Yogi Berra famously said “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over,” but one of the greatest careers in baseball history might have been over before it had even begun.
In 1944, two years before he started launching home runs at the Yankee Stadium, Berra was on a rocket boat off the coast of Normandy, providing cover fire for the D-Day Invasion.
He was injured during the attack, he pulled bodies out of the water, and he learned that in comparison to war, baseball would be easy.
During his remarkable 90 years of life, Berra became many wonderful things to many different people; he was universally loved, but he was the most revered by a special few, his family.
“For me, Yogi Berra was my grandpa,” his granddaughter Lindsay told CNN, “He was the guy who burned all the hot dogs at our family barbecues when I was a kid. But to the rest of the world, I mean, I think he was arguably the greatest catcher of all time!”
Berra’s list of accomplishments as a ballplayer are so extensive that they hardly seem credible.
He won so many World Series rings with the Yankees that he had one for every finger, then he won three more as a coach to bring the total to 13.
“He had one of the greatest World Series resumes, of any player, ever,” remarked the legendary US broadcaster, Bob Costas.
He was the American League’s MVP three times, and he made 18 appearances in the All-Star game.
“Many of his records will never be broken,” says Lindsay. “The proof was in the pudding.”
A baseball catcher is often compared to a football quarterback; as the only player with a complete view of the field, it’s the catcher who communicates with the pitcher and sets up each play.
In 1956, Berra helped the Yankees pitcher Don Larsen to throw the first, and still only, perfect game in the World Series. And yet, Berra somehow became his sport’s forgotten man.
As the actor Billy Crystal put it, “He was the most overlooked superstar in the history of baseball.”
A new documentary film, now playing at movie theaters across the US, is trying to recalibrate the narrative. Fittingly entitled, “It Ain’t Over,” the movie’s producers are hoping that his legacy can be re-evaluated by a new generation of sports fans.
Lindsay notes that the 1950s media portrayed Yogi as more of a caricature than an athlete.
“They certainly went after his appearance in a way that I find somewhat appalling,” she explained. “They said he looked like an ape and a gargoyle and a fire hydrant, and Life Magazine said he looked like a fat girl running in a too-tight skirt.
“One paper wrote that he was too ugly to be a Yankee, I don’t even know what that means. And quite frankly, he was pretty handsome as a young man.
“They say that the jester can never be king. I think in portraying him as this kind of ugly, goofy, funny guy, it did downplay his achievements on the field. The press went with the funny part, and not the great part.”
If anything was ugly, it was the mood of the pitchers whose offerings pitches that he still managed to club all over the ballparks in the American league.
Berra famously said that the pitches “all looked good to me,” swinging at balls that were often well out of the designated strike zone.
In baseball, as in life, he had an uncanny ability to make lemonade out of lemons. Observers said that his strike zone seemed to be anywhere between his ankles and his nose, and he would instinctively adapt his swing to smash low balls away for deep home runs or high pitches for line drives.
That’s perhaps how he was able to hit 358 home runs and drive in 1,430 runs, a major league record for a catcher, in his career, and he never struck out more than 38 times in a single season.
For seven consecutive years, he led the Yankees for in RBIs (runs batted in), a Yankees team that included Joe Di Maggio and Mickey Mantle – both of whom are considered all-time greats.
If Berra was bothered by the media’s obsession with his looks, he never showed it.
“I never saw anyone hit with his face,” he’d quip.
Lindsay noted that her grandfather’s experience in the war had armed him with a shield that seemed to protect him against any perceived slights in later life.