Yogi Berra Finally Gets the Credit He Deserves

A lot of people misunderestimate Yogi Berra. Maybe you do, too?

Yes, he’s the master of the malaprop. (Or “bonaprop,” as the New York Times columnist William Safire called it, which is when the “mistake” or made-up word is better than the correct one.) But Yogi’s baseball record is also a kind of tongue twister, because there’s so much to give him credit for.

He’s a baseball Hall of Famer, a three-time MVP, a 13-time champion as a player and manager and he holds a ball-bag full of World Series records: games played (75), at-bats (259), hits (71), doubles (10), singles (49), games caught (63) and catcher putouts (457). And he hit the first pinch-hit home run in World Series history.

As Casey Stengel (not Yogi) said: “You could look it up.”

And you may want to, after you watch the new documentary It Ain't Over (in theaters May 12). It redefines the lovable goofball we all think we know, in terms that are more complimentary and also more realistic. Yogi, born Lawrence Peter Berra, worked the most punishing position in the game: catcher. He holds the record for his errorless streak behind the dish: 148 games, in 1959. “No one will ever match his streak,” says former Yankee catcher and World Series-winning manager Joe Girardi. “No one will ever even approach it.” And by all accounts, he set records as one of the nicest people ever to play or manage the game, as well.

Joe Posznanski, author of the definitive baseball sorting-hat (and provoker of barroom arguments) The Baseball 100, says flatly: “Yogi Berra is the greatest winner in the history of baseball.”

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And yet, in 2015, Johnny Bench, along with Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax and Hank Aaron, were declared baseball’s greatest living players based on a poll of 25 million fans. The four were introduced before the All-Star Game in Cincinnati that year, and the crowd roared. But here’s the weird thing: That other great—Yogi Berra—was alive and well that night, watching the game with his granddaughter, Lindsay Berra.

Says Lindsay, in the film: “I’m sitting next to my grandfather. And I’m thinking: He’s got more MVPs than any of these guys. He’s won more World Series rings than all four of them combined. I looked at him and said, ‘Are you dead?’ And he said, ‘Not yet.’ I don’t know how 25 million baseball fans can leave him off of that list.”

Maybe they did because Yogi was just too busy having fun to be an immortal. He’s the guy who, when asked by a female reporter if the chocolate drink “Yoohoo” was hyphenated, retorted: “Lady, it ain’t even carbonated.” The guy who advised all of us mortals to “go to your friends’ funerals. Otherwise, they might not go to yours.” (In case you’re wondering, his funeral in Montclair, N.J., in September 2015, was crowded with luminaries, and the streets outside were packed.) This is the guy who told visitors coming over to his house for the first time, “when you get to a fork in the road, you should take it.”

George H.W. Bush quoted that line in a speech. Ronald Reagan agreed with Yogi that “it ain’t over until it’s over” and Bill Clinton asserted, like Yogi, that “we may be lost, but we’re making good time.” And when, in November 2015, Yogi was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Barack Obama quoted another of his greatest hits: “If you can’t imitate him, don’t copy him.”

Says Lindsay: “My grandpa is the most-quoted guy along with Jesus and Shakespeare, and they’re losing ground.”

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But Yogi had a lesser-known claim to fame away from the baseball diamond. At 18, in 1942, he was a renowned catching prospect coming out of American League ball in St. Louis, and he had a rookie contract with the Yankees (plus $500 signing bonus!) in his back pocket. So what did the phenom do? With World War II looming, he enlisted in the U.S. Navy, even though he didn’t know how to swim, and then doubled down by volunteering for a secret mission. That’s how he found himself on a rocket boat during the D-Day invasion, giving cover to soldiers landing on Omaha beach.

“I wasn’t scared,” he said. “It looked like the 4th of July.”

The day after the invasion, his mission was to pull his dead comrades out of the water. Says Lindsay: “He was incredibly grateful to have made it through D-Day. He saw how terrible the world can be, and yet he made a living playing a little kid’s game. It made him more appreciative of life, of just being here.”

Yogi was wounded during the invasion, but never filed for his Purple Heart. His reasoning: He didn’t want to worry his mother.

And yet, even his military service made him the butt of a joke. When he finished his service in the Navy, he reported to the Yankees clubhouse still wearing his uniform. “That’s the Berra kid they’re talking about?” said a skeptical bystander. “He don’t look much like a ballplayer.” Peter Sheehy, the clubhouse manager, followed up with, “He don’t look much like a sailor either.” Joe DiMaggio compared him to a fire hydrant.

But looks aren’t everything. In his first year as a Yankee he played eight games and hit two home runs. The rest is baseball history.

“There he was, in the middle of all of these glamorous players,” says sportscaster Bob Costas, “playing for baseball’s most glamorous franchise, and yet he himself wasn’t glamorous at all. But the statistics tell you he was a great player, and underappreciated, and the documentary corrects that. It’s the deeply American story of an Italian kid from St. Louis, the son of immigrant parents, who became admired for his good nature and decency.”

Says Joe Girardi: “[Yogi] was how God designed people to be.”

And, it turns out, Yogi was even a good guy to turn to for dating advice. When Lindsay, a sportswriter, told her grandpa about interviewing a very handsome tennis player for an article, he told her: “You should date him.”

“Gramps,” Lindsay replied, “he dates a swimsuit model.”

‘“You got swimsuits,” Yogi said.

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