THE YANKEES MOUNT OLYMPUS: YOGI BERRA

The title “Greatest Living Yankee” is one not to be taken lightly.  After all, the New York Yankees are baseball’s most successful franchise.  One only needs to look at the plaques hanging in Cooperstown to get an idea of the line of heroes that have put on the pinstripes.

In 1969 a poll of national sportswriters named Joe DiMaggio baseball’s “Greatest Living Player”.  Whenever the “Yankee Clipper” appeared at Old-Timer’s Day festivities in the Bronx, he insisted on being introduced as “The Greatest Living Yankee”.  Thus a tradition was born.

It leads us to number six on our list of players that make up the Yankees’ Mount Olympus.  He is the successor to DiMaggio (though he doesn’t insist on the title as Joe did) as the “Greatest Living Yankee”.

He is, of course, our beloved Yogi Berra.

No one has won more World Series rings than Berra.  He owns ten of them as a player, and three more as a coach (for the 1969 Mets and the ’77 and ’78 Yankees).

It is more than just luck.

In a career spanning 19 seasons, Berra hit .285 with 358 home runs and drove in 1,430 RBI.  In 14 World Series he hit 12 home runs and struck out just 17 times in 259 postseason plate appearances.  In fact, over the course of his career he never had a season with more than 38 strikeouts.  To say that Yogi knew how to put a ball in play would be the biggest understatement in the history of baseball. 

Yogi ranks eighth among all Yankees in hits, seventh in total bases and fifth in home runs.

As valuable as he was at the plate, behind it, what he lacked in grace he more than made up for in talent.  He threw runners out at an incredible 49% clip.

Berra was named an All-Star 15 times in an era where a player’s peers had a say as to who participated.  Three times he won the MVP and he was at the heart of perhaps the greatest era the franchise has ever had.

As a manager he led the Yankees to a pennant in 1964, and later the Mets to a pennant in 1973.  He remains one of the few managers in baseball history to lead teams to championships in both leagues.

In spite of all that he accomplished on the field, it may be what Berra did off the field that makes him a true hero.

His first two years as property of the New York Yankees were spent in military service (he joined the Navy) where he participated in the D-Day invasion and spent time in North Africa and Italy.  It seems that Yogi always found himself on the biggest stages – be they in baseball or in life.

Baseball hero, war hero, and successful businessman (Yoo-hoo chocolate drink wouldn’t be what it is without its association with Yogi); Berra is a true American icon.

Ironically, what baseball fans most identify with Berra has nothing to do with what he has done; rather it is what he has said.

There are entire internet sites dedicated to “Yogi-isms”.   Sayings like “Baseball is 90 percent mental, the other half is physical” and “If you come to a fork in the road, take it” have set Yogi apart from his peers in the media and ensured that he will be remembered for generations to come.

In 1972 Berra’s number 8 was retired by the Yankees and the catcher was elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame, and in 1988 his plaque was added to Yankee Stadium’s monument park.

He is a Yankee legend whose life has encompassed some of the biggest moments on the biggest stages. 

There will never be another Yogi Berra and Yankee fans should cherish the moments we have left with the 88-year-old, and remember: “You can observe a lot by watching”.

It is with great honor that we add Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra to the Yankees Mount Olympus.  

    
--Steve Skinner, BYB Guest Writer
Twitter: @oswegos1

  



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