Tag: Baseball

“It ain’t over till it’s over.”

                       – Yogi Berra, 1925-2015

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Let’s get this disclaimer out of the way. I ain’t no Yankee fan, but who could not love baseball and not also love Yogi.

I have nothing original to say about the squat, barrel chested catcher, the Hall of Famer, the guy behind the dish who won ten World Championships with – OK, the Yankees – the best bad ball hitter in the history of the great game, a guy who managed champions in both leagues, the maestro of mangled syntax. It’s all been said.

After reading and listening to all the appropriate tributes for the late Lawrence Peter Berra, laughing out loud again at the “Yogi-isms” – my favorite, which might well be appropriated by Donald Trump, “I didn’t say all the things I said” – and again quietly reflecting on his abilities as a ballplayer, human being and D-Day veteran, I’m left only with this: Yogi was the real deal.

No chiseled, cheating hunk like A-Rod, no arrogant bat flipper like Harper, no trash talking, no umpire baiting – well maybe a little umpire baiting – and no apparent ego. What comes through time and again in the stories about Berra is that the little backstop was a great guy. A genuine guy. A warm and funny guy. A teammate, the term ballplayers and office co-workers use when they describe someone they really like and value. Yogi was a great teammate. That about says it all.

The best and most enduring photo of Berra, when Yogi leapt into the arms of perfect game World Series pitcher Don Larsen in 1956, should have focused on the other guy in the picture – the only guy still and ever to pitch a perfect freaking game in the World Series. But the eye automatically goes to Yogi.

He, of course, called and caught the Larsen perfect game and gets some of the credit for that remarkable performance, but it was Yogi’s exuberance, his sheer joy in the moment of that historic moment that makes the picture so wonderful.

In a game that is too often dominated by talented individuals you wouldn’t invite over for dinner, Yogi was the guy we would have all invited to a Sunday barbecue. You suspect Yogi would have brought a six-pack.

When Berra had his famous feud with George Steinbrenner you didn’t need a psychology degree to know that Yogi was right and that it was The Boss who was being the jerk. Now we know, big surprise, which Yankee received the outpouring of affection, the tears and the laughs when the last line-up was handed in.

The catcher’s position is the unique position on the diamond. The catcher is involved in almost every play. The entire game unfolds in front of the catcher. The catcher has the greatest opportunity to screw up and get banged up. It’s not an accident that the catcher’s protective gear was long ago dubbed “the tools of ignorance.” But there is nothing dim or dull about a truly good receiver and Berra was one of a handful of the games truly great catchers. The record speaks for Yogi’s place among the elites even if he might not have made the case so smoothly himself. Berra was simply a great, great catcher and a superb hitter.

You gotta love this from a hitter, and Berra was a hitter with both power and average, who was once asked if he was in a slump. “I’m not in a slump,” Yogi says, “I’m just not hitting…”

Yogi’s passing is sad in many, many ways. He had of course a full life of 90 long years, but I’m sure he would have enjoyed one more post season, particularly with the pinstripers in contention. But the real sadness, at least for my generation, is that Yogi’s passing marks another fading away of that generation of post-war ballplayers who now mostly flicker back to us in black and white, suited up in their baggy flannels and properly worn socks.

Whether it was or not, it seems like a more innocent time. Guys wore hats, the snap brim type, to ballparks and doubleheaders were played on Sunday. Washington was in the American League and Texas wasn’t in either league. Players weren’t perpetually fastening and unfastening their batting gloves because no one wore a batting glove. The facial hair consisted of day old beards what would inevitably face a razor once the last out was recorded. And a 5’7” catcher could be the biggest man on the field.

Yogi was right about many things, some of which he even said, but he was wrong about it being over when it’s over. Some things and some people are so special that they just go on and on. Yogi isn’t gone. They’ll be taking about him, quoting him, laughing along with him, smiling at him in Don Larsen’s embrace for as long as little boys toss around the horsehide.

Real deals like Yogi Berra get remembered even for things they didn’t say.

 

 Yankees, Giants and New York Baseball

The late, great Baseball Commissioner Bart Giamatti once said one of the important things he learned by working on the inside of baseball was “the enormous grip this game has on people…it goes way down deep.”

I learned that lesson all over again reading a wonderful new baseball book telling the story of how the game came to be defined in 1921 as a New York game – the Yankees and Giants faced off in the 1921 World Series – and how that spectacular rivalry helped the great game bounce back from the Black Sox Scandal of 1919.

As the Los Angeles Times said in a recent review of 1921 – The Yankees, the Giants and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York, “1921 was a transitional one. The nation had only recently emerged from the horrors of World War I. Prohibition was in place, although that didn’t stop Ruth and company from indulging. And why not? Ruth was widely regarded as baseball’s savior for restoring the credibility and allure of the national pastime in the aftermath of the 1919 Black Sox gambling scandal, in which members of the Chicago White Sox took money to throw the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. By 1921, he was the game’s pre-eminent superstar, acquiring an agent — the ubiquitous Christy Walsh — and igniting the first home-run boom.”

For a baseball junkie – and someone who loves history – 1921 is a great retreat into the formative days of the game so many of us enjoy today. And that is the value of a fine book like this – it connects my history (and yours, perhaps) to the game our fathers also loved.

My dad, a knowledgeable baseball fan, used to talk about the great Yankee teams of the 1920’s and 1930’s. No Yankee fan he, his admiration was for the franchise’s success and for the supporting cast around Ruth and Gehrig and later DiMaggio. He admired a Yankee outfielder by name of Bob Meusel, a guy with a lifetime .309 batting average, 156 career home runs and more than a thousand RBI’s. Meusel played only 11 seasons, all but one for the Yankees and often hit fifth in the line-up behind Ruth and Gehrig.

In 1921, Meusel hit .321, had 24 homers (Ruth hit a remarkable 59) and drove in 135 runs. Meusel and his brother Emil (nicknamed Irish), played against each other in the World Series that year. In 1921, these guys – and their substantial accomplishments – come alive and I can almost hear my dad, the baseball fan, weaving a story about the “old days” in baseball. A wonderful aspect of the game is that the history of baseball really allows us to appreciate an entirely different era.

Baseball in New York in 1921, with writers like Damon Runyon and Heywood Broun doing the daily reporting, was something special. (Runyon once wrote, “The race may not always be to the swift nor the victory to the strong, but that’s how you bet.”) Ruth appropriately received a lot of newspaper ink, but so too did the managers of the Yankees – Miller Huggins – and the Giants – John McGraw.

After the Yankees came on late in the session to win the American League pennant, Runyon wrote of Huggins, who rarely received the credit he was due for the success of this heavy hitters and slick pitchers, “the little manager of the New York club, tramped across the yard in the wake of his men, his head bowed in characteristic attitude. In happiness or sorrow Huggins is ever something a picture of dejection. The crowd cheered him as his familiar Charley Chapin feet lugged his small body along, and Huggins had to keep doffing his cap.”

Good book about great characters and the American game in a very interesting time.