Yogi was the best
Yogi Berra at 90: Quips and quotes from a Yankees icon
David Schoenfield, SweetSpot blogger
Yogi Berra, the great Hall of Fame catcher of the
New York Yankees, turns 90 Tuesday.
He's living in an assisted living facility in New Jersey, where he still watches a lot of baseball. In honor of Yogi's birthday, here are 10 of his best Yogi-isms:
Yankees legend Yogi Berra, who never said most of the things he said, turns 90 Tuesday. J. Meric/Getty Images
10. "It's like deja vu all over again."
9. "You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I'm not hungry enough to eat six."
8. "The future ain't what it used to be."
7. "We made too many wrong mistakes."
6. "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."
5. "You can observe a lot just by watching."
4. "You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours."
3. "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
2. "Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical."
1. "It ain't over 'til it's over."
Did he really say all those things? Probably not. The evidence for some of them doesn't exist, and as early as 1949, the New York Daily News referred to Yogi as the "man who says funny things even if the newspapermen do make up most of them." As Yogi himself tried to explain, "I never said most of the things I said."
In some regards, this caricature of Yogi as kind of a bumbling verbal clown has obscured what a great player he was. ESPN colleague Jayson Stark has called Berra one of the most underrated players of all time. He won three MVP awards and had four other top-five finishes. Clearly, this was a respected player, a team leader, extremely durable (he led the league eight straight years in games caught) and a clutch performer. As Bill James once wrote, "Casey Stengel, asked the secret of his success with the Yankees, once said, 'I never play a game without my man,' by which he meant that he never played a big game without Yogi Berra behind the plate."
James rated Berra ahead of Johnny Bench as the greatest catcher of all time, yet it's Bench and not Berra who appears on the MLB.com ballot of the greatest living players.
So, let's do this -- five quotes
about Berra:
1. "He seemed to be doing everything wrong, yet everything came out right. He stopped everything behind the plate and hit everything in front of it." -- Mel Ott
2. "Yogi had the fastest bat I ever saw. He could hit a ball late, that was already past him, and take it out of the park. The pitchers were afraid of him because he'd hit anything, so they didn't know what to throw. Yogi had them psyched out and he wasn't even trying to psych them out." -- Hector Lopez
3. "Why has our pitching been so great? Our catcher, that's why. He looks cumbersome but he's quick as a cat." -- Casey Stengel
4. "He was the guy who made the Yankees seem almost human." -- Mickey Mantle
5. "Yogi wasn't better than me. He was much better than me." -- Joe Garagiola, a childhood friend of Yogi's in St. Louis. Garagiola signed with the
St. Louis Cardinals for $500. Yogi, knowing he was better than Garagiola, refused to sign for the $250 that Branch Rickey reluctantly offered him. He signed instead with the Yankees for $500 and $90 a month to play for Norfolk in the Piedmont League.
