He was a team player in a world where stars dominated…
The press was all about Mickey Mantle, but it was Yogi Berra who we loved. And kept on loving long after his playing days were through, because although he was a member of the jockcracy, Yogi danced to the beat of his own drummer, he was not beyond feuding with Yankee’s owner George Steinbrenner, because winning isn’t everything, it’s how you play the game that counts.
But back then the Yankees were winning everything.
It was so different from today.
No one flew, never mind went to spring training camp. But we couldn’t wait for the season to begin. We’d camp out in damp basements watching exhibition games when the snow had already melted but it was still too cold to go outside. We flipped baseball cards. We bought books. Baseball was the National Pastime.
Before the players grew moustaches and gained free agency. Before we discovered their foibles. Sure, Joe Namath transcended the stars who preceded him, he played both on and off the field and won in both arenas. But before that athletes were two-dimensional.
And then there was Yogi.
Maybe it’s because he was involved in every play, catching the ball. Sure, Bill Dickey had preceded him, but at this point stars were outfielders, pitchers, maybe shortstops, catchers were just part of the battery, integral but insignificant.
But Yogi could not only field, he could hit. You could count on Yogi.
He won the first game I ever went to.
That’s right, I was a baseball fanatic. Every day after school I walked down to the park for a pick-up game. I practiced with this contraption made of mesh and rubber bands that bounced the ball back to you. I owned my own glove and my own bat and my own ball. And although this made me privileged, it was a way for my dad to make up for the fact that he was the least athletic man in the neighborhood. We stopped playing catch in kindergarten, I’d superseded his ability. And he never came to my Little League games.
But he took me to Yankee Stadium.
When Schaefer ruled and no one you knew had season tickets and even though the bleachers were under a buck you never sat there. The outfield was for city kids. You can hear their stories everywhere, about a hardscrabble life of collecting returnable bottles so they could go to the game and get the autograph of a player. I grew up in the suburbs. After all, it was the sixties. When the economy was flourishing and our first generation parents wanted to provide a better life.
My father owned a liquor store. And brought home the wares for us to consume. And there was Cott grape and Schweppes ginger ale but also Yoo-hoo. With Yankees on the bottle. Gil McDougald, others just before my time, and then Yogi.
Whose fame only grew with the namesake bear.
Being first, everyone believed the Hanna-Barbera animated character was a direct reference. Forget having your own video game, even your own E! show. Yogi was bigger than the Kardashians because you never saw him working it, he just was. And he didn’t take a victory lap and he didn’t pooh-pooh the accolades, he just laughed.
He was our favorite.
Pair off in threes.
…nobody goes there any more, its too crowded.
He had retired before I was born, but he was my father’s favorite player.
I didn’t really say all those things I said.
Excellent article.
I took my boy to Strouds on 85th St. under the bridge in 1992 to meet Hank Bauer and Yogi Berra. They were in town and were involved peripherally in an electronics promotion that my company was participating in. Berra and Bauer were sitting against the wall, surrounded by folks, but when my little boy came in to see them, they maneuvered around folks, interrupted their dinners and knelt down to speak to my boy at his height.
The both of those guys, were just so classy and charismatic, I was so very impressed.
What a great era, what a great sport it was then.
“What a great era, what a great sport it was then.”
– agree… a time no chest thumping, sky pointing; no bat flipping to diamond and ball slamming to turf. No $25, $50 or more price autograph too (ditto no resale an buyer on eBay etc. for even more.) Ominously $ign the times then, trash talking reared its ugly head infancy, signaling beginning the end one era and beginning a less civil one, exhibits today including playing fields NFL, high school, blogosphere, etc.
Keeping with the article’s theme, if one were able magically be transported back to a simpler time sports, would engage Mr. Peabody’s ‘Way Back Machine’ the narrative form, new book title ‘When It Was Just A Game: Remembering The First Superbowl.’
Inspired the same era Yogi, Yogi and Boo Boo 1960’s, Kerouac got his copy today, and engrossed therein, am already half way through its 300 pages. Will vouch for it being quite the flashback, and definitely not a bad trip down memory lane. It features your boyhood (or some cases, your father’s perhaps) heroes/trailblazers, the 1966 Kansas City Chiefs, a lead-up to and post script after what is now but wasn’t then consensus America’s Game, January 15, 1967 ‘s ‘Superbowl 1’.
Though there’s not much in the way yesteryear I have not either experienced or read re: that era’s Chiefs, this book among other affirms with quotes what has been known off-the-record more so on – the Green Bay Packers (Vince Lombardi in particular) felt the Kansas City Chiefs were legitimate – and in fact, capable of beating the Pack. That day Green Bay won a game that, save for a missed KC field goal, had the upstart AFL Chiefs leading the stodgy NFL Packers 10-7, 2nd quarter. That 9-months earlier GB escaped Chicago with a 7-point win over the Bears & 7-months after Superbowl 1 the Chiefs beat those same Bears by 38 points, intriguing, at minimum. Yes, those were the days my friend, we thought they’d never end.
Back to the beginning of the end, the picture of an true rivalry: AFL vs NFL (unlike modern-day farce lukewarm Chiefs/Broncos which pales in comparison. Only thing rivals the good old days Superbowl 1 the Chiefs/Raiders wars which followed it, the late 1960’s.) Sportsmanship too soon began to slowly vanish, bringing us to today, a time of new lowlights weekly, from high school (an official assaulted) to that one big unhappy merged league, lawsuits, suspensions, cheating et al, the NFL.
Sad too recall that a former Chiefs player, Fred Williamson, was a contributor (one of and perhaps ‘the’ major bad actor responsible, his ilk same to include Johnny Sample, among others.) Yogi Berra has exited the spotlight, Yogi & Boo Boo too not relevant in a world where divide cartoons and reality has been irrevocably blurred.
Yogi-isms come to mind, seem apropos: “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore” (more so, will cost you hundred$/thou$ands attend an game/season’s worth, today… back in 1966, $15 would get you into a game KC & get back some change.) Sheesh – just think what a ticket to see the Chiefs play today would cost if they were actually any good?
Is what you get for your buck 2015 better, for the price? What about the results? No, not even good as it was, be it 1966, January 11, 1970 or January 15, 1967 (latter when the cost of the very best Superbowl 1 ticket you could buy was $12.)
Yogi 2: “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going, because you might not get there.” Alas, not careful enough: here century 21 Yogi, desperately wish we could return those thrilling, more pleasant (and pocket-full) days yesteryear.
Mr K sparks memories of my first day working for KCMO Public Works as a surveyor. We were setting line for water and sewer at KCI. It was a balmy -6.
A bus drives by the open field and the windows go down. Players hanging out of the windows hootin’ and waving at us. I guess we were the “parade”.
Yogi is one Yankee no one could ever hate. Not even Mr Mitchell, my fifth-grade teacher who was from Boston.
Surprisingly few mentioned Yogi’s mentor who could also turn a phrase, Northeast KC’s Casey Stengel.
His wife asked him before he died if he’d like to be buried in Connecticut or back home in St. Louis. His reply? “I don’t know – surprise me.” RIP YOGI.