe it's the Yogi-isms that really are true.
"It ain't over until it's over." We all know that.
"It isn't over till it's over."
Yogi Berra once said, "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
"We may be lost, but we're making good time."
You're probably best known in America for your Yogi-isms.
Oh, boy.
So how on earth is he overlooked
and not included as one of baseball's greatest living players?
He may be overlooked, but he certainly wasn't overlooked
by the people who know what they're looking at in baseball.
He slams it over the scoreboard in right field
for the first pinch-hit home run in World Series history.
For me, Yogi Berra is the greatest of all catchers.
He has one of the greatest World Series résumés of any player ever.
Got him! The greatest game ever pitched...
Yogi was representing, not the big guys,
but he was representing us, the stickball kids in the street.
He was a giant.
I mean, he was the most overlooked superstar in the history of baseball.
"I'm not a cartoon. You know, they made me a cartoon."
Yogi Bear!
Man, I only saw the cartoon side of Yogi.
Right? I mean, he's a figure that was larger than life.
Yogi Berra is the American League's most valuable ballplayer.
He is also one of baseball's most popular figures.
This despite the fact Yogi is an awfully tough man when the chips are down,
either behind the plate or when he's up there with a bat.
Yogi grew up in St. Louis, became a Yankee when he was 20.
And he's been hitting home runs with considerable regularity ever since.
Uh, Yogi, did your parents encourage you to become a ballplayer?
No, they didn't, Ed. Uh...
I've got a funny story to tell you about that.
Back there on The Hill, we played ball all the time.
Us kids, we played every darn day, you know.
We played with a bottle cap and broomsticks.
If I swung hard, I would swing and miss.
And one strike, you were out.
And I think that would help me a lot,
you know, playing that bottle cap 'cause that was pretty tough to hit.
Yogi Berra is not my grandfather's real name.
It is Lorenzo Pietro, Lawrence Peter.
He grew up in the Italian section of St. Louis
that used to be called Dago Hill.
Now known simply as The Hill.
They were very poor as immigrants,
and he was very accustomed to hearing "dago," "wop,"
all the derogatory terms for Italians.
His father was, uh, you know, old-school, and they had to work.
His brother Tony, who they called "Lefty,"
he was a tremendous ballplayer too.
They were all great athletes, so it's something they had to give up.
Tony was a tremendous athlete.
Mike was a good athlete. They were all good baseball players.
They wanted to see somebody get out there and play
and do what they felt like they really wanted to do.
If work coincided with a game, Papa Berra made him go to work.
And he'd have to leave work or sneak out of work to get to the game,
so Papa Berra didn't find out he left work.
Kind of skipped work a little bit.
And I said, "I'm gonna play in the big leagues one of these days."
Where could you go and work three hours and make that kind of money?
And then I got a chance to play American Legion ball.
They had no benches in the sandlots.
So they sat on the ground.
And Dad would cross his legs and cross his arms
and sit like this on the ground between innings.
Bobby Hofman played with the Giants.
We played on the same American Legion team.
And I was sitting on the ground with my legs crossed
and my arms crossed.
He says, "You look like a yogi."
That stuck.
His three older brothers kind of ganged up on Grandpa Pietro
and convinced him to let Grandpa Yogi have a chance as a ballplayer.
They allowed him to go away
if Dad would send home his paycheck.
This is 5446.
This is where I live.
Right across the street is 5447.
That's where Mr. Berra lived.
So how long have I known Yogi? I can't remember not ever knowing Yogi.
In fact, I think he's the first guy I ever saw.
Which, of course, brings up another thing. How good a ballplayer was I?
Most guys, when they go to the big leagues,
they're either the best player in school or the best player in the neighborhood.
With Yogi living over there, I wasn't even the best player on my block.
The Cardinals had a tryout,
and everybody in the neighborhood knew that Dad was the best ballplayer.
I guess he just didn't look like a great ballplayer.
You know, Garagiola got $500 to sign with the Cardinals.
And they offered Yogi 250.
And Yogi got mad.
He thought he ought to get just exactly what Joey got.
Yogi, uh, Branch Rickey is an old friend,
and I seem to remember him telling me
that you and he were once almost in a business deal. Is that right?
Well, Ed, this is what happened in 1942,
when, uh, he was still general manager of the St. Louis Cardinals.
But in a couple of days, he was moving over to Brooklyn.
And, uh, he told me-- I was working out with the club.
He said I'd never be a big-league ballplayer.
All I would be is a Minor League ballplayer.
Branch Rickey said Yogi was too clumsy and too slow.
Yogi was crushed.
But we later, you know, learned that Branch Rickey had a plan.
Rickey knew he was leaving the Cardinals to go to the Brooklyn Dodgers.
He also knew if he didn't offer Yogi what his pal Joey got,
Yogi was probably not going to sign.
Figuring, "As soon as I get over to Brooklyn,
I'm right back in there and I'm signing Yogi,
and now he's playing for me and not the Cardinals."
And the only thing that upset that apple cart was...
It was too late. I already signed with the Yankees.
The Yankees got there in between St. Louis and Brooklyn.
Are your parents baseball fans now, Yogi?
Well, my dad's a pretty good baseball fan now, Ed.
Yogi, you took part in D-Day, didn't you?
Well, I was only a kid at 18 years old
when I made the Normandy invasion, uh, Ed.
During World War II, if you're an able-bodied young person,
you signed up or you enlisted into the service.
Yogi was playing in the lower levels of the Yankee Minor Leagues.
He was at Norfolk, where the big Naval base was.
He enlists before he has a chance to be drafted.
So he volunteers to join the Navy for World War II.
And then he volunteers again for what the Navy was calling
"a secret mission," which was the rocket boats.
Yogi was a big, big fan of comic books.
He thought it had something to do with Buck Rogers.
But, ultimately,
it was really, uh, preparing for the invasion of Normandy.
Couldn't write home, tell them what I was doing.
We were the first ones in, before the Army come in.
It's amazing what that little boat could do though.
We could shoot one at a time, we could shoot two at a time,
or we could shoot all 24 at a time.
We did pretty good.
In that landing, he was right there.
All those bullets and everything you see in that landing,
he was offshore.
He didn't know how to swim.
There were six or seven guys on his boat, and they all got hit.
I stayed on the water for ten days.
I wasn't scared when going into it. It looked like 4th of July.
The next day,
his job was pulling the bloated bodies out of the water
after the beach was secured.
And he talked about how that was the worst and toughest experience of his life.
Baseball ain't hard.
You know, war is hard.
This is New York,
rich in the promise of a bright tomorrow.
So after my dad got out of the service,
they took him into the Yankee clubhouse to show him around,
and he still had his sailor's uniform on.
One of the guys said:
"That's the Berra kid that they're talking about?
He don't look much like a ballplayer."
And Pete Sheehy, the longtime Yankee clubhouse man,
said he took one look at Dad in his sailor's uniform,
said, "He don't look much like a sailor either."
First of all, he wasn't 6-foot-3,
210 pounds of pure gold with blond hair,
et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
He was Yogi.
Everything about him was kind of funny.
If you look at the early photography,
the early baseball cards of Berra,
he is a strange-looking man.
Yoda-like.
Not attractive.
Everything about Yogi was round.
The rounded shoulders, the...
I mean, he was... The whole structure was circular.
You have to understand, too,
the Yankees, they were almost like America's Team.
There was a look, an elegance about them,
with Joe DiMaggio, Tommy Henrich.
So when Yogi comes to the team,
you've got this 5-foot-7,
awkward-looking, kind of talked a little funny as well...
You know, he...
They say, "He doesn't look like a Yankee."
He was a very unlikely prospect.
He was short. He was squat.
Nobody thinks this guy can play, until you put him out there.
And it's time to play ball.
Grandpa makes his big-league debut in September of 1946.
And when Joe DiMaggio sees him, he says:
"Who's this guy? He looks like a fire hydrant."
Everyone said he didn't look like a Yankee.
His own manager, Bucky Harris, called him "The Ape."
The media said he looked like a Neanderthal and a gargoyle.
And it brings up the catcher Yogi Berra.
And I think he went on to prove
that it didn't really matter what you looked like.
Because as soon as he got up to the plate,
he silenced all of the critics with his bat.
Berra swings, and that one's gonna leave the ballpark.
Well, what do you know?
Larry Berra, they call him Yogi,
his very first time at the Major Leagues
and what does he do?
He hits a home run.
Grandpa hits a home run
in his first game in the big leagues, which is...
You know, doesn't happen very often, kind of unheard of,
and then he hits a second in his second game.
Yogi's blast sails over the right-field fence...
And he rounds the bases and comes back to the dugout,
and Joe DiMaggio is sitting on the bench, staring at him.
And Grandpa's staring back at Joe DiMaggio,
and he says, "What? I can hit homers too."
Well, I mean, first memories of Yogi Berra
was watching him play on television.
He was a left-hand hitter.
I could just see him taking that long bat
and hitting it over the right-field fence into Bedford Avenue at Ebbets Field.
[commentator[ Berra connects,
and the ball goes high and far over the right-field wall.
He was such a good hitter and such an unorthodox hitter.
You know, his hits, probably half the time,
were on pitches that weren't strikes.
You know, he just basically looked for something
that looked good to him and he swung at it.
I had fun. It's a fun game to me.
The fun of the game is hitting.
He had these amazing, like, meat-hook, gigantic hands that were super fast,
which is another reason he was able to put the bat on so many
what everyone else called "bad pitches."
Great, great hands. Great ability to know where the end of the bat was.
That's what Yogi was really good at.
He knew where the end of the bat was every time.
And that's why they said he was such a good bad-ball hitter.
Look at the old videos, man.
Sometimes a pitcher gives away their pitches to a hitter.
If you're paying close attention to the pitcher,
you could come down so far for a fastball,
come down lower for a curveball.
You watch it.
Then Yogi hits one out into right field.
He hit with power,
and the amazing thing was, almost never struck out.
He swung at everything. That's the key.
Can't strike out if you don't get two strikes.
If you don't get to two strikes. Yogi swung at everything.
He's probably one of the best bad-ball hitters there was in the game.
Well, I think that's not exactly true.
What it is, instead of a bad-ball hitter, he could hit a good ball,
but he could also hit a ball that was up or outside.
I could hit the ball the other way too.
If he threw a curveball,
-he's not gonna fool me. - No balls, two strikes.
Two strikes, I always guard the plate.
Then there's some pitchers out there, don't care what he threw, I could hit it.
He would slash at something that was way out of the strike zone,
so, in effect, what he is doing is abolishing the strike zone.
To put the ball in play at different quadrants of the zone,
it's unheard of, really.
You don't see guys do that nowadays, but he was so strong.
It's phenomenal because it's the art of hitting.
Berra swings,
and there's a drive going deep into right field.
Going back is Carl Furillo. That ball is over the wall for a home run.
Yogi was a tremendous clutch hitter.
He was probably one of the hitters that the opposition hated
to see him come up with men on base.
And especially in the late innings.
That was when he was particularly good.
It was amazing how that last at-bat,
when the game's on the line or they got a one-run lead,
he's gonna hit a line drive.
The count is two strikes
when Yogi Berra slams one down the right-field line.
His second homer of the series.
One time, a reporter asked him if all the bad things
people said about his looks bothered him.
He just brushed it off and said:
"Nah, in this racket, all you've gotta do is hit the ball,
and I've never heard of anybody hitting it with his face."
People really liked him because he was affable
and he was fun to listen to and fun to be around,
but that sort of became who Yogi Berra was,
this funny, little guy.
Because the media tended to view Yogi as a clown,
he was made fun of in the New York press.
They took advantage of him to create a persona
with which he was only too willing to subscribe.
Yogi was a little different. He was a character.
And people like that,
but sometimes the writers would go a little too far
in making fun of him.
Yogi, you take a lot of ribbing.
Does it ever get under your skin?
Not at all, Ed.
There's an old saying in baseball.
"If the ballplayers kid you, they like you.
If they don't kid you, they don't like you."
Does this kidding ever bother you, Mrs. Berra?
No, it doesn't. He's a pretty good bench jockey himself.
Mrs. Berra, do you call your husband Yogi too?
Yes, I do, Mr. Murrow, although I feel a little guilty about it.
I feel that I should call him Larry, but we have a son named Larry also,
and, uh, I feel that it's easier
to distinguish between the two by calling him Yogi.
Mm-hm.
♪ Just an average guy... ♪
My Grammy Carmen grew up on a farm in Missouri,
but when she was a teenager, she came to St. Louis,
and she was waiting tables
in a restaurant on The Hill called Biggie's.
This was an expensive restaurant.
And my grandfather used to drag Joe Garagiola there at lunchtime,
and they would go sit at the bar and they would drink glasses of water,
and Grandpa would basically stare at Grammy Carmen.
Finally, Joe said, "Hey, Yogi,
what's going on here with this Biggie's?
I'm gonna be broke by Christmas.
I can't keep eating at this place."
I was shy.
I thought she was a nice-looking girl, and, you know, I'm not that good-looking.
And I'd kind of taken a liking to her.
It was love at first sight. It was.
I actually asked Biggie, the owner of the restaurant,
to introduce me, to ask if she wanted to go out with me, you know.
I liked him. He was a little different.
All the other boys I dated were tall, handsome, 6-foot-4 fellows.
This is what he told us. I'll never forget.
We were all sitting around and he said:
"I looked at her and said, 'That's the woman I'm gonna marry.'"
Right? And everybody teased him and said, "You'll never get somebody that pretty."
- Yeah. See? - They all teased him
that he would never get anybody that pretty.
And she fell for him. He was a sweetheart.
Well, I thought he was kind of cute.
He was better-looking then than he is now.
I went after him, really.
He didn't have a chance.
When my grandparents had just met,
he used to write my grandmother old-fashioned love letters.
And they're very sappy and very sweet,
and the best way to illustrate is to just read one.
"Dearest darling, received your letter and was very happy to have received it.
Glad to hear everything with you is fine.
As for me, I am just fine, and I hope I stay that way.
Darling, I love you very, very much.
I will always love you as long as I live. There will never be another girl but you.
I love you, darling, more than ever.
I mean that. I love you. I love you. I love you.
I love you always and always."
But my favorite thing is that now and then he throws in a tidbit, like:
"I went 3-for-4 today."
The New York Yankees reporting for play
at St. Petersburg, Florida, with manager Casey Stengel.
Catcher Yogi Berra and Coach Bill Dickey have the right idea.
No winter storytelling here,
but signals for certain service in the summer.
I never caught until I turned pro. I was a lousy catcher.
Till they got Bill Dickey there.
Both Reese and Robinson score on a passed ball.
Here it is, Yogi.
He really worked me, boy.
Bill Dickey did drills with his catchers at Spring Training,
and it was the cruelest drill I've ever seen.
He would stand on home plate, put the catchers at the backstop,
and hit line drives in the dirt, to the left, to the right,
and Yogi never got tired, never quit.
But it made him a much better catcher 'cause he worked very hard.
Bill Dickey set the bar by playing in 100 games
13 seasons in a row.
When Yogi became the catcher,
he was catching 150 games a year.
Yogi Berra caught 117 doubleheaders,
both sides of these games.
And as somebody that did it a couple times,
I want you to know that that is absolutely ridiculous.
A hundred and seventeen doubleheaders he caught.
That's unbelievable. That is... That's unfathomable today.
Being Yogi Berra behind the dish,
I'm feeling pretty good about my chances, right?
It was a preposterous amount of energy and durability.
Yogi was a physical specimen,
and because he was so low to the ground,
which today we regard as an amazing deficit,
it was something of an advantage to him
because he was so quick in the infield.
Cox attempts to sacrifice both runners along,
and Hodges is called out at third on the force play.
And everybody tells me, "Oh, you're so short."
I said, "Well, I make a good target. I don't have to bend down so far."
I'm in the strike zone all the time.
Here's the pitch, and Sisler goes down swinging.
When he settled in as a catcher, with Bill Dickey's help in 1949,
he memorably said that Dickey was learning him all his experience.
And he made me work, boy.
He used to tell the teams when we'd play, "Steal on Yogi."
Here's a throw into the plate,
and the runner is out at home.
I remember one time a foul ball went right here
and shattered the whole bar.
That's the velocity of that pitch.
He had a little cut, but he went right back out and played.
I had a lot of fun catching. I really did.
You get to talk to everybody.
You talk to the batters a lot, Yogi. What do you say to them?
- Try to help them. - Help them?
- The guys you wanna beat? - Sure. I tell them:
"Watch out for the pitcher. He's a little wild."
Or, "It's hard to see the ball because of the white shirt."
- Helpful things. - Yeah.
Strike two. Fastball.
Yogi knew the hitters very, very well.
I mean, he really knew what their weakness was.
And if a hitter had a weakness,
I mean, he fed it to him constantly.
Yeah, till they proved to him that they could hit it.
I watched hitters. I really did.
I studied hitters.
If I see a guy diving in, that ball's coming inside. I don't care.
There's no question that the catcher runs the show
back from behind the plate.
He basically puts the puzzle together.
He's the one that's putting the fingers down.
Catchers are 100% like quarterbacks.
One, they gotta know everything that's going on.
Number two, they have to be able to call a game.
You need to know the strength of every hitter coming up to the plate,
as well as the strength of your pitcher,
as well as the positioning of your players on the field.
That's why a lot of catchers become managers.
You have to know everything that's going on.
And now they have the hot and cold maps of hitters coming up,
because they're saying that's too much information to keep in one brain.
But for Yogi Berra, that was a walk in the park.
When you walk out to talk to the pitcher, what do you talk about?
The main thing, you go out there and try and ease the pitcher.
He knows what kind of trouble he's in already.
But, uh, I go out and tell him:
"Well, you wanna go to the movies tonight?"
Or, "What kind of date you got for tonight?"
And you try and ease his mind.
I've always thought
the relationship a pitcher and catcher have to have is,
the pitcher needs to know that you'll do whatever it takes
to get him through seven innings, no matter what.
You'll stand on your head. You'll dive for balls.
You'll take balls off your neck. Whatever it takes, you're there for him.
Here's the throw to Berra to the plate, and Hamner's out.
When you prepare as a catcher, pitchers trust you, right?
They know, "He knows something.
All I gotta do is execute the pitch he calls,
and I'm gonna be okay."
They win the final game, 5 to 2,
to remain the baseball champions of the world.
You know, I go back to 1956.
I was, as a, you know, 16-year-old,
I was sitting in the bleachers.
I guess I was pulling for the Dodgers. I was a National League fan.
And then about the sixth inning, I started pulling for the Yankees
because you knew that, uh...
That Larsen had something special going.
Strike one.
Don Larsen must have really studied Mr. Maglie
'cause he's got the blueprint.
Strike two.
Not a Dodger had reached first base off Don Larsen,
the big right-hander from California.
Over the years, watching certain players,
I could see that Yogi had the ability of elevating these players.
Let's just take Don Larsen, for instance. Don had a losing career in baseball.
He lost more games than he won.
Yet, at that time, Yogi was able to bring the most out of him,
so that people are still remembering that perfect game in baseball.
I didn't know I was gonna pitch until I came to the clubhouse.
I was shaking a little bit. Quite a bit.
You can feel it in the crowd.
Tense, breathless.
When Larsen comes out for the ninth, still no Dodger has reached first base.
This is more than a no-hitter.
Everything Yogi called for, I threw close to where he wanted it.
Don Larsen never shook him off once in 97 pitches.
Don Larsen is spinning quite a web today.
He's retired 16 men in a row.
He called a game because he intuitively knew
what would work and not work against certain hitters.
An accidental swing.
And here's Vin Scully to carry on the rest of the way.
Thank you, Mel. Hi, everybody.
I think it was Yogi who took this man
and after, like, the fourth inning,
started to mold him into, "Hey, you gotta concentrate now."
He had great control that day.
Strike two on a beautiful change-up curve.
- Fastball, curveball, slider... - Down he goes.
He got it over in the right spots.
Two out in the ninth, still not a hit.
I think it would be safe to say
that no man in the history of baseball
has ever come up to home plate in a more dramatic moment.
Only one man now blocks Larsen
from the greatest pitching achievement of all time.
And that man is Dale Mitchell.
Mom was sitting in the stands with Whitey Ford's wife.
Strike one.
And, of course, my mom was pregnant at the time.
Strike.
She said, "If we get this guy out, I'm naming my child Dale."
- And sure enough... - Here it comes.
Strike three! A perfect game.
Not a man reaches first base.
No one has ever done this in World Series history.
Where do you start?
Larsen's achievement was an outstanding individual effort.
That really should be not the Larsen perfect game.
It should be the Larsen-Berra perfect game.
Larsen has pitched the perfect game, but it's Yogi
who runs out and jumps into his arms.
We go through our entire lives...
Even someone as old as I am,
we go through our entire lives as big kids.
Inside, we're kids.
And when Yogi leaps on Larsen,
what he's doing is he's acting the way he would have
on Dago Hill when he was 12 years old.
It's a kid's game. I don't think he ever lost sight of that.
And that was one of many things that endeared him to people.
♪ B-O-M-B-E-R-S ♪
♪ Here they come now The marvelous Bronx Bombers... ♪
Strike three called.
Yogi has one of the greatest combinations
of personal and team accomplishments
in the history of baseball.
In 1950, he batted .322 with 28 home runs, 124 RBIs,
and only 12 strikeouts.
That's un-- Twelve strikeouts, bro?
I don't even think I did that in Wiffle ball.
Typically, there's a correlation between strikeout rate and home-run rate.
And it's amazing to think that Yogi Berra strikes out 12 times
in a full-time year like that, where he hit 28 home runs.
You don't see that anymore, and I'll go out on a limb
and predict you're never gonna see that again.
For the next seven seasons, from 1950 to 1956,
he won three MVPs, finished second twice,
third once and fourth once.
If that doesn't tell you he was a main anchor,
a cog in that Yankee team, nothing will.
I mean, he was it. Yogi was the guy.
And look at Berra, piggyback-riding Bob Kuzava.
The Yankees, for the fourth consecutive time...
Between 1949 and 1964,
the Yankees won 12 pennants in 14 seasons.
And between '49 and '53,
they won the World Series every time, five years in a row.
Fifth consecutive world championship.
Then they turned around and went back in '55, '56, '57, and '58.
So go figure, how good is that?
That's, if my math is correct, nine times in ten tries.
During that seven-year stretch from '50 to '56,
he was not only the backbone of a Yankees team
that won five World Series rings,
he also averaged .295 with 27 home runs,
108 RBIs, and just 24 strikeouts per season.
There's a drive hit deep to right field,
but it is going to go all the way for a home run!
The four greatest living players from 2015 averaged 1.5 MVP awards,
17.5 All-Star appearances, and two World Series wins.
There is no doubt that Yogi belongs in their company,
with three MVPs, 18 All-Star appearances, and ten World Series wins.
Hey, he got it done. He was a winner 'cause he had all the rings to prove it.
Ten World Series rings. No one's ever gonna beat that.
That's crazy.
It's difficult to comprehend
just how popular baseball was in the 1950s,
which is when the crosstown rivalry between the Dodgers and the Yankees
was at its peak.
Lo and behold, the Dodgers sign Jackie Robinson.
And instantaneously,
most every person of color in the country becomes a Dodger fan.
One of Dad's lessons growing up was respecting the opposition.
And, you know, it didn't matter who you were playing.
Jackie Robinson once told me
that when he came to hit in a game, Dad said to him:
"Thank you for your service to the country.
And welcome to professional baseball."
Groundball now to Jackie Robinson.
Over to Reese for one, back to Hodges.
It gets away from him. Berra's trying to go to second.
Hodges picks the ball up, and Yogi goes into second base.
I don't know what I'm laughing about,
to tell you the truth, but Yogi,
to me, is as fine a clutch hitter as I've ever seen in the game.
He does a tremendous job.
There's no Jackie without the acceptance of Yogi Berra
and Ted Williams and Pee Wee Reese.
That amazing supporting cast who didn't say no.
Game 1 of the 1955 World Series brings Yogi and Jackie together
in one of the most iconic moments in the history of the game.
They were behind, and Jackie felt that he needed
to spark his team in the most daring play in baseball,
the steal of home.
Whitey Ford, the Yankee pitcher, ignores him.
But his desire burns as fiercely as ever.
Suddenly, Robinson is roaring down the line.
Robinson dashes to the plate.
It's close.
And Umpire Summers calls him safe.
Yankee catcher Yogi Berra roars in protest,
but Jackie Robinson has stolen home,
the most exciting moment in World Series history.
Yeah, I think I broadcast that.
I did.
And, yeah, I can see Yogi jumping up in the air, you know.
Thought he had him.
I thought that Jackie was out.
Yogi thought he was out.
But the umpire thought he was safe. That's really all that counts, you know.
It looked like he was out to me when they called him safe.
But Yogi went-- That's the only time I saw Yogi kind of went off.
He was all over that umpire.
I mean, he was safe, right?
They called him safe. You can't change it.
There's no replay back then. So, uh, yeah, he's...
Yeah, no matter how you look at it, he was safe.
I asked him once.
"Why didn't he throw you out when you were just screaming,
the veins are popping, and you're yelling and yelling?
And Yogi said, "He knew I was right."
He let it go on the field,
but certainly didn't let it go elsewhere for the rest of his life.
Till the day he died, he knew Jackie was out.
He knew Jackie was out, and he got volatile.
He's out. Just ask Yogi, right?
I mean, he told that story year after year,
and you could get him going with it.
- Yogi. - What?
- Robinson's steal-- - He's out.
- What? - He's out.
All right, let's roll it, guys. They wanna see it.
- Look at that. - Your glove is up in the air.
Yogi, your glove is up here.
Oh, my God. No, forget about that.
Now, when you wanna get Yogi upset, that was my point. That was...
"Yogi, I think he was safe."
And he'd look at me, like, "Mariano, he was out."
"No, Yogi, I mean, I'm looking at the video.
I think he was safe."
"He was out!"
I get... We used to... He used to get mad at me too, man.
"Yogi, he was safe. He was safe."
And he used to go, "Bullshit, Willie. Bullshit. He was out."
"Hey, Yog, I'm telling you,
I was watching MLB last night, they broke it down."
- Safe! -"And he was safe."
And he goes, "Bullshit. He was out."
Even to that, he was just like, "Bullshit."
Right away. Instantly.
If I ever agreed with Yogi, that'd have been no fun.
I couldn't agree with him.
Jackie was out.
- He was out. - He was out.
There's no question about it. He was out.
Look at it frame by frame. There's no other way to do it.
Because if you're looking at it with your heart,
then you may say Yogi.
And in my view, anyone who looks at it closely
can arrive at only one conclusion.
Jackie Robinson was safe.
Doggone it, he's out, I tell you.
Why, Berra had him cold.
You saw that play. He had him cold, didn't he?
That collision at home plate became part of the national conversation
because both men had become cultural icons
who represented something much larger than baseball.
♪ Take me out to the ball game ♪
♪ Take me out with the crowd ♪
♪ Buy me some peanuts And Cracker Jack... ♪
- Strike! - What? Yogi.
It's a perfect strike. The ump was right.
I don't like sarcasm, Berra. You're out of the game too.
You can't do that!
♪ For it's one, two Three strikes, you're out ♪
♪ At the old ball game ♪
I think, ultimately, what happened with my Grandpa Yogi is that
he plays these 18 amazing seasons in the big leagues.
And he becomes this funny-looking, little dude
who comes into the national consciousness in another way.
Do you ever hit home runs?
- Sometimes. - Are you in love with a movie star?
Have you played several positions this year,
notably catcher and left field?
- Are you Yogi Berra? - Yeah.
If there's a problem about Yogi, it's perception.
Mantle was Elvis in pinstripes,
and Yogi was Sancho Panza.
I mean, that was... He was this squat, little guy.
That's how people became aware of Yogi.
Introducing the Yoo-hoos!
Advertisers amplified Yogi's clown-like image
every chance they got.
Bottle caps for Yoo-hoo chocolate drink bore a photo of Yogi
with the grammatically questionable slogan "Me for Yoo-hoo."
There was a cat-food commercial where Yogi has
a perfectly normal conversation with a cat.
- Champ, you're in great shape. - I like to keep fit.
Work out every day, gym, road work.
I think it's quite evident that his personality
overshadowed his talent as a ballplayer.
The jokey Yogi, the cute Yogi, the little gnome Yogi,
the character Yogi,
it always felt wrong.
It's not fair to him.
This was a really great player.
He was as great as any of them.
Mantle said to me several times:
"Well, he was the heart and soul of our teams."
This image of Yogi as a lovable mascot,
like a cartoon character,
continued to grow until they decided
to just turn him into an actual cartoon character.
This happens to be a true bear story.
This particular bear, called Yogi, smart-- Uh, fairly smart.
It was, like, common knowledge in my family that Yogi Bear
had been named after my grandfather.
Oh, no, I don't think it was a coincidence at all.
- That's right. - Yogi Bear.
Yogi Bear.
Now, where did it go?
Yogi Bear's got an appetite for adventure.
Oh, Yogi.
Go!
I'm smarter than the average bear.
Well, when they made the Yogi Bear,
they actually tried to get a civil suit against them.
Unfortunately, the judge ruled that Yogi was not his real name.
He never trademarked his name.
♪ Yogi Bear is smarter Than the average bear... ♪
It was a great cartoon show though.
I don't think Yogi liked it too much.
Um...
"I'm not a cartoon. You know, they made me a cartoon."
Yogi Berra announced his retirement as a player.
In 1964, Yogi was offered the chance to manage a Yankees team
that was on the precipice of a steep decline.
Key players like Mickey Mantle and Whitey Ford were battling injuries,
and Elston Howard, whom Yogi had mentored to replace him at catcher,
was nearing the end of his career.
I know all my ballplayers. They're all a great bunch of fellas.
I know their habits and what they do off the field and off the field.
I think it's a challenge for me,
and I wanna get a taste of it.
If I can't manage, I'll quit.
And if I could, then we'll stick around a little longer.
Yogi was a very good manager.
You can't be funny and serious.
Just like you can't think and hit at the same time.
That's true.
A lot of the writers weren't quite as enamored
with Yogi the manager
'cause they couldn't get funny statements out of him
or because he couldn't be the friendly Yogi, Yogi Bear.
When you first broke in with the Yankees, the sportswriters made a big thing
about you reading comics in the locker room.
Do you think this will fit in with the Yankee image?
Well, I have one thing to say.
Every time I'd finish reading, everybody else wanted to read them.
They all asked, "Let me see it after you."
Yogi was dealt a very difficult hand.
And remember, he was a manager,
but he was managing guys who, I think...
They were still, "Hey, Yog. Hey, Yog."
I think it was a problem for a lot of people in the media
who thought there should be some kind of chain of command
that you had to adhere to.
And with him, it was like, "Hey, we're all in the dugout.
We're all pulling from the same end of the rope."
And I think that the media looked at Yogi as:
"This guy's not smart enough to be a manager
because he doesn't look the part."
You've been saying that the Yankees are gonna finish in first place.
Do you still feel that way?
I think so. I think they gotta catch us.
Yogi, as I recall, I don't think
you've been waved out of any games by the umpires.
- You gonna get along with all the umps? - I'll just let it ride right now.
You gonna get a little tougher, huh?
I don't know about a little tougher,
but you always can put your two cents' worth in.
Yogi worked very hard to sound like a manager.
His image suffered from it.
But at that point,
you think the Yankees had a couple of old veteran players.
How do you control guys
that have been out of control for a decade?
The Yankees didn't start off real well.
We were behind maybe seven or eight games.
Went into a series with the Chicago White Sox.
Yogi Berra paces the dugout impatiently.
We lost all four games.
We got on the bus going out toward O'Hare Airport.
You could've heard a pin drop, it was so quiet.
And finally, Phil Linz, who hadn't played an inning in any game,
chose this time to learn how to play his harmonica.
Someone says, "Hey, Phil, what can you play?"
He says, "Well, I can play 'Mary Had a Little Lamb.'"
And he started playing--
It's not that difficult.
Well, Yogi said, "Shut up back there."
"Shut up that noise back there."
So Phil then turned to Mickey Mantle and said:
"What did he say?"
Mickey Mantle said, "He said play it louder. Play it louder."
And next thing, you see Yogi coming down the aisle.
And he said, "I told you to put that thing away."
And Phil freaks, and Joe Pepitone is sitting to Phil's left,
and Phil just throws the harmonica up in the air,
and Yogi swipes it and hits Joe on the knee.
He said, "You hurt my knee! You hurt my knee!"
It's like a sitcom.
Linz is fined. It's a big deal.
It's the back page of the New York tabloids.
We're going to have a harmonica solo tonight
by Mr. Phil Linz of the Yankees.
Yes.
His first selection will be "Who's Sorry Now?"
Basically, what the media says about the harmonica incident,
when it came out in the paper, was:
"That's proof that Yogi does not have control of this team."
Which is nothing further from the truth.
Or, "We don't think Yogi can manage."
Midway through the season, our team is rolling.
We're cooking, we're in the pennant race.
Everybody's saying, "It's just luck. Look at the team he has."
But there were a lot of moves that he made that made a big difference,
and taking chances on some players
that some people might not normally take a chance on.
Coincidence or not, the Yankees then turn it around.
And we went on to win 18 games in a row after that
and won the pennant.
And here, New York clinch the American League pennant
on next-to-the-last day of the season.
Yogi Berra, serving his first year as manager,
had a close call, but came through in the end.
♪ It's a beautiful day For a ball game... ♪
And here again are the New York Yankees.
They've been in 15 of the last 18 World Series.
Yogi once again found a way to defy all expectations
by leading a squad of aging and injured Yankees
back to the World Series,
where they faced the upstart Cardinals in what would become an epic battle.
Manager Johnny Keane seems relaxed as he talks with reporters.
Manager Berra of the Yankees keeps busy before the game.
Bob Gibson blazes a fastball past hard-swinging Mickey Mantle.
Sometimes things happen,
and one instance can change an entire series.
And there was one play, in my mind, that totally changed that series.
Richardson goes far to his right for a fine stop,
but the ball seems stuck in his glove.
He finally makes the toss, but Linz drops the ball,
and Flood is safe at second base.
We should've won that series, and I've told it before,
but if I hadn't made that error
that loaded the bases for Ken Boyer to hit the grand slam,
we'd have won that series too.
Boyer smashes it deep to left field.
It might be out of here. It is a home run!
A grand slam that's fair by only five or six feet.
St. Louis hangs on to win their first World Series since 1946.
Yogi took his team all the way to Game 7 of the World Series
in his first year as manager.
So he was convinced the Yankees were going to give him
a two-year contract extension.
But Ralph Houk had made up his mind months ago
that he was going to fire Yogi.
And so he did.
Yogi gets fired,
and Johnny Keane, who was the manager of the Cardinals,
comes over to the Yankees.
And quite frankly, that put the Yankees on the downward spiral.
I used to talk to Yogi about that, and the way he would say it:
"I thought I was going in for a raise."
Behind the color and the crowds of the World Series,
machinations worthy of Machiavelli were in progress.
They had fallen six or seven games behind in August.
Yankee management felt that Yogi had lost control of the team,
and they decided then that they were gonna fire him.
What are you doing to Yogi?
You know, and it wasn't right.
You know, but he, uh...
He took it like a man, you know, but inside...
It had to be killing him. It had to be.
I called Yogi. I talked to Carmen, his wife.
She said, "Yogi's upstairs crying. He's so upset at losing the job
and maybe having to leave the Yankees," and so forth.
But cellar dweller Stengel had no complications.
He was re-signed,
and then came the news that the Mets had hired Yogi,
who got a hefty severance check from the Yanks.
Casey Stengel swooped in and hired Yogi to help coach the Mets.
They were dead last in the league,
and Shea Stadium was considered a place where careers went to die.
Casey was determined this year
that the Mets would not fall below last place.
Excuse me, sir. Why are you a Mets fan?
I'm not.
Yes, out.
And out comes Casey Stengel, one of baseball's...
In 1968, we couldn't do anything right.
Yogi is our first-base coach, but he's also the hitting coach.
Art Shamsky.
One day, I said to him, "I'm really struggling. What should I do?"
He just simply said, "See it, hit it."
I mean, you don't get any more basic than that. He was right.
It's a pretty simple philosophy.
He really loved to mentor younger players.
Nobody in baseball tries harder than Ron Swoboda.
One time, Mets outfielder Ron Swoboda
said he was going to start using
the same batting stance as Frank Robinson.
And Grandpa says, "No, no, no. I don't think that's a good idea."
And he says, "If you can't imitate him, don't copy him."
I think the thing is, is he simplifies everything.
Sometimes you overanalyze and you overthink,
and you hear something so simple as:
"Swing at a strike."
And you're like, "You know what? I keep thinking about everything else,
but that really makes a lot of sense."
When Yogi joined the Mets, they were losing over 100 games a year.
Ron Swoboda.
He helped turn them around, and in 1969,
the Miracle Mets went on to win 100 games
and shock the baseball world by winning the World Series,
giving Yogi his 11th ring.
- Amazing. - It's amazing!
He saw a team that went from nowhere,
the lovable losers, for lack of a better word, to winning a World Series.
♪ In a ballpark in Flushing In the year '69 ♪
♪ That team known as losers Began a miracle drive... ♪
Again, they-- Somehow, these World Series follow my dad around like rabbits.
It's just an amazing thing.
♪ That miracle drive... ♪
Upon the death of Mets manager Gil Hodges, Yogi's dear friend,
Yogi became the manager of the Mets in 1972.
And in 1973, he overcame the odds once again
to find himself in the middle of a heated pennant race.
- Let's go with percentage, Tug. - You wanna put him on?
- You do? - Yeah. Go ahead. Go with the lefty.
The team's motto that year, "Ya Gotta Believe,"
embodied the underdog nature of Grandpa's persona.
The New York Mets are in first place!
Somehow, the Mets managed to overcome
a 12.5-game deficit in July to win the pennant,
which sent Yogi back to the World Series again.
Yogi told the press, "I never thought we were really out of it.
You're not out of it until it's mathematical."
It's this last bit, "You're not out of it until it's mathematical,"
that ultimately evolved into his most famous quote of all time:
"It ain't over till it's over."
The most amazing thing about this quote
is that there's no definitive proof that he ever originated that exact phrase.
But it didn't matter because, as with every other aspect of his life,
the myth outgrew the facts.
In 1973, George Steinbrenner bought the Yankees.
They'd better represent themselves like Yankees,
in the same pride and tradition of the era, the past.
Three years later, in 1976, he brought Yogi back as a coach.
And there is Yogi.
Reggie Jackson.
Long drive, right field, it is goodbye!
The Yankees had not been to a World Series
since Yogi was fired in 1964,
but as soon as he returned,
they reached the World Series three years in a row.
Their 21st World Series!
For the 22nd time in 75 World Series, the New York Yankees are the champions.
Even though they won back-to-back World Series titles
in '77 and '78,
giving Yogi his 12th and 13th rings,
it was a tumultuous time for the Yankee organization.
They were known as the Bronx Zoo,
and it was Yogi who helped keep the team together when things got out of hand.
Some of the Yankees' minds weren't on tonight's game
when they came to town.
Reggie Jackson was still feuding with manager Billy Martin.
He just took Reggie Jackson out of the ball game,
and Jackson hit the top step of the dugout and went flying right at Billy Martin.
The people over there can see it.
Now people are climbing on the dugout roof.
Now the police are down in the dugout or along the dugout.
The Yankee dugout is a caldron down there now.
When Reggie and Billy go at it in Boston,
you know, who's pulling who away, you know, and keeping a cool head?
They pushed, and they shoved.
They would fight. They would pout.
They were unhappy people, of that there's no doubt.
They were willing but tired and frustrated men.
- You're fired. - Oh, not again.
All set?
I guess you all know why you're here. Uh...
The manager of the New York Yankees for 1984 will be Lawrence "Yogi" Berra.
And there is probably no Yankee in the world
any more genuinely loved or respected than Yogi.
Uh... those who would say, "Can he manage?"
Let me put this proposition to you.
He took the New York Yankees in one year to an American League pennant,
and, uh, then, for some reason, a change was made,
uh, and they didn't win another thing for 12 years until 1976.
Uh, then he went to the Mets, and he won a championship,
and, uh, for some reason, a change was made,
and they haven't won any pennants since.
So Yogi Berra is a very unique man.
Come on up here, Yogi.
Any ques--? Nobody can see me.
If I could get a box.
Is it all right?
Hey, boy, I'm tall now.
Two years. Two years. Mm-hm.
That's long enough.
If you're any good, uh, you may get an extension.
Does that mean we'll win next season? We're gonna have a pennant?
I achieved everything in baseball.
I got inducted into the Hall of Fame.
I've been voted the most valuable player three times.
I won the pennant with the Yankees and the Mets.
But there's one thing I haven't achieved, win a World Series,
and I hope to do it this year, next year.
- No. - Can I interrupt y'all?
"Yogi's back" was the word about town.
Yogi Berra, who helped write Yankee history through five decades,
was the man chosen to find the winning pieces
that would put the Yankees back on the track to the top.
Some pieces included well-known stars.
Others, unknown youngsters.
I mean, you feel a total respect for Yogi,
a guy that, uh, everybody loved, not because he was cute and funny,
it's because he was good and he was real.
Fly ball, right center field. Did he get all of it?
Yeah, he got it.
He got it! And the Yankees have tied it up!
He's just a gentle, kind soul, is why he's so loved.
And Yogi, a prophet in his own time.
It ain't over till it's over. Look at Mattingly.
You could go 0-for-4 or 4-for-4,
you see him after the game, it was always gonna be the same:
"How you doing, kid?" Or...
He said to me one time, 'cause I was a guy that liked to hit a lot,
and I would hit, and hit, and hit extra, do all this stuff,
and he'd tell me, "You're gonna hit your way right into a slump."
It took me a while to take that in, quite honestly,
but I understood what he was saying probably years later.
I got traded to the Yankees in 1985.
Um... Dad was the manager.
You're able to separate the family from the manager's standpoint.
Is he a better guy as a manager or a father?
Nah, he's good both ways.
He's always smiling, I give him that.
We had a good team, but we got off to a rough start.
Griffey, and nobody can get it.
But there was never a doubt that we were going to have
a long winning streak at some point.
Does the best moment managing ever compare with the best moment playing?
Playing's the best. I like that.
This from the manager on the hot seat,
now with George Steinbrenner breathing down his neck.
Don't worry about Yogi. I tell you, Yogi is a survivor.
I said, "Yog, how's he treating you?" He said, "Don't worry about it."
I said, "Is he on you a lot?"
Here it comes. He said, "We agree different."
You threw a pack of cigarettes at George Steinbrenner?
- Wait a second. - That's one time I lost my temper.
- So that happens. - Right.
There is a Yogi watch that is being conducted in New York, isn't it?
It's the tough job of the manager under George Steinbrenner.
The players loved him.
Dad would talk after every loss and say:
"Don't worry. We'll get them. This is too good a team.
We know we'll contend when it comes down to it at the end of the year."
And we all knew it.
The Yankees got off to a slow start,
but Dale was playing some of the best ball of his career,
batting .343 through the first 16 games.
And there's another hit by Berra!
Then it all came to a screeching halt.
That's a shot up the middle.
A diving stop by Cruz! Over to Guillen...
The White Sox climbed above .500,
with a three-game wipeout of slumping New York,
and that smash put the Sox ahead to stay.
I go back into the clubhouse,
I see some players crying.
And I'm like, "What happened here?"
And Don Baylor says, "They fired your dad."
I said, "What?"
What did George say to you? How did you find out?
George didn't say anything. Clyde King told me.
The indignity of it.
He asks an assistant to go tell Yogi Berra,
who contributed as much to the Yankees as any man ever,
maybe as much or more than Babe Ruth,
and sends an assistant to fire him.
What'd he say?
What'd he say? I was dismissed.
How's Dale taking this? Did you and he have a chance to talk at all?
Oh, yeah, I talked to him today, and I said, "You gotta keep playing."
They got a good manager in Billy Martin. Billy's my friend.
- What do you think about it? - What do I think about...?
There's not much to think about it.
Well, Dad asked if he could ride on the team bus to the airport
and sit in his manager's spot, where he always sat.
And we stopped,
and as he stood up to leave, the entire bus got up,
gave him a standing ovation as he was gonna go home.
Now, you know, that--
Don't think that's ever happened before in sports.
What's the reaction of the players?
Well, the players liked Yogi.
How are they going to react to Billy, it remains to be seen.
It angered a lot of guys.
I think that lack of respect is what caused the anger.
What is that? What do you call that?
You just turning him out to the pasture?
I mean, that was no pride, tradition.
That wasn't respect.
Many, like team leader Willie Randolph,
felt the move wasn't really necessary.
I don't think the change is gonna be a shot in the arm or anything like that.
I don't think we need that. We just need a few breaks here and there.
Uh, we could've done that with Yogi.
We were all shocked and upset. We were mad, really.
We were upset because he didn't deserve that.
And we really felt genuinely sorry for the fact that he lost his job
because we didn't get off to a good start.
It was--
It was heartbreaking to see that man walk away like that, you know,
and treated like that, really, because of who he was.
He was the Yankees.
I don't care what they say about other guys. He was the Yankees.
For his-- Not just 'cause he could play ball.
'Cause he was part of the thread.
And you can't treat people like they're serfs.
It was the biggest mistake
that George Steinbrenner ever made in the baseball game,
and certainly with the New York Yankees, because people loved Yogi Berra.
Steinbrenner should have his head examined.
He never knows whether he's coming or going.
Billy Martin equals him. They deserve one another.
I've never liked Billy Martin. I don't like George Steinbrenner either.
I am a fan of Yogi's though.
How do you like that? Steinbrenner fired him.
It's like firing Winnie-the-Pooh, for crying out loud.
It took a lot to make Yogi mad,
but the way his firing went down made him furious,
and he swore he'd never return to Yankee Stadium
as long as Steinbrenner was in charge.
He didn't tell me I was fired.
He sent somebody else to get fired, and I didn't like that.
Said, "I'll never go back to Yankee Stadium."
I would very much like Yogi to come back. Very much.
- He feels you went back on your word. - Oh, yeah? I don't want to--
You said he was there for 162 games, and 16 and he was out.
Yeah, well...
If he feels I did that to him, I apologize, but I can't...
Do you have regrets over that decision?
If that's accurately stated, definitely have it.
Do you have regrets over firing Yogi Berra after 16 games?
I have regrets over letting a lot of people go.
But what about Yogi?
After that, I didn't have any memories of Yankee Stadium
because we just didn't go.
Grandpa was so separated from this team
that he'd been so involved with his entire life.
Three boys and eight grandchildren live near their home in Montclair.
But for many years, Yogi was on the road.
The Yankees tried to lure Yogi back
by dedicating a plaque to him in Monument Park.
I'll never come back to the stadium again.
- As long as he's there? - Yeah.
Yankees win! The Yankees win!
When we won the World Series in '96, I called Yogi,
and I said, "Yogi, you think you could come out to the stadium
to present me with my World Series ring?"
And he was touched, and he told me, he said:
"But, no, I'm not gonna go there."
Like, Uncle Yogi was a nice guy, but don't get him mad.
He did not step foot in Yankee Stadium.
He didn't talk to anybody.
He was loved by so many people in this country.
Not to have him around a ballpark was crucial.
You know, you need him there, okay?
But he's not gonna go to the park.
So if we can't have him at the park, then we need to have him somewhere else.
Let's put him on TV.
Travels with Yogi Berra, brought to you by Amtrak.
This train is so comfortable, you don't have to concentrate on relaxing.
Now I just make Stove Top.
He spent a lot of time in exile making commercials.
You can taste how good they are just by eating them.
"Mr. Berra, will you sign my ball?"
- Mr. Berra, will you sign my ball? - Sure.
Hey, I like these sneakers.
I said, "Who's the commercial for?"
He says, "Amtrak."
I said, "Okay." Well, it was Aflac.
Not too close. What do you think, I got that insurance?
- What insurance is that, Yogi? - Aflac.
The one you really need to have.
If you don't have it, that's why you need it.
- Need what? - Aflac.
Classic, that's one of the greatest commercials ever.
If you get hurt and miss work, it won't hurt to miss work.
Ah!
I used to catch baseballs. Now I'm pitching beers.
You see the one with the Miller Lite that's got--
Jason Alexander is one of the guys in it.
He's talking about, "If it's less filling..."
It's less filling than it would've been,
if it was more filling than they didn't want it to be.
If it had more calories than it didn't have in the first place.
You couldn't write it any better.
But I figured it was easy for Dad to do
because that's the way he would talk anyway.
- Yogi's been an inspiration to me.
Not only because of his baseball skills,
but of course for the enduring mark he left on the English language.
The Yogi-isms. Let's talk about the Yogi-isms.
Yogi Berra has eight entries listed in the latest edition
of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations.
That's more than any living American president.
A Yogi-ism is something that may appear to not make sense but actually does.
-"You can observe a lot by watching"? - You can.
- I've watched a lot. - Yeah?
Like Yogi Berra said, "Déjà vu all over again."
It's when Maris and Mantle hit the home runs, back-to-back.
What you hear them say or what you read doesn't make sense at first,
and then it makes perfect sense.
It is contradictory within itself and gorgeous.
"When you get to a fork in the road, take it." Well, that's... What?
Well, there's usually two ways to go,
but he's saying, take the one that's the best one.
I think.
He lived at the back end of, like, a curved drive.
This is the actual fork in the road Yogi was talking about.
It's right near his home in Montclair, New Jersey.
No matter which way you went, you could wind up at his house.
-"90 percent of the game is half mental." - That's right.
- That doesn't strike you odd? - No.
What's it mean?
- I really don't know. I just say it.
I don't even know I say them. I don't know. I can't say them.
My kids could catch me right away.
Mom said, "You're lost, Yogi."
He said, "Yeah, but we're making good time."
He said, "The only reason I'm wearing these gloves is 'cause of my hands."
They all made sense though.
Just like he said, "Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore. It's too crowded."
"It's at Biggie's restaurant, and nobody goes there anymore.
It's too crowded," means his crowd.
"I don't go to restaurants because it's too crowded."
It's a wonderful thing.
My favorite Yogi-ism, and I hope it's authentic:
"Always go to your friends' funerals.
Otherwise, they won't go to yours."
Who can dispute the wisdom of that?
I love all of the Yogi stuff,
and I long ago ceased to wonder which are genuine and which are made-up.
Actually, I made up some Yogi-isms.
- Should I talk about that? - Yeah, sure.
"The other guys are only a figment of their imaginations."
That was one that I wrote. But anyway, um...
We worked on a lot of projects with him, including several TV commercials.
Who says Yoo-hoo's just for kids?
Get Yoo-hoo from Iroquois Brands.
People often ask what made him such a great pitchman,
and I think it was because he was so genuine.
"Whatever you do, don't get too caught up in whatever you're doing."
I'm not sure if I wrote that or he did.
I'd spend so much time on the script
that I really don't know what I wrote in his voice versus what he did.
One of the Yogi-isms is, "I didn't say everything I said."
And I think a lot of them were made up by media.
I think Joe Garagiola embellished a lot of them.
Free to deny it, but I've heard that you used to write some of his material.
I didn't write it.
I might have made up some of it, but not all of it.
"Oh, boy, do I got a headache."
No, I think that was mine, not his.
The ones that are fake, to me, at least, are immediately obvious as fakes
because they're just kind of silly, stupid things.
If they didn't make sense, they weren't true.
They weren't Yogi-isms.
- The Yogi-isms, they all made sense. - Right. And I believe that.
I think one of the quotes that is most, perhaps,
psychologically revealing about Yogi is:
"If you can't imitate him, don't copy him."
You develop an understanding of who you are first.
And that's the most important thing.
The other things that other players do are not necessarily for you.
If it's not gonna work for you, you gotta know yourself.
And what he's encouraging is more self-awareness.
"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
You're talking about baseball, but you're also talking about life, aren't you?
Right.
"Simplexity."
Being able to take something that's really complex
and boil it down into its simplest terms, so that other people can understand it.
And I think that's exactly what Yogi was able to do.
You know, anyone who ever thought he wasn't smart missed out.
He was so wise.
Not just about what pitch to call,
'cause he did call the perfect game and ten world championships.
He was wise about life.
I think he was a genius. I think he was a genius person.
Now it's my turn. I want to give some of my favorite advice to the graduates.
First, never give up because it ain't over till it's over.
We could look at the way he used his language
and we could say, "Oh, that's silly."
But once we say, "That's silly," we give it a second thought and we say:
"He's right. He's telling us something that's true."
During the years ahead, when you come to the fork in the road, take it.
And the language doesn't tell us that.
He's telling us that, without using the language we think he ought to use.
That makes us think.
And then we realize the truth is in him, not in his words.
Yo, guys, there's Yogi.
♪ You can't top... ♪
- Yo... - Gi.
Yogi.
Even though he was having fun making all of those commercials...
Who the heck is this guy, Phil Harmonic?
...I know it was tough for him to be away from the Yankees.
But he stood firm, and as always,
Grammy Carmen stood right there by his side.
She was his rock.
She still had a big crush on him.
You could see it. You could just-- They were so cute together.
When someone asked him about Carmen, another Yogi-ism was born.
He said, "We have a good time together, even when we're not together."
- I bet that made sense to you, huh? - Yeah, absolutely.
I know exactly what he means by that.
Okay.
He's happy to be away from me for a while, but he can't wait until he gets home.
The best thing about having Grandpa around
was that he was able to spend more time with his family.
I'm the oldest of his 11 grandkids,
and I know I speak for all of us when I say
we'll cherish those years we had with him for the rest of our lives.
But it wasn't just his grandkids who needed him.
His boys needed him too.
'82, '83, and '84, I was one of the best shortstops in the National League.
I should've got better every year.
And it was during those years where I started to use cocaine,
and I started to miss too much sleep.
There was more testimony about big-league drug abuse
and more players implicated
at the baseball cocaine trial in Pittsburgh Monday.
Dale Berra said he used cocaine in the Major Leagues,
in the Minors, even in Spring Training.
Berra said he bought cocaine from Curtis Strong.
He shared cocaine with other Pirates.
He also said he got cocaine from the man inside this uniform,
the Pittsburgh Parrot.
Yankee manager Billy Martin says he's the one
who warned Yogi of Dale's drug use.
Reached at home, Yogi had no comment.
I knew something was gonna change, and I knew something was different
the second he said, "Get on up here."
And when I went up to the house,
uh, I saw my brother's car is out in front.
Oh, yeah. It was a tough time for my dad.
I felt bad for my dad. I really did.
I felt bad for him, but he handled it really well.
It was hard, I mean, but it had to be done.
We had to, finally, because he might have died.
He might have killed himself.
He simply said to me that:
"I'm not gonna be your father anymore,
and your two brothers sitting over there aren't gonna be your brothers anymore.
And your mom in the kitchen isn't gonna be your mom anymore
if you continue upon the same path.
You're gonna have to make a choice, and you're gonna have to make it now."
And it was right then,
in that five-second, uh... span,
where I knew that I had been struck
with some kind of a gift from heaven, a lightning bolt.
You can say whatever you want.
But I knew from that second on,
I was never going to have another drug or a drink again the rest of my life.
Listen, I played ten years at the elite level, and I'm proud of that,
but I should've been better.
I had the talent to be an All-Star and I know it.
This book is about family.
It's about how the love for family saved me from myself,
with a powerful intervention that changed my life.
And I'm proud to say...
I'm 27 years sober, going on three decades.
People who were very, very close to Yogi all wanted him back.
I think, as the years went on,
he just decided that he wasn't gonna go back,
no matter what gimmicks, no matter what people were saying.
When are you gonna please come back to the Yankees' Old-Timers' Game?
We'd love to see you.
Yogi, by the way, for the benefit of viewers,
does not go back to Yankee Stadium as long as George Steinbrenner owns the team.
No, I don't think so.
I don't know when I'm going back yet. I don't know.
Why not, Yogi?
I always got something to do on Old-Timers' Day.
Oh, Yogi.
All he wanted was an apology from George. That's all it took.
He was never gonna go back.
If it weren't for Yankee icon Joe DiMaggio.
I became very close to Joe D. in his final years.
And more than once he mentioned to me:
"You gotta get him back. You gotta get him back."
It weighed on him, the relationship that had been severed.
He was a bridge from the DiMaggio-era players into the Mantle-era players.
Nobody represented the Yankees better than Yogi Berra.
George Steinbrenner was a complicated and sometimes polarizing man,
but, for sure, George Steinbrenner had great regard for Yankee history.
And it's the deepest history of any team in baseball.
You can't write a history of the New York Yankees without Yogi Berra.
And George Steinbrenner, who himself could be stubborn, realized this.
You can't have Yogi Berra excommunicated from the Yankees.
But it took Suzyn Waldman, one of the radio voices of the Yankees,
to bring the two of them together.
So the program director at WFAN had called me and said:
"Yogi Berra's opening a museum.
Wouldn't it be great if George and Yogi made up on the air?"
I said, "That'd be good. That'll happen." Click.
I didn't know Yogi. My loyalty was to Mr. Steinbrenner.
I owe Mr. Steinbrenner a lot.
"George, I wanna talk to you about Yogi." And he said, "What's wrong?"
As soon as he said, "What's wrong?" I said, "Okay, go for it.
He wants you to apologize."
And he'd say, "What does he want me to apologize for?"
I said, "I don't know, George. What did you do?"
He said, "Well, I had him fired." I said, "Well, there's gotta be something else."
He knew exactly what it was.
Suzyn called me and said that George is willing to come to the Yogi Berra Museum,
look at Yogi in the eye,
shake his hand and say, "I made a mistake and I apologize."
He said, "Like hell!"
He goes, "I don't want him in our museum, and I don't want him here.
I ain't going back."
So that night comes, and I'm there, and I'm pacing around,
and I remember Tim Berra saying to me:
"Suzyn, why are you standing behind a pillar?"
I said, "I'm just thinking about my career going up in smoke if this doesn't work."
Yogi went to the door and let George in, there's George, Yogi says, "You're late."
George said, "I'm not late." And then they went into a room and had their chat.
They started yelling. I heard yelling. I heard George yelling.
And I saw Carm go in the room, and all of a sudden, the voices stopped.
She wanted this reconciliation,
and she wasn't gonna let somebody's ego get in the way.
He said, "Yogi, I just want to tell you that
I know I've made a lot of mistakes in baseball,
and letting you go in that manner was one of them."
And Yogi says, "That's all right, George.
I've made a lot of mistakes in baseball too.
So let's make up and be friends."
- Mr. Steinbrenner, you remember Mr. Berra. - Yes.
Mr. Berra, you remember Mr. Steinbrenner.
Steinbrenner finally told Yogi he was sorry.
And I apologized to him,
and I just hope he can accept my apology.
- It's over. - It's over. Yeah, it's behind us.
In the words of Yogi, "It ain't over till it's over," but it is.
Yes, sir. It finally happened after nearly 14 years.
Yogi and George together again.
But now he'll be back.
Welcome back to Yankee Stadium.
The pregame ceremonies are about ready to begin here on Yogi Berra Day.
Ladies and gentlemen, Yogi Berra!
And Yogi Berra is back.
This is going to be a special treat, Tim,
because it looks like Yogi Berra is coming out,
and Don Larsen is going out,
and Larsen will throw out the first pitch of this game
in commemoration of 1956, when Larsen pitched his perfect game,
the only one ever pitched in World Series history.
Hello. Go out there, Yogi.
Go out there and jump on him. Go ahead. No?
I said, "Do you wanna catch with the little glove?"
He's like, "No, that's too small."
I said, "Well, would you bless my glove today?"
So I gave him my glove, he caught the first pitch.
Perfect. Perfect. This is absolutely perfect.
And it has been a perfect day today.
Then we sat and watched the game.
Usually, I'm gone after three or four innings.
But as time went on, they made us both stay.
Swing and a miss, strike three.
We both stayed and watched him do his marvelous performance.
Nine up, nine down, and Cone already has five strikeouts.
Another easy inning for Cone.
Popped up. Girardi.
What a play by Girardi!
Brosius!
Nineteen in a row.
Got him!
Twenty in a row!
-Can't happen, can it, Suzyn? - No, it can't.
- No way. Come on! - Why not?
Now, that would be the coincidence of coincidences.
I mean, my gosh!
Hard... Knoblauch!
Two outs!
Oh, boy! Oh, boy!
Popped up and playable. Brosius!
David Cone has a perfect game.
Who better to bring in
but a man who pitched the perfect game to Yogi Berra,
here on Yogi Berra Day?
I've always said that there's ghosts in Yankee Stadium
because it seems like just strange things happen all the time.
And for there to be a perfect game on Yogi Berra Day,
it doesn't make a lot of sense. You know what I mean?
But, uh, some things happen for a reason and that was one of them.
Um, but I'll never forget that day.
Yogi Berra.
He was back with the Yankees. He was back in baseball.
He'd be at the stadium on an absolute regular basis.
I had fun with Jeter.
Sometimes, he strikes out on that ball up there,
and I'd get on him, I'd say, "What do you swing at that ball for?"
He says, "It looks good."
He said, "You used to swing at it."
I said, "But I hit it. You don't."
We used to go back and forth.
He used to always tease me because, you know, he won ten championships.
And, um, you know, I told Yogi:
"Really, in this day and age, it's more like five
because there's more teams and there's expanded playoffs, so..."
Um, and he looked at me and he said, "You can come over to my house
and count the rings any time you want."
So that ended the conversation.
A man that was so talented and so good at what he did
had the ability to make you feel like he was your grandfather.
We all lit up when he came to the ballpark.
Yogi Berra!
What I loved about Old-Timers' Day...
It's not so much anymore 'cause a lot of those people are gone.
...if you look into the stands,
people are telling their little kids who these people are.
That's baseball.
You can see them, they point, "See that guy?"
And it only happens for the great ones.
When he came back, all was right in the Yankee world again.
He would oftentimes be up in our box, with Carmen, his beloved wife.
What a marriage, unbelievable, that they had.
And he was just always very humble, always very kind.
He was just class.
A ten-time world champion,
Yogi Berra!
The last time I saw Yogi, uh, it was...
I believe it was at his museum.
Carmen took my arm, and we were walking.
And Yogi was in front, and Carmen says to me, "Joe, I love you."
I said, "Shh!"
I said, "Yogi's right there."
She says, "He can't hear anyway. Don't worry about it."
It was-- It was so adorable, those two.
It was priceless.
But, uh, they were deeply in love.
This one says, "Darling, when I'm around you,
I'm always in the mood for love. I love you so much."
"Darling, you said I won't have any time to miss you.
What do you mean? I do miss you, always.
I am always thinking about you."
That's enough of that.
If you had bet me a million dollars,
I wouldn't have taken the bet that Grammy would go before Grandpa.
I remember the last time he saw Mom.
He-- We were all together.
And I can't do it.
Mom's final day.
Dad was not doing great.
He got down to Mom's room and saw Mom in the bed.
And he got up out of his wheelchair, and all of a sudden,
in his voice from when he was 25 years old:
"Hey, Carm, come on. Let's get out of here and have a drink."
And my mom looked at him and just said, "Okay, Yogi."
And she smiled.
That was the last smile I saw her have.
And she died that night.
I know there was a big chunk of, uh, Yogi...
uh...
that, uh, when Carmen passed,
that, you know, a part of him died at that time.
I said, "Dad, you know, you're gonna go see Mom.
You're not gonna be in pain anymore.
You're gonna see all your buddies up there."
He goes, "You wanna get rid of me?
Why don't you go up there and see her if you want this that bad, huh?"
That was literally one of the last things he said to me.
His mind wasn't as clear as it could have been.
And, um, to see your parents fade away is tough.
I keep seeing them as younger people.
When they fade away, it's hard to get it into your system.
It's tough to do.
Yogi lived the life that we're supposed to live as men,
and I always looked at what he was doing.
At the end of the classic film It's a Wonderful Life,
someone says, "No man is a failure who has friends."
Yogi had a world of friends,
who either knew him or didn't know him,
you felt like he was your friend.
I think he still represents an age of innocence, if you will.
A more innocent era,
America as a better place.
Maybe it wasn't for African Americans.
It wasn't for women, necessarily.
But something in his generation
always strove to make it better for everybody.
It's fitting that he's there with Jackie, so they can argue into eternity
as to who was safe or who was out.
In every respect, the proof is in the final results.
The statistics are there. The achievements are there.
His standing with his peers,
and with the public, and his personal life,
a long, loving marriage, the depth of the friendships,
his children and grandchildren,
this is what you hope for.
From day one, this is something like what you hope,
in one way or another, your own life will turn out like.
That's success.
Fans, let's hear it one more time
for these four icons of the game:
Bench, Aaron, Koufax, and Mays.
We lost Grandpa just a few months after that 2015 All-Star Game.
The Associated Press announced his passing by saying that Yogi Bear had died.
I can't tell you how frustrating it is that all that's left for most people
is this cartoon image of my grandpa.
A baseball card just came out that makes him look like some sort of
animal, baby thing sitting on a log in the woods,
while the same set of cards has Johnny Bench looking like a superhero.
This is a guy who volunteered to fight in World War II
when he already had a Yankee contract in his hands.
And then he gets injured on D-Day in Normandy,
but declines to file his Purple Heart paperwork
because he doesn't want his mom to worry.
We all felt that he deserved to be honored,
and so we asked the Navy if there was anything we could do
to prove he was injured during the war.
And the Department of the Navy tells me to "go on social media"
and find "a witness" to the event.
Now, Grandpa was on a rocket boat in 1944.
If anyone on that boat is still alive, they're pushing 100 years old.
I'm sure I'll find them on Instagram, right?
We also took aim at the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
It's the highest civilian honor our country gives
in recognition of contributions to the nation.
To get the president to consider my grandfather for the Medal of Freedom,
we had to get 100,000 signatures in an online petition within 30 days.
Yeah, it was impossible.
Why the overlooking of Berra? You'd think this would be a no-brainer.
Why has no president given him this award?
I think it's almost because he's too famous.
He was a wonderful person. He was a guy who,
when my father stepped on the field for the first time
as the first Black in the American League, treated him with respect as an equal.
And my father never forgot that.
He saw that I was the first African American manager
in New York baseball history.
He wanted me to do well.
He became an LGBT rights activist with Athlete Ally later in life.
Talk about progressive thinking.
Yogi embodies a philosophy of allyship,
uh, a philosophy of making outsiders insiders.
It really was natural, then, to ask Yogi
if he would consider becoming an Athlete Ally ambassador.
It was amazing to have Yogi stand up and say:
"This is what I believe in. This is what is right."
Um, that is, to this day,
going to change people's lives and is gonna save people's lives.
You have until tomorrow to sign the petition
to get Yogi Berra the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
On the last day of the petition, we only have about 60,000 signatures.
I said, "We need 40,000 by the end of the day." And I'm like, "All is lost."
So if you want him to, today is your day to sign that petition.
He deserves this honor too.
I feel like I kind of missed the mark, and I fell short
for somebody who'd never fallen short for anyone in his life.
This makes me very sad.
But we still have six hours left,
so I start tweeting at every celebrity I can think of
who has ever attended a Yankees game.
Alicia Keys, Spike Lee, Billy Crystal, Robin Williams.
And it gets "YogiMedal" trending on Twitter within about 25 minutes.
With an hour left to go, we're still short 12,000 signatures.
But we never gave up.
Welcome to the White House, everybody.
What can be said about Lawrence "Yogi" Berra
that he couldn't say better himself?
The son of an Italian bricklayer,
they called him Yogi because he sat like one while waiting to bat.
And he was born to play baseball.
But he loved his country,
and at 18, he left St. Louis for the Navy,
and ultimately found himself on Omaha Beach.
After he returned, Yogi embarked on a career
that would make him one of the greatest catchers of all time.
- Nobody's won more than this guy.
And he coached the game with as much heart as he played it.
He lived his life with pride and humility, and an original, open mind.
One thing we know for sure, if you can't imitate him, don't copy him.
When I got there with Lindsay, I was overwhelmed.
My father's being honored by the United States of America.
You know, I was proud to be a Major League ballplayer
and proud to be a Yankee.
A lot of good things have happened to me
since I first put on the pinstripes over 50 years ago.
I got married to Carm and raised a wonderful family.
I played on great teams, great championship teams,
and the Yankees also became my family.
Well, I wanna thank you all, making me feel right at home.
God bless you. Thank you.
Yogi! Yogi! Yogi!
♪ Here we are Still together ♪
♪ We are one... ♪
So this is my bed and breakfast.
This is the place where Yogi grew up and was born in.
The name of it is Berra's Beginnings 'cause it all started here in this home.
This is my memorabilia case.
The guests love it. They take pictures and think it's awesome.
And people are loving staying here in the childhood home of Yogi Berra.
♪ Baby, it ain't over 'til it's over ♪
♪ So many years we've tried... ♪
We are getting word of a US Airways plane crash in the Hudson River.
Tourist ferries have it surrounded.
One of the ferries
that carries people from New Jersey to New York, you know,
is actually named after my grandfather.
We got to break the champagne bottles over the hull of the boat.
It was christened the Yogi Berra.
But it was one of the ferry boats that they used to pull the survivors
of the Sully plane landing in the Hudson River.
So it was a nice full-circle moment for Yogi Berra, the boat.
We've had a miracle on 34th Street.
I believe now we've had a miracle on the Hudson.
♪ So many tears I've cried So much pain inside... ♪
This is actually a bigger event for me than most people think.
I was a stamp collector for years.
What a great honor for the Berra family. We are so proud.
When I was younger, I asked one of my teachers:
"How does my father get on a stamp?"
And he goes, "Larry, you better wait because he has to be dead."
God bless you, Mom. She would be so proud.
Hey, Yogi, it ain't over.
As Yogi used to say, it ain't over.
- It ain't over. - It ain't over till it's over.
Well, buddy, I'm back at Spring Training. It's, uh, 25 years.
Um, everybody down here misses you.
Uh, me, more so.
Hey, Yogi, it ain't over.
It ain't over till it's over. You were right.
Lawrence Peter Berra, a life well lived.
It ain't over.
It ain't over, and it'll never be over, actually.
Ten World Series, MVPs, All-Stars.
Listen, the mark you left on this world was epic.
Miss you, brother.
Just remember, it ain't over.
Yogi, it was a privilege to watch you play,
and it was a blessing to know you.
And even though you're long gone,
it ain't over till it's over.
You're more than just a mentor. You are a friend of mine.
So it ain't over.
We haven't forgotten you. You meant so much to me in my life.
And I tell my friends all the time what you meant to me.
What a wonderful teammate, all those years.
My whole career was with you, as a player and you as my manager.
And I just want you to know that I love you.
I love you. Always will love you.
And, uh, it ain't over.
Thank you, Yogi. Thank you for everything.
Thank you for being you because that's quite special.
You and Carmen were an example for all of us
how we're supposed to live life.
And I'm extremely grateful that I got to know you.
And it's not over, Yogi.
It ain't over till it's over.
I wish you could all apply it to your life.
It ain't over till it's over.
But I'm pretty sure, checking the clock, this is now over.
You could use me last.
I'm not saying I'm lobbying for that. I'm just saying, there's your option.
I'm trying to help you out.
It's over.
- ♪ You don't know ♪ - ♪ Time will go on ♪
♪ We are lost Everywhere... ♪