The outpouring of tributes and heartfelt warmth devoted to Yogi Berra in light of his passing Tuesday at the age of 90 has been overwhelming. Not overwhelming in a bad way, of course. Far from it. The wave of love and nostalgia for the baseball legend is genuine, so warm that it provides a blanket that provides some security with this solemn news.
Perhaps this is presumptuous of me to say, since I obviously don’t speak for anyone other than myself. But I honestly feel like you can’t read enough of the eulogies and acknowledgements that fill up the internet and news cycle today.
Obviously, Berra deserves tribute for his baseball accomplishments alone. (He was even a pretty good manager, leading the Mets to a division title and Game 7 of the World Series in 1973.) It’s easy to forget that because he’s known to modern generations as more of a goofball savant. How many of us who follow baseball or write about it actually saw him play, let alone at his peak?
But Berra is a Hall of Famer, inducted in 1972. With a lifetime batting average of .285 and .830 OPS, 358 home runs and 2,130 hits, he ranks among the greatest hitting catchers in baseball history. He was also excellent defensively, having thrown out 49 percent (403-of-829) of opposing basestealers. He won four MVP awards and was named to 15 All-Star teams. Oh, and he won 10 World Series championships with the most famous sports franchise on the planet. About the only thing you could knock Berra for is not being on the ’27 Yankees. That was before his time.
Favorite Yogi quote: “Somebody’s gotta win, somebody’s gotta lose. Just don’t fight it. Just try to get better.”
— Jonah Keri (@jonahkeri) September 23, 2015
Of course, what most of us remember Yogi Berra for is all those memorably funny, baffling quotes. They would make the best fortune cookies ever made. (If any fortune cookie maker has never included a Berra quote on one of those slips of paper, it’s surely being done wrong.) Even if he didn’t necessarily say all of them or come up with them on his own, that these nuggets of quirky wisdom are popularly attributed to him is a testament to his mythology.
Does it really matter if he originally said something like “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded” or not? The world just seems like a better, less complicated place when believing that Yogi Berra is the guy who came up with that. It’s been that way for so many years that to try and dispel any sort of myth just seems like being a buzzkill. (Even if the need to provide truth and clarification is compelling. Believe me; I get that.) Don’t be a Debbie Downer. Let us enjoy those memories. It’s what made Berra such a special figure to so many people.
NEW YORK – MAY 02: The plaque of Yogi Berra is seen in Monument Park at Yankee Stadium prior to the game between the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox on May 2, 2010 in the Bronx borough of New York City. The Yankees defeated the White Sox 12-3. (Photo by Jim McIsaac/Getty Images)
For his baseball achievements alone, Berra’s death would have been national news, certainly a front-page story for New York newspapers and the lead on local TV newscasts. Maybe he would have been a below-the-fold story in papers across the country, perhaps the last story on the network evening news.
But Berra was so much more than that. There’s a reason he was the first news story many of us saw on our phones, computers or TVs this morning, why our social media feeds and timelines were filled with links to stories of his passing.
My mother is a devoted news watcher and obviously knows I love baseball, so she asked this morning if I’d heard about Berra’s death. What surprised me, however, is that she also said “It ain’t over till it’s over” to me. Did you hear that on the news, I asked. No, she associated that saying with Yogi Berra. My mother was in her native Malaysia during Berra’s entire baseball career.
During my morning workout, someone asked me about Berra. I heard a few other patrons at my gym (which admittedly skews very old in the retirement haven where I currently live) chatting about it as they watched the news on the overhead monitors, heads shaking sadly. When I got coffee afterwards, I overheard a couple of people talking about it. The person behind the counter, aware that I write about baseball, asked me about Yogi. She didn’t even say his last name. She didn’t need to.
I don’t live in a big city. It’s nothing close to a media center. (Though I’ve often cracked that the majority of the population are among those that still buy and read newspapers.) Yet even in my admittedly narrow social path in a relatively small mountain town, Yogi Berra was the top topic of conversation. For a little while this morning, maybe he was even bigger news than the Pope’s visit. (Now, if Pope Francis mentions Yogi upon visiting New York, that will be an amazing moment.)
Will we ever have a sports icon and pop culture figure as transcendent as Yogi Berra? Maybe Muhammad Ali or Michael Jordan, but will either of them be remembered as fondly as Yogi, decades and generations after their athletic days are over? Perhaps my vision is obscured by the moment and I’ll have more clarity on this days and weeks later. But I really wonder if we’ll ever see anyone resonate the way Yogi Berra did ever again, especially in this era when public personas are so manufactured and controlled, when quirkiness seems like more of a marketing ploy than personality trait. Yogi Berra wasn’t a brand, but he was — and is — certainly a treasure.
