If you want a reason to sponsor kiddush in shul the Shabbos of May 10, here is my reason.
That date is two days before the 100th anniversary of the birth of Lawrence Peter Berra. Of course, we all remember him as Yogi. This year also marks the tenth year of his passing at the ripe old age of 90. May 10 is a double-header Shabbos as we read Acharai Mos and Kedoshim.
Yogi caught more innings in a single game than catchers do in a double-header. On Sunday, June 4, 1962, Yogi caught all 22 innings as the Yankees beat the Tigers in Detroit. I was there but left after the 14th inning. I had supper while the game finally ended and watched about five minutes into the popular Ed Sullivan 8 p.m. television show. Yogi was 37 years old at the time and had to get his catching gear on and off 22 times during the seven-hour game.
Yogi holds the record for being on ten World Series winning teams as a player. He had a ring for every finger, and collected more during his years as coach and manager with the Yankees and Mets.
I had several conversations with Yogi during my years on the baseball beat. I always found him wearing a serious face. I never heard him say anything funny. He was soft-spoken and easy to talk to. If you asked him about the latest movies he’d seen, he would open up more. Yogi was shorter than I thought. Back in the 1950s, when I read stories about him in magazines or on the back of his baseball card, he was listed as 5’8″. I’m much closer to five feet than six feet and talking to Yogi while he was wearing his baseball cleats and we were standing up, I thought he was no taller than 5’6″. Many smallish players say they’re taller than they are. And many smallish and ego-ish guys (me, too) make themselves a bit taller when applying for a driver’s license.
In the old days, before computers and better municipal record-keeping, many players also made themselves a year or two younger, since teams wanted to sign younger players, knowing they probably had several years of minor league ball ahead before they would make the majors. Black players who played in the Negro Leagues and had to wait for Jackie Robinson to break the color barrier in 1947 with the Brooklyn Dodgers made themselves younger hoping for an eventual shot at the big leagues.
Yogi made the majors with the Yankees a year before Jackie Robinson, and the two played in All-Star games and the World Series against each other as the American and National League did not have interleague play during their playing years. Yogi had a .285 career batting average for his 19-year playing career and amassed 2,150 hits which included 385 home runs. He caught Don Larsen’s perfect game in 1956, and we remember an excited Berra jumping into Larsen’s arms after the last out was recorded.
Yogi got his name as a teenager when he sat around friends with his arms and legs crossed as if in a yoga pose. One of the guys remembered seeing a newsreel about India at a movie theater and called Larry a yogi. The name stuck.
If you’re not far from Montclair, N.J., it’s worth a trip to the Yogi Berra Museum to find out more about the man and the life he lived. In the meantime, raise a glass to one of America’s most storied characters.
