Happy 80th, Yogi!

HBYB!!

WELL WISHES TO THE SAME PERSON!!!!

I saw Dale Berra a few years ago at the Yogi Museum, and he told his dad he'd gotten him a personal appearance for early 2004. "2004? I might be dead again!"

This same party was the source of my prizest possession. My invite was last minute, and on my way out the door I scrambled for something to have him sign. I ended up grabbing The Velvet Underground and Nico. His signature is in the corner opposite Andy Warhol's.

At the HOF films show in Brooklyn last night, they showed the cat food commercial.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LMwEl_L65u8

88

http://brooklynfans.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/Stengel-with-Yogi-Berra.jpg

I did not know that Carmen died in March. House is up for sale.

http://baristanet.com/2014/04/montclair-yogi-berra-house-sale/

90!

There is a petition going to give him the Medal of Freedom. Well, he was at D-Day.

http://www.sikids.com/sites/default/files/multimedia/photo_gallery/1105/willie.mays.rare.photos/images/mays-bobsled.jpg

pretty amazing (these days) to see how little yogi struck out

@AndrewSimonMLB
Yogi Berra is the last player to have a season w/ 5x as many extra-base hits as strikeouts. His 1950: .322, 64 XBH, *12 K*, 55 BB, 656 PA.

by the end of next season, kris bryant will be closing in on yogi's career total

pitchers weren't throwing as hard, not close

(not that his wasn't a notable skill, but either baseball has decided it is no longer that useful, and hence don't find guys who can do it, or the game has changed too much for it to be physically possible for power hitters to do it)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/sports/hall-of-fame-catcher-yogi-berra-dies-at-90/2015/09/23/881270ba-61bf-11e5-b38e-06883aacba64_story.html

aw man RIP he was so awesome

apparently not a well-liked players' mgr, tho, either by '64 Yanks or '72-75 Mets (dunno about '80s Yanks)

also, to ppl im my immediate age bracket we knew him as a Met (1b coach '65-71)

Johnny Bench, with a Yogi telegram:

https://twitter.com/Johnny_Bench5/status/646731338796662784/photo/1

Thought Yogi managed the Mets too but probably was confusing him with Stengel.

he did! succeedded Gil Hodges after his death in '72; came within one game of winning the '73 WS; fired in '75

Didn't he?

(Xp, obv)

http://assets.nydailynews.com/polopoly_fs/1.2216433!/img/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/article_635/yogi10s-16-web.jpg

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/51Y4pN-VwuL._SX425_.jpg

Well then!

I gotta admit, I think until I saw this I could have put Roger Angell on the people-you-were-surprised-were-still-alive thread. He's seven years older than Vin Scully.

http://www.newyorker.com/news/sporting-scene/postscript-yogi-berra-1925-2015

NYer fact checking fail: Steinbush fired Yogi in April '85, not late summer.

further: Yogi did not debut with the Yanks til September '46, so he did not play CF, or anywhere else, in the home opener. He did start in RF in the '47 home opener.

You'd think you'd want to help out one of your legendary writers by clicking on Baseball-Reference a few times.

Was checking something and discovered that Joe Garagiola will be turning 90 in February. That was some long-running friendship.

the petitions worked... Yogi will be getting the Medal of Freedom, posthumously. Great timing, Washington! At least Willie Mays will be there to get his.

http://www.nj.com/politics/index.ssf/2015/11/yogi_berra_to_get_presidential_medal_of_freedom.html

...and Yogi won't have to rub elbows with James Taylor.

Didn't know this existed till I saw the trailer tonight; loved it, can't wait till it shows up here next week.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGvXOjD6zQ8

I love the hook at the beginning of that trailer.

I don't really remember this "greatest living player" thing from 2015. I'll excuse a granddaughter's devotion for the fanciful idea that Yogi ranks alongside Mays and Aaron. Koufax? There were many pitchers who were still alive in 2015 and demonstrably better than Koufax (and not just for their careers; there were a handful with even more awesome peaks). But I'll give that one a pass in terms of, I don't know, some combination of nostalgia, mystique, and the unique circumstances of his early retirement.

I don't get Bench, though, as great as he was. Even putting aside all PED-related names, I don't see the determination that ranked Bench ahead of Rickey Henderson, Schmidt, Morgan, Frank Robinson, or Yaz, all very much alive in 2015, and then there are those other pitchers: Seaver, Maddux, Pedro, others.

I know the guy who directed this, he's been talking about it for a few years and it's great to see it achieve liftoff and apparently glowing reviews.

Crowd-funded, I'm assuming? Ron Guidry has turned into Josh Brolin.

I can't access the Times or Washington Post reviews, but here's Esquire:

https://www.esquire.com/sports/a43756265/yogi-berra-it-aint-over-documentary-review/

Not sure how it was funded, he wrote and directed a feature film a ways back and maybe he got the gig via that somehow? There may have been some crowd funding but I know he also worked closely with the Berra family too.

Almost accidentally missed the Yogi movie--I don't check titles carefully enough when I scan the two nearby rep schedules--but luckily caught the last screening I could have seen tonight.

(Don't read this if you want to see it completely fresh.)

Only minor complaint I have--same thing that comes through in the trailer--is there's a lot of special pleading that to me just seems unnecessary. Berra was amply recognized and rewarded during his career, and if the caricature of him is unfair, he also encouraged and greatly benefitted (financially, in terms of fame and celebrity) from it. To use his three MVPs as measured against Mays' two or Aaron's one as an argument that it was Berra who was under-recognized is perverse, to say the least.

Otherwise, definitely try to catch it. A lot to take in, some surprise interviewees (at least six of whom are dead now), very moving from his reconciliation with Steinbrenner to his posthumous Medal of Freedom. Two favorite segments: the Robinson steal of home and the infamous Phil Linz harmonica incident in '64. The Robinson steal is hilarious in that players, even decades later, always knew you just had to say "I don't know, Yogi, I think he was safe" to push Berra's buttons and get him cursing. (I agree with John Thorn: Robinson was safe, because as the old adage goes, ties goes to the runner--to get someone out, you have to get them out.) And I loved the Linz incident because it's retold by three or four people, and they tell it almost word-for-word like Bouton does in Ball Four. I could almost hear Joe Pepitone whimpering, just like when I read the book.

Two things I learned, both connected: why Dale Berra is named Dale, and--another thing where I think, "How did I not know that? Surely I was aware of this at the time"--the real significance of David Cone's perfect game.

If I'd given it any thought, I should have seen the end-credit song coming from a mile away. It worked well.

One of the categories at pub trivia tonight was "Fictional Addresses"--places from movies or TV. You'd get the address and an image, and you had to supply the title of the show or movie. The second one was the apartment in Seinfeld, which for some reason I thought was the apartment in Friends--dumb. Even dumber, because I'm a complete scatterbrain, instead of saying Friends I said Cheers, and was promptly ridiculed by my teammate Sandy. "Jesus, I can't even get my wrong answers right..."

I think I spontaneouly came up with a genuine Yogi-ism.