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Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee (2009)

by Allen Barra(Favorite Author)

3.94 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0393062333 (ISBN13: 9780393062335)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

W. W. Norton & Company

review 1: You run into a lot of characters lurking around baseball clubhouses, but it's less interesting than it might sound. From superstars to rookies to owners to agents to assorted hangers-on, most adopt some version of the same clubhouse mask, fake boredom or fake seen-it-all weariness or fake bravado that rules out glimpsing much honest emotion.Yogi Berra was one of the all-time great exceptions to that. Sure, he lived in a different era, and sure, sportswriters were more into building baseball players up back then, in the years before Simon and Garfunkel sang "Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?" But Berra was always an original.He stiffed Branch Rickey's offer to sign with the St. Louis Cardinals, just because he wanted the same $500 signing bonus he knew was going to Joe Gar... moreagiola, his friend growing up in an Italian American part of St. Louis called the Hill. As the MVP catcher of the powerhouse Yankee teams of the late '40s and '50s, which at one point rattled off five straight World Series victories, Berra would torment opposing hitters by sitting behind home plate and making good-natured small talk with them."Who are they trying to fool with this guy?" Ted Williams said when he first caught a glimpse of stumpy, grinning Yogi behind the plate, but later on the two got on famously.I was struck reading Allen Barra's altogether sturdy and well-written biography at just how unusual a figure Yogi truly is. Barra (no relation, he thinks), an amiable, guys-talking-at-the-water-cooler type sportswriter best known for his former column writing at Salon.com and his well-received Bear Bryant biography, does a beautiful job of reminding even the casual fan of Yogi's bona fides as a baseball great. He was perhaps the greatest overall catcher ever (see Appendix A), definitely one of the great winners of all time (with an absurd 10 World Series rings) and indisputably an all-time original as a personality, teammate and clubhouse presence.It's a tribute to Barra's thoroughness in bringing us back to the Casey Stengel Yanks, before the Dodgers and Giants went west, and sketching the baseball backdrop with both understated ease and virtuoso skill, that it finally came to me, reading this book: Yogi has to be the most honest great figure baseball has ever produced. His whole life, he has said what he meant, even when few others would. Working in a hardware store one off-season as a young player, for example, he told a customer looking for a certain screw, "I can't tell one from another. I think you'd better pick them out yourself."That was Yogi. People laughed at the Yogi-isms, but they remembered them. These were the words of a smart man who both knew baseball and knew what he knew, who has always cared only about making a point, not impressing. The modern player, brought up on a diet of disposable, mass-produced, ready-made quotes, could never dream of being so original or so honest, or not for long, anyway. Barra, in a worth-the-price-of-admission brilliant flourish, includes an "Appendix B," which he calls "Yogi Berra and the Great Minds: A Comparative Study," including the following gems - and truly does justice to Yogi's insights. Winston Churchill: "Never, never, never give up."Yogi Berra: "It ain't over till it's over."Napoleon Bonaparte: "In war, the moral is to the physical as three to one."Yogi Berra: "Half this game is 90 percent mental." Henri Cartier-Bresson: "Thinking should be done beforehand and afterwards, never while actually taking a photograph."Yogi Berra: "You can't think and hit at the same time."I hope this is not the last biography written of Yogi. Barra did not have direct access to his subject for the project (though he has spoken to him on a number of occasions), which is an unfortunate loss, given how enjoyable some fresh Yogi truth-telling might have been.
review 2: Nonfiction. An in-depth biography on the life of the beloved Yankees icon.This is an excellent look at Yogi Berra's remarkable life. It goes beyond baseball, with little-known details about his childhood, teen years, and military service. The book makes a convincing case for Berra as the greatest catcher of all time. Even if you aren't a Yankees fan this is a worthwhile read. But you should at least be a sports fan or the book may bog you down in baseball lingo. less

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