Yogi Berra Was More Than Baseball’s Comic Relief
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If a unicorn ever existed in pro sports, its name would be Yogi. After all, what’s more improbable than a lovable New York Yankee?
The defining image of Yogi Berra as a player is from the 1956 World Series, when he leapt into Don Larson’s arms after the last out in the pitcher’s perfect game. Yogi had a funny name, a funny-looking face, and a funnier-looking body — proof that athletic greatness comes in all sizes. He’s the guy who humanized the Evil Empire. But according to It Ain’t Over, the polished, often pugnacious new documentary directed by Sean Mullen and executive-produced by Berra’s granddaughter, Lindsay Berra — who is also the central talking head — Yogi’s adorable comic persona obscured his greatness as a player.
The documentary, which Sony Pictures Classics has given a theatrical release, is animated by the conceit that Yogi the player has been neglected to the point of disrespect. The filmmakers spend so much time driving this point home that the movie, certainly intended as celebratory, often takes on a curiously combative, defensive tone. “He may be overlooked,” says former Yankee manager Joe Torre, “but he certainly wasn’t overlooked by the people who know what they’re looking at in baseball.”
Was Yogi an underrated superstar? Well, he won three MVP awards. He’s in the Hall of Fame. He even has his own Hall of Fame. How many other great players can say that? “Yogi Berra was more valuable to his teams, over the course of his career, than any other catcher,” wrote Bill James, in his 1986 classic, The Historical Baseball Abstract. “He was never as great a catcher at any moment as Johnny Bench was in his best years, or as Mickey Cochrane was or Roy Campanella, his contemporary. But Yogi’s record of sustained excellence over a period of a decade is without parallel by any catcher in the history of baseball.”
Born in 1925, the fourth son of Italian immigrants, Lawrence “Yogi” Berra lived an extraordinary life. He survived the landing at Normandy as a solider in WWII and went on to a Hall of Fame career as a catcher for the Yankees during the team’s dynasty years. Berra’s 10 championships as a player has no peer and will likely never be matched. He later coached the Yankees and Mets to the World Series and won a ring as a coach for the Mets in 1969 and the Yankees in ’77 and ’78. When the Yanks held Yogi Berra Day in 1999, both Berra and Don Larson were in attendance; that afternoon, David Cone pitched a perfect game for New York.
You can make the case that Yogi enjoyed the most charmed baseball life of all time. His fame stretched beyond the game, beyond sports, and into the pop culture consciousness, lasting for generations after he stopped playing. How many players have a cartoon named after them? Berra’s fame didn’t diminish in retirement. It grew.
Yogi was a classic comic archetype, the dumbass-genius-philosopher, unintentionally hilarious without trying. (Though he was a deliberately funny ballbuster on the field, distracting opposing batters with conversation as they tried to hit.) It didn’t matter if Yogi himself was no great wit — unlike his longtime Yankee manager Casey Stengel, who was. Yogi didn’t need to write all of his material: He was the material! Bill Veeck, the maverick owner of the Indians and White Sox, summed up Berra’s early persona, in his 1962 book, The Hustler’s Handbook:
Yogi had originally become a figure of fun because with his corrugated face and his squat body he looked as if he should be funny. When he turned out to be a great baseball player in spite of his odd appearance, a natural feeling of warmth went out to him, as to the ugly duckling who makes it big in a world of swans. It pleased the public to think that this odd-looking little man with the great natural ability had a knack for mouthing humorous truths with the sort of primitive peasant wisdom we rather expect of our sports heroes. Besides, there was that marvelous nickname. You say “Yogi” at a banquet and everybody automatically laughs, something Joe Garagiola discovered to his profit many years ago.
Garagiola wasn’t the only one to profit. But before Yogi enjoyed a long career as a celebrity pitchman, he endured more than his share of ridicule. Teammate Joe DiMaggio — who liked Yogi — said he looked like a fire hydrant. Bucky Harris, his first manager with the Yankees, named him “the ape.” Yogi was used to hearing things like, “How does your wife like living in a tree?” And far worse. But Yogi was shrewd enough to take advantage of his differentness, especially when it came to endorsements. More than a little of that had to do with Carmen, Yogi’s beloved wife — the brains, not just the beauty, behind team Yogi.
You can’t entirely blame the Berra family for being defensive; nobody wants to be dismissed as a clown. And yet, Yogi was not underrated during his playing career — again, the writers voted him MVP three times. He wasn’t mocked and dismissed like Minnie Miñoso, neglected like Larry Doby, or improbably underrated as Frank Robinson. Let’s face it: Stan Musial, great at he was, is not venerated like Ted Williams or DiMaggio simply because he was less interesting as a dramatic subject.
There’s no reason to feel badly for Yogi, though you like to imagine that he would be proud of his granddaughters’ stridency. A stubborn streak they share. It Ain’t Over’s entire sequence covering Yogi’s tackless, though predictable, dismissal as manager of the Yankees in 1985, is sharp and doesn’t whitewash the lousiness of Yankee owner George Steinbrenner’s behavior.
After Yogi was fired, he vowed never to return to Yankee Stadium so long as Steinbrenner owned the team. He kept his word until 1999, when Steinbrenner, in the midst of another Yankee title run, visited Yogi at the Yogi Berra Museum and apologized. A man of his word, Yogi’s old school values endeared him to a new generation of fans.
Though clearly a family affair, including Yogi’s three sons, his granddaughter, and adoring adult nieces, It Ain’t Over is not a particularly intimate film. (For a more candid look at Yogi, check out Harvey Araton’s endearing 2012 book, Driving Mr. Yogi.) Still, old teammates such as Bobby Richardson, Ralph Terry, and Tony Kubek (wow, it is great to see Kubek!), help evoke the man behind the image, while other Yankee veterans Willie Randolph, Don Mattingly, and Ron Guidry add warmth and humor. And Joe Girardi, a Yankee catcher and manager from another era, provides vulnerability and insight.
Sadly, there’s no room left for Yogi’s close relationship with teammate Phil Rizzuto, who mentored Yogi as a ballplayer as well as a businessman — and shockingly little on Casey Stengel. There’s also no mention of the infamous 1957 incident at the Copacabana involving a bunch of Yankee players (and their wives), after which Yogi told reporters, “Nobody did nuthin’ to nobody.”
It Ain’t Over is at its best breaking down Yogi’s remarkable, idiosyncratic skills as a hitter, and his intelligence and mobility as a catcher — a welcome look at a certified baseball genius. The proceedings are anchored by a familiar, durable cast of experts, from historian John Thorn to journalist Claire Smith and author Marty Appel. (It Ain’t Over Drinking Game: Who appears first: Bob Costas or Billy Crystal?) It’s reassuring to see interviews with the late Roger Angell and the late Vin Scully, as well as commentary from Yogi authorities Allen Barra (Eternal Yankee) and Dave Kaplan, the founding director of the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center. The chorus of affectionate voices remind us why we won’t see the likes of Yogi again.
As far as Yogi’s greatness as a ballplayer, the last word goes to Stengel, who said: “I never play a game without my man.” And he didn’t mean Mickey Mantle.
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