Orts #737
Lawrence Peter (“Yogi”) Berra, a hero of my flagrantly misspent youth, died last Tuesday (September 22, 2015), age 90.
From the New York Times obituary (http://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/24/sports/baseball/yogi-berra-dies-at-90-yankees-baseball-catcher.html?src=se):
"As a boy, Berra was known as Larry. . . one day in his early teens, young Larry and some friends had gone to the movies and were watching a travelogue about India when a Hindu yogi appeared on the screen sitting cross-legged. His posture struck one of the friends as precisely the way Berra sat on the ground as he waited his turn at bat. From that day on, he was Yogi Berra.”
He was loved as much for his manglings of the language as for his baseball prowess.
Some of the quotes attributed to him may be apocryphal, but the doubtful ones are surely in the “if not real it should be” category.
Samples:
You’re not out until you’re out.
When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
Always go to other people’s funerals. Otherwise, they won’t go to yours.
Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.
Ninety percent of the game is half mental.
You wouldn’t have won if we’d beaten you.
We made too many wrong mistakes.
If the people don’t want to come out to the ball-park, nobody’s going to stop them.
Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets.
You can observe a lot by watching.
It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.
The future ain’t what it used to be.
I didn’t really say eveything I said.
On July 15, 1980, Johnny Bench hit his 314th home run to pass Berra as the all-time home-run leader among catchers. The next day, Berra sent a telegram to Bench, reading in part: “Congratulations on breaking my home run record last night. I always thought the record would stand until it was broken.”
Yogi-isms were never unique to Yogi, of course.
Nobel physicist Niels Bohr famously said “Prediction is very difficult, especially if it’s about the future."
__________________________
Late breaking news: Pope Francis Set to Release a Rock/Pop Album: Listen to the First Single