On his death at 90, the country's baseball fans were recalling the wit, wisdom, and remarkable career of Lawrence Peter Berra, better known as Yogi, who may have been the greatest catcher in the sport's history. Although some would say there's no maybe about it. But some things about the man himself may have been overlooked in all the admiration and celebration the news of his death stirred.
Hard as it is to credit in a time when star athletes are paid astronomical salaries, Yogi never got more than $65,000 a season, and was never able to negotiate a contract that ran for more than a year.
Yogi's 14-year feud with Yankee owner George Steinbrenner, the Donald Trump of baseball, began when Steinbrenner suddenly fired him as manager, but came to an end when Steinbrenner--at the urging of Gentleman Joe DiMaggio--apologized.
In the course of his long life, Yogi served in the Navy as a gunner's mate, and saw action on D-Day. "I think his military service has been a little overlooked," his wife Carmen once recalled, "because men like him didn't talk about it much. It wasn't a big thing with him . . . . it was just what they had to do."
In the years after the war, Yogi took many a troubled kid under his wing, but didn't talk much about that, either. Yogi's complete absence of pretension may have been the most appealing thing about him--that, and his gift for gratitude. The son of immigrants, he never played up his patriotism; he just practiced it.
"I've been very lucky," he once commented. So were we all to have him.
Editorial on 09/29/2015