Wednesday, 23 September 2015

Yogi Berra was a catcher and quite a character, or is that caricature

Great Yankees catcher passes away at 90
Berra became equally known for his adages

By Mark Schadenberg
If you don't have some humour to insert into a serious moment, you simply have a personality which is too serious.
Baseball great Yogi Berra died yesterday at the age of 90. When you heard the name Yogi Berra you realized your thoughts drifted away from him being a baseball great – a wonderful catcher, before my time with the New York Yankees. Just like monikers such as hockey's Tim Horton or baseball's Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle or Babe Ruth, you almost forget they were a real person.
In his early times with the Yankees he went by the name Larry. As for Lawrence Berra, his Yogi-isms have become as famous as he was.


Perfect for baseball, was the adage: It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”
Has a more true statement ever been made about baseball, and of course many other sports as we have all witnessed a triple bogey on the 18th hole, a fumble returned for a touchdown, or a speedster running out of gas on the turn for a home.
Below are three stories, which both honour Berra's lifetime in baseball, including 10 World Series rings as a player and three more as a coach, and also recall that he was a Second World War veteran (Serving on D-Day with the U.S. Navy at Normandy France) as well. 
Dan Lamothe of the Washington Post included this passage in his published obit:
Berra put his baseball career on hold and enlisted in the Navy, 
becoming a gunner’s mate. 
He “got tired of sitting around” and volunteered to serve on amphibious ships, not entirely clear what they were, he recalled in an interview with the nonprofit Academy of Achievement in Washington. 
He was assigned to  a 36-foot “rocket boat” and told to prepare for what would become the largest amphibious invasion in history: “D-Day,” the June 6, 1944, assault on the beaches of Normandy.



The Yankees catcher won three MVP awards, and still holds the record for most World Series games played. With 358 career home runs, his lifetime .285 batting average is miraculous for a catcher. Inducted into Cooperstown's baseball hall of fame in 1972, Berra played in the majors from 1946 – 1965, receiving votes for league MVP for 15 consecutive seasons.
Yogi Berra was truly a legend, apparently also quoted to say: Always go to other people's funerals, otherwise they won't go to yours.”

More Yogi-isms:
It's like deja-vu all over again.
Nobody ever goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.
Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical.
He hits from both sides of the plate. He's amphibious
I always thought that record would stand until it was broken.
When you come to a fork in the road, take it
You can observe a lot by watching
The future ain't what it used to be
If you ask me anything I don’t know, I’m not going to answer.
He must have made that (movie) before he died.
If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.
We made too many wrong mistakes.
Pie a la mode, with ice cream.
You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I'm not hungry enough to eat six.
I'm not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.
I don’t know (if they were male or female) fans running naked across the field). They had bags over their heads.
I never said most of the things I said.


LINKS:
http://www.baseball-reference.com/players/b/berrayo01.shtml
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/checkpoint/wp/2015/09/23/yogi-berra-world-war-ii-and-the-gradual-loss-of-sports-stars-who-served/




I'm a Blue Jays fan, but a baseball fan first!
Mark Schadenberg, Sales Representative
Senior Real Estate Specialist (SRES designation)
Royal LePage Triland Realty Brokerage
757 Dundas St, Woodstock
www.royallepagetriland.com
(519) 537-1553, cell or text
Email: mschadenberg@rogers.com
Twitter: markroyallepage
Facebook: Mark Schadenberg, Royal LePage Triland

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