CHAPTER 1

The Redoubtable Mr. Berra

LAWRENCE PETER BERRA—“the redoubtable Mr. Berra,” as the great Red Barber used to call him during New York Yankee broadcasts back in the early ’60s, or just “Mr. Berra” as Casey Stengel did—was a product of his environment, as was I. The difference was, he transcended poverty growing up in Dago Hill in St. Louis and pushed himself to an incredible level, to where real life read like fiction, as a miniature, ethnic version of a John Wayne character. He became ingrained in the fabric of the Greatest Generation that won the Big War and refused to accept defeat. At eighteen he was in a gunboat on D-Day, dodging German machine-gun fire. Any of a thousand images of him, his cap turned backward, shin guards and chest protector caked with dirt and sweat, pancake mitt ready to swallow up a pitch or a pop fly, is a picture of courage and character.

The familiar freeze-frames of his career are unforgettable, like him leaping like an overjoyed kid into Don Larsen’s arms when the last out was made in Larsen’s perfect World Series game against the Dodgers in 1956. Or drifting back when Bill Mazeroski hit the first pitch in the bottom of the ninth in the 1960 Series. Dad always said he believed he would catch that game-winning homer. And if you look closely at the old films, the ball seemed to hang right over his head for a split second, as if he was willing it down to him. If it had dropped, nobody would have been surprised.

He had all the credentials a player could have: three-time MVP, eighteen-time All-Star, thirteen-time world champion. He was a fixture of sports’ greatest dynasty, but also a player, coach, or manager on every single pennant-winning New York baseball team from 1947 to 1981. For many, he was baseball in New York. Yet he was also a symbol of something bigger than baseball. Because of his roots and coming into prominence when there was still anti-Italian discrimination, when he was honored by friends and businessmen on Dago Hill in 1951, someone said he was “one of the three best-known Italians in the world—Columbus, Marconi, and Yogi Berra.” Not Joe DiMaggio, one of the greatest ballplayers of all time, but the squat little guy who looked like a Smurf. No one who ever saw him forgot him. Which is why, in 2017, one sports columnist asked: “How About Yogi Berra Day—Why Columbus?”

I regret to say I never saw him play in person. In fact, I never rooted for his team until it was no longer the Yankees but the crosstown Mets when he managed them in the early 1970s. But I was there for Larsen’s perfect game—in my mom’s stomach. She was eight months pregnant as she sat in the stands that day with Merlyn Mantle and Joan Ford, Whitey’s wife, watching each out, the last coming when a pinch hitter, a utility player named Dale Mitchell, was called out on a half-swing for strike three. Mom told Joan that if Mitchell made the last out, she was going to name the baby Dale. She liked the sound of it and that it could be given to a boy or a girl.

Dad, of course, went along. He was friends with everybody in baseball, but I’m sure he didn’t have any special relationship with Dale Mitchell. Still, I have a sneaking suspicion it meant something to him, because of how his mind worked. He might have wanted to make the moment live through his son. At least that’s my theory; Dad would never have thought too deeply about it. He just did things and they usually worked out fine. As that name has for me.

During his Hall of Fame career, he wasn’t Yogi to me. That was more like a public thing, a brand name, one perfect for him. He’d worn it since he was a kid, meaning that even back then he was a wise man, not a wise guy. Even Mom called him Yogi, but to his sons he was Dad, the guy who came home after Sunday home games and sat at the head of the table, tearing into the veal parmigiana. He always had to sit at the head of the table and have both ends of the Italian bread. No one could touch a heel of that bread but Dad.

There was no ESPN back then, no MLB Network, no internet to endlessly watch highlights on. Baseball—all sports, really—lived through box scores and game stories in the newspapers. I was too young to read them. I was watching cartoons—one of them being Yogi Bear, who also played in a big park, Jellystone. I had no idea that Yogi was named after Dad, though the producers, Hanna-Barbera, who created so many cartoons in TV’s early days, ludicrously said it was just a coincidence. Dad even sued them for defamation. It wasn’t that he couldn’t take a joke, but when someone uses your name for a cartoon character and doesn’t even ask for permission, much less pay you a dime, you don’t accept that. Dad may have looked funny, but he was nobody’s fool, on or off the diamond. But Dad didn’t object because he was owed money; it was because he was owed respect.

He did eventually drop the suit, because technically his name was Larry, not Yogi, so it complicated an open-and-shut case. He just shrugged and let it go, like all the other jokes about him, and took it as flattery, although he never knew why he wasn’t being paid for it. The joke never died, even when he did. When the AP wire service first reported on his death, it wrote: “New York Yankees Hall of Fame catcher Yogi Bear has died. He was 90.” In truth, Yogi Bear lives on, sort of like Dad, in suspended animation.

He did more TV appearances than most players. The only times that kids saw the faces of their favorite ballplayers was on the Game of the Week or local telecasts, or the old Home Run Derby TV show. Dad never made it onto that show, not being a big home run hitter. That was for the matinee-idol long-ball guys, Mantle, Mays, Aaron, Killebrew. But Madison Avenue loved Dad during the first decade of the new invention called television. A team that won like clockwork, with about as much flair and exertion, whose big star was a blond god with a Li’l Abner physique and the too-good-to-be-true name Mickey Mantle, had seemed exempt from the truism of Yankee haters that “rooting for the Yankees is like rooting for U.S. Steel.” As Mickey once said, “He was the guy who made the Yankees seem almost human.”

That must have been why I saw flickering images of him on our TV, in commercials, smoking a cigarette, selling a car, whatever else someone would pay him a few bucks to say he used. I can all too clearly remember the commercials he did for Yoo-Hoo—the chocolate drink’s sales skyrocketing when it became synonymous with Yogi—with the punchline “It’s Me-He for Yoo-Hoo!” (Another Yogi-ism happened when he was asked if Yoo-Hoo was hyphenated; he replied, “It ain’t even carbonated.”) He also did a cameo on the Phil Silvers Show, with Mickey, Whitey Ford, Phil Rizzuto, and Gil McDougald. They played themselves posing as Southern squires, helping Sergeant Bilko convince a phenom pitcher who was a Southern boy, played by Dick Van Dyke, to sign with the Yankees. The highlight was Dad, wearing a cutaway morning coat, stealing the scene by saying in his best Bronx drawl, “Arrivederci, y’all!”

Another appearance was in 1964 when he was the mystery guest on What’s My Line?, signing in to thunderous applause, his championship pinkie ring glistening, and then squeaking a high-pitched “yes” or “no” to the panel’s questions—the voice he often used to disguise himself when he picked up the telephone, in case it was someone he didn’t want to talk to. They got who he was very quickly, the actress Arlene Francis asking, “Are you the Yankee doodle dandy, Yogi Berra?” Mom even got to come out and take a bow. The funniest moment was when one of the panelists asked, “Do you work for a non-profit-making organization?” That broke him up but good. Almost as funny was when another asked, “What if you woke up tomorrow morning and found out you were the manager of the Mets?” His answer, “Well, I don’t know yet.” Maybe he knew something.

Those Yankee stars were celebrities—the very first mystery guest on What’s My Line? was Scooter Rizzuto. A Yankee sighting was a big deal. Mom and Dad were sitting in the first row when Marciano knocked out Joe Louis at Yankee Stadium in September 1950. Joe fell through the ropes and almost landed into Dad’s lap. And sitting right behind them was Boris Karloff, who played Frankenstein and was great friends with them. Movie stars would be thrilled seeing them. The big in-spot for stars of all kinds was Toots Shor’s Restaurant on Broadway. You’d look around the dining room and see Jackie Gleason and Frank Sinatra mingling with Joe DiMaggio. Dad liked it because Toots always protected you from the other patrons. That’s why he went there, not to be seen but to be with people he admired and because Mom liked to mingle more than he did. Before the night was over, the movie stars would be at their table, schmoozing.

Joe D loved Dad during the brief time their careers intersected—back in those pre–politically correct times, the Yankees dubbed them “Big Dago and Little Dago.” Joe always had an entourage, the first athlete to have one. He got picked up at airports and train terminals, never rode the team bus, always had people waiting for him, never stayed at the team hotel but in luxury in people’s homes. That was class. The players never saw him outside the park. And if you were a Berra or Rizzuto and he said, “Come out to dinner with me,” you had to go, and you had to be dressed properly. You couldn’t say no. One time, he invited Mom and Dad out to meet Marilyn Monroe and go to dinner. Joe was very guarded, and he would never introduce anyone to Marilyn. He kept her almost like a prisoner. But he thought enough of Mom and Dad to have them meet her. Dad said he could think of only one thing to say when he met her—marone.

There was also the time Frank was playing at a club in town, and my brother Larry, who’s a huge fan, wanted to go see him. The show was sold out, so Dad said, “I’ll call Frank.” Just like that. He never said he knew him, but he could just reach into his little black book and ring him up. That’s what being a Yankee, and being Yogi Berra, meant.

My first decade of life coincided with the last hurrah of the Yankee dynasty, which began after Dad came up in 1947 and they won five straight American League pennants from 1949 to 1953, four more from ’55 to ’58, then another five from ’60 to ’64, the last of them when Dad was their manager. I watched the later World Series on the tube and was beginning to know him as more than just Dad, although he never once acted like a star or boasted about himself. Baseball was his job. His life was as a husband and father.

When he began taking me out to Yankee Stadium, as early as the late ’50s when I was still a toddler, I was more taken with the pageantry of it, the brilliant green and brown field, how the baby blue seats rose forever into the blue sky, above the unforgettable picket fence–like frieze facade lining the roof of the enormous upper deck. There was even a photo in the Daily News after the last game of the ’59 season of Dad in the locker room carrying two duffel bags, with, as the caption read, “Little Dale Berra, 2, help[ing] his famous dad, Yogi, carry a bat from Yankee Stadium.” Carry? That bat looked so big on my shoulder, it seemed to be carrying me. (I was also blond then. That didn’t last long.)

I got attention for being the little tyke Yogi would sometimes hold in his massive arms. I also remember that Mickey would squirt me with the hose from the whirlpool. I’d walk past him, and he’d let me have it. He’d get Dad, too, all the time. He’d whisper to me, “Kid, watch your dad. I put some Ben-Gay in his hat. His head’s gonna start itching in a second.” And sure enough, Dad would start furiously scratching his noggin. I admit, it was pretty funny. I didn’t tell Dad, but he knew, and he didn’t mind being the butt of Mickey’s jokes because it kept those guys loose. Also, Mickey could crush an anvil in his hands.

There were times when his Yankee buddies would come to our house across the George Washington Bridge in Montclair, New Jersey. Everyone loved him and Mom; it was a real extended family, unlike the individualistic vibe of team sports today. Dad and Mickey would sit in the den drinking vodka and bullshitting. Away from the sportswriters, he was loud and unrestrained with his teammates, not with Yogi-isms but jokes and stories that had Mickey on the floor. Believe me, he could talk all day if he wanted. With his sons, though, he wasn’t there to entertain or unwind; he was there to raise us right.

When Mickey would bring his two sons, Mickey Jr. and Dave, with him, Larry, Timmy, and I would take them into the backyard to play wiffleball, and we would kick their asses every game. We had Dad’s ferocious competitive streak. We had to win. Dad taught me that, but he never really taught me the game or how to play it. “That’s what your brothers are for,” he’d say. It wasn’t that he was ignoring me. It was just that there was a chain of command among his boys.

When Larry was born in 1949, I think Dad may have been more hands-on about showing him how to play, but when Tim, who came along in 1951, and I arrived, Dad had nothing to do with it. I really learned all I had to on my own. All three of us were lucky enough to have his genes, the ones that blessed us with athletic talent and coordination. But that was all Dad handed down. Everything else, we had to find out by ourselves, or get from Mom.

TIM BERRA: He wasn’t what you would call a warm, affectionate man. And I think all of us kids have gotten that trait from him, unfortunately. I wish I could say there were moments when he got sentimental, like at confirmations, graduations, weddings, funerals, but I never saw a tear running down his face. Mom was the emotional, touchy-feely one. Dad was supportive, he was always there, he came to as many of our school games as he could, but didn’t fawn over us. Even when he took us to the stadium, and he did that quite a bit when we were little kids, it would be Mickey who would hit me balls, play catch with me, not Dad.

That’s how he was, but Dad was also a very smart man. He knew the complications of raising three sons who might want to play sports, and he had it all thought out; his distance was meant to let us flourish on our own. Would I say he was a good father? No. He was a great father.

LARRY BERRA: Actually, Dale is wrong about Dad teaching me. He didn’t consider that to be his role as a father. That was his business. But here’s the kind of father he was. Mom told me once, “You and your brothers would never have to work a day in your life if your father wanted to travel in the winter time.” Because after the season was over, he had many offers, to open stores, do ribbon-cuttings, make appearances. In the ’50s, Hertz was just starting and opened rental car franchises all over the country. They wanted him to go all over for them, but he turned them down to stay home.

Not that he was sacrificing much. He and Mickey were in incredible demand locally, from Yankee sponsors. He’d do Ballantine beer, Brylcreem, Marlboro cigarettes, Gillette razors. Someone would hand him a hundred-dollar bill and take his picture with the product. You’d see his face everywhere in magazines, newspapers, local TV. When Yoo-Hoo came along, it was a Jersey-based company, so he did their commercials because one of his best friend’s fathers invented the drink. My perk was that I could drive my car down to the factory and fill my trunk up with Yoo-Hoo. I’d tell people, “Hey, I got Yoo-Hoo.” I made a lot of friends that way.

I never doubted that Dad was a caring father. He would take us with him to play golf at a country club, travel to see the relatives in St. Louis. When I was nine, ten, eleven, Dad even took me on Yankee road trips. I went on the train with him, which was how they traveled then. I went to Boston and Baltimore, and they were all so close. Even now. I just got back from playing in a softball tournament in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, and I called up Bobby Richardson, who lives there, just to see how he’s doing. And he actually came over and watched us play. Those guys were like my family. It’s not like that in the game anymore.

Timmy and I were luckier than Dale. They still played mainly day games when we were young, so Dad would be back for dinner almost every night. When Dale got older, they were playing all night games and he’d be asleep when Dad got home and at school before he woke up. But during the winter, when Dale had hockey practice, Dad would be up at four a.m., because practice would be at five. He’d open Dale’s door and say, “Come on, kid, rise and shine.”

When I was thirteen, I went on my first road trip with Dad, with the Mets to Montreal and Chicago. He took me to the movies in Montreal. I remember we saw Beneath the Planet of the Apes and loved it. That was 1970, the year after the Mets’ amazin’ championship, and Dad and I felt on top of the world. For him, all that travel was commonplace. He’d logged more miles than an old Dodge. For me, it was a whole new world. It was like I was hanging with some of the most famous athletes in sports, flying on the team plane—a United 5000 charter, the one the Mets used all the time. I was a mini celebrity, I suppose. The pilots let me sit in a jump seat in the cockpit during takeoffs and landings.

It was early, but it was obvious this was the life I wanted to live, this was my future. How could I not want it to be? I stayed at luxury hotels with the champion New York Mets, came to the park with them on the team bus, put on a uniform and took fly balls hit by Cleon Jones and Tommie Agee, fielded grounders with Buddy Harrelson. I’d take batting practice. I could find a light bat, one that a pitcher used, and even at a young age I could make people sit up and take notice, because I was a natural hitter. Dad would also arrange for me to work as a visiting bat boy, at Wrigley Field—how’s that for a memory?

The next year, he took me on the Mets’ West Coast swing, to LA, San Francisco, and San Diego, where we went to the San Diego Zoo. We would spend all day together before we went to the ballpark. He always had plans for me. We did everything together, and it was very bonding, the kind of father-son relationship most kids can only dream of. But Dad was more than a sports legend. He was the man who brought me up, and those times with him on the road were really the first times in my life that I got to spend alone with Dad, just me and him, away from everybody. He may not have been a man who said a whole lot, but he really took care of me; that was as important to him as preparing for a game. And those are memories that will last a lifetime.

My brothers and I were so lucky that we had two amazing parents who would have done anything for their kids. Yogi’s better half wasn’t only a great mom; she was a smart, classy, caring woman. The world knew Carmen Berra almost as much as they knew her husband the legendary Yankee. She could certainly make both men and women do a double take. Actually, both of them could, especially when they were out together. They were like a royal couple. And Mom, a beautiful, striking blonde, with an amazing sense of style.

There is a photograph of Mom in 1968 taken during a fashion show put on by wives of ballplayers. Wearing a black sleeveless dress with a big buckle on the waist, she could have been a fashion model, her body language graceful and poised, walking by spectators and other wives, some of whom seemed transfixed, almost with their jaws hanging open. They say opposites attract, and sometimes they do in storybook ways. Mom was the beauty who somehow married the beast.

When they would go out on the town, she looked like a movie star, and because of her, so did he. If we have good looks, she gave them to us. That’s not being mean to Dad; it’s just a fact. He said the same thing, and could laugh about it because it was he, the beast, who got the beauty. To the day she died, he looked at her like a lovesick teenager. I don’t think he ever quite believed she had fallen in love with him. Dad had that cuddly, teddy-bear quality, but he knew he had married up, way up.

Unlike her operatic namesake, Carmen Short Berra was no gypsy. Dad’s ancestors came over on a boat from Italy. Mom’s came over on the Mayflower. Okay, I’m exaggerating. It just seemed that way because of how classy she was. But when they met back in their hometown St. Louis, her family had been entrenched for decades in a rural farming town called Howes Mill, Missouri, where she grew up with no plumbing or electricity and an outhouse in the back for a good portion of her youth. Her family always reminded me of the sisters in Petticoat Junction. Dad’s brothers were Uncle Tony and Uncle Mike. Her sisters were Marylou, Nadine, Bonnie May, and Donna. Talk about your all-American, county fair, farmers’ daughters. Her cousins we’d call Uncle Claude and Aunt Ismus. (Nadine also married an Italian boy, named Palermo.) They were typical Midwest Baptists, very Bible Belt. My grandfather Ernest Short read the Bible to Mom and her sisters and brother every night.

Not to name-drop, but Robert E. Lee may be in our family tree. No bull. Mom’s middle name was Lee, and she insisted it was after the Confederate general, who was somewhere in her mother’s family tree. I don’t know, since General Lee was from Virginia. But Mom said somewhere in their ancestry they were related. If I was handed down the leadership qualities of Yogi Berra and Robert E. Lee, I’ll take it.

When they met over the winter of ’48. Dad was still living in St. Louis in the off-season, and she was a waitress in a restaurant called Biggie’s. As in The Godfather, when he saw her he was hit by the thunderbolt. In Dad’s words, she was a “knockout,” the highest praise a man could give a girl back then. Shy as he was, he summoned up all his nerve, marched right up to her, and asked for a date. Mom was only the third girl he ever dated, but he knew she was the one, even if she wasn’t Italian, which meant he’d have to convince Grandpa Pietro and Grandma Paolina that she was worthy of him. But he didn’t need to convince Mom. She fell for him right away; to her, the guy some called an ogre was actually strong, masculine—yes, even sexy. That summer, she helped stuff the ballot boxes to get him chosen for the All-Star Game, and he was, the first of his eighteen selections, still third in the American League after Mickey’s twenty and Cal Ripken’s nineteen.

Dad had it made with her, but he got the lesson of his life when he pulled back. Thinking his career was too important for love, he stood Mom up on a date, knowing she would be mad as hell because he didn’t even call her, just didn’t show up, and it embarrassed her with her friends. Mom really let him have it. She told him she had a lot of guys just dying to date her, which was absolutely true. She did some reverse psychology on him, adding in that she had a good job waitressing, making $90 a week, and maybe she wasn’t ready to settle down herself. Well, that did the trick. For a while, Dad was so ashamed that he stopped coming down to Biggie’s, for fear he would run into her. And Biggie told Dad he wanted him to be there, it helped business, and he liked Dad so much. He said, “Yogi, get her back.” And Dad always knew good advice when he heard it. He knew he’d made a big mistake and came crawling back. She forgave him. He asked her to have dinner with him and the whole family. When she was looking away, he dropped a ring on her plate. When she saw it, she was stunned silent, but nodded yes. They tied the knot on January 26, 1949, at St. Ambrose Church. By then, Mom had converted to Catholicism out of love for Dad, and she also loved the trappings of the Catholic Church.

He certainly showed he would do anything for her; on that blessed day, he wore a tuxedo for the first time in his life, and even a white carnation on his lapel. She, of course, looked resplendent in her long gown and tiara. And from that day on, she also wore the pants. Mom was really the rock of the family. Dad was away for long periods of time on road trips and two months for spring training, so she was both mother and father. But even when he was home, she was the one who woke us up and got us on the school bus, and she’d be waiting when we got home. She was the one who sent us to our rooms when we misbehaved. She was the hands-on parent, and Larry, Timmy, and I are as much a product of her as we are of Dad. He gave us the stuff of our dreams, but she was the one who made sure we believed we could achieve them.

Mom was a real intellectual; she read tons of books. Mom gave deep thought to everything. She was a rock-ribbed Republican. Her brother, Norman, was an NRA member. And she admired William F. Buckley for his erudite manner. Dad would go along with her opinion of things. Like most immigrants, his family worshiped Franklin D. Roosevelt. The Berras were working-class men, union men. But he voted for Republicans because Mom said so. No kitchen-table debates were necessary.

That’s not to say he didn’t have opinions of his own, but he wouldn’t pretend that he wasn’t an eighth-grade dropout. As a teenager during the Depression, he had to work so his family could eat. And he saw his baseball career pretty much the same way. He wasn’t playing for ego; even as a living legend, he was playing so we had food on the table.

LARRY: She was a registered Republican, but she voted for the person who she thought was best for the position. She formed quick opinions of people. If she liked you, you got the vote. And Dad hated labels but, more than that, phonies. He wouldn’t say much about issues, but he watched the news, and if someone was a phony, he’d grunt derisively. I guess that’s why he wouldn’t come out for candidates. They all wanted that, but it was just for his name, his popularity. Mom and I would watch debates on TV, and he’d go upstairs and put on a sitcom. Mom would have had a field day with this Trump stuff, trying to make sense of it all. I can hear her saying, “This is crazy, I’ve never seen anything like this.” And I can just see Dad, who saw the country survive the Depression and about six wars, shaking his head, laughing and saying, “Wait ’til tomorrow, it’ll get crazier.”

People have asked me if Dad’s public persona was a put-on, as if he played a lovable, somewhat befuddled character someone later called the “Yoda of the Yankees,” then came home and was a loudmouthed tyrant or something. I can honestly say he was the same exact person at home. And, yes, there were the same kind of say-what Yogi-isms, which I wish I could remember in full but don’t because they just rolled out of his mouth so naturally. My brothers and I and Mom would tell him, “You just said another one.” Mom would tell him if it was funny or not. If it was, she would write it down, like a stenographer, for future use. Because he wouldn’t remember them right after he said them.

He’d be asked about something, such as meeting the pope, and say, “He must read the papers a lot, because he said, ‘Hello, Yogi.’ And I said, ‘Hello, Pope.’” Or seeing Steve McQueen in a movie and saying, “He must have made that before he died.” Or the one about him observing, after being told a Jewish lord mayor had been elected in Dublin, “Only in America can a thing like this happen.”

Actually, only in America could a Yogi Berra have happened. I find it hilarious that books have been written by very smart people analyzing those sayings as “pop philosophy.” One of those smart people, Roy Blount Jr., remarked that they were “less in the tradition of the Bhagavad-Gita than in that of Mark Twain, who observed that the music of Richard Wagner was ‘better than it sounds.’” Some call them malapropisms, contradictions, roundabout veracity—or tautologies. Dad himself didn’t know if he said everything he said—see how easy it is to do it? A lot of folks thought they were made up by Joe Garagiola, who grew up with Dad in St. Louis on the Hill and had a much better career telling Yogi stories on TV and at banquets than he had as a big-league catcher. Those stories helped make Joe famous and later in his life the lead baseball broadcaster for NBC and co-host of Today. Dad never claimed to be Aristotle or Plato. He just knew that whatever he said, he was a basic guy telling a basic truth from his, shall we say, unique perspective.

He provided fodder for others to use as comic material, not just Joe, but Jimmy Piersall, the Cleveland Indians outfielder who recovered from a mental breakdown and became a great storyteller, used to recall asking Dad, “Why don’t you get your kids an encyclopedia?” The answer (according to Jimmy)? “Listen here, buddy, when I went to school, I walked. So can they.” Of course, nobody told the line better than Dad himself. He would get tons of invitations to speak at school graduations, business luncheons, whatever. And he had a set speech, where he would weave homespun motivation. Instead of lame clichés, he’d sit in his den and take time writing them out, not just a string of a bunch of known Yogi-isms, but new ones created for the occasion, making a point about life.

“How’s this one sound?” he’d ask, then read: “If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be.” Or: “Be careful if you don’t know where you’re going in life, because you might not get there.” You couldn’t help but see how savvy he was at self-parody to help get across his very sound advice. And even though he didn’t really like attention, if there was one thing he loved after Mom and playing baseball, it was playing the role of Yogi Berra.

In reality, men of great intellect gravitated to him. Everyone familiar with Yogi lore knows the story of him rooming with Bobby Brown on the Yankees in the ’50s. Bobby, who would become a doctor, would be in the room reading Gray’s Anatomy while Dad read comic books—“How’d your story come out?” Dad supposedly asked. But let me tell you, there must have been something in those comic books nobody else saw. And Bobby didn’t want to make conversation with anyone else, so draw your own conclusions about how much Dad meant to men with sharp minds. They envied him for being able to seem dumb while being so smart.

Really, he didn’t say much, which was why the Yogi-isms stood out. During one of Dad’s managerial stints, his great buddy Phil Rizzuto said, “Yogi gives short answers. And they’re all mixed in with grunts. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t know as much as managers who’ll talk forever.” Remember, he was a child of the ’30s, a product of the ’40s, a household name in the ’50s. Those were decades when stern, stoic, hardworking fathers ruled the home. But the children of those fathers loved them and knew when they got their point across. The memories of him that are etched in my mind are of the long, endless hours spent together on road trips, but I don’t know that I ever spoke with him in depth about school or even baseball. He just wasn’t that kind of father.

Do I wish he had been more verbal, more expansive in his thoughts? Yes. We could have been less sheltered. Looking back, I would have liked it if he had taken me into his den, closed the door, and like Ward Cleaver related the perfect story about right and wrong, so Beaver would never do what he did again, at least until the next episode. I don’t think Dad was capable of that. It wasn’t innate to him. If it was, he wouldn’t have been Yogi Berra.

We Baby Boomers like to say that the Father Knows Best portrait of America in the ’50s really didn’t exist. But it did exist. We had some scenes in our house like those on TV. Mom would come downstairs and tell us, “Look at your dad. Isn’t he handsome?” She’d sit down and just smile at Dad. It was something from a Norman Rockwell painting. Dad was his own version of Ward. He was there for you; he just didn’t have a long story to tell to make his point.

You wouldn’t have thought he ever worried, ever doubted himself. But he did. He once told a Sports Illustrated writer, “I worry about keeping Carm happy so she won’t be sorry she married me, about the kids growing up good, and about keeping out of trouble with God. I worry a lot.” In that article, he told of having trouble sleeping on the road, and that Phil Rizzuto read him bedtime stories to get him to doze off. Scooter recalled, “He said the sound of my voice put him to sleep. I often thought of that when I started broadcasting.” The article also quoted Mom saying, “I don’t know why people think he’s so relaxed. He’s a basket case!”

I never saw Dad like that, as anything other than a rock, because he never let me see anything else. I think I might have caught a glimpse if he’d ever given me “the talk,” the one fathers are supposed to give their sons about sex but usually chicken out. Not that I needed that talk. This was the time of bra burning, free love, women’s liberation, and X-rated movies. What was he gonna say that I didn’t already know? But for something like that, he had his standard answer: “Ask your brothers.” Then he probably said to himself, “Whew!”

LARRY: He only did “the talk” with me. I remember coming home when I was fifteen or sixteen, and Mom said, “Your father wants to talk to you.” I said, “About what?” She said, “Just go up, it’s time for your father to talk.” And so I go up and he was in his room. He kind of smiled awkwardly and you knew he only agreed to do this because of Mom. His heart really wasn’t in it, and he had no idea what to say. After a minute, he was ready.

“Eh, you already know everything you need to know about sex and all that kind of stuff. Good night.”

And he was right, as always. We all knew about sex. That’s why I never gave Timmy “the talk” and Timmy never gave it to Dale. Hell, I think Dad thought we might teach him a few things.

It had to be hard for him to come to grips with the ’60s. The antiwar marches and draft-card burning, the assassinations, the confusion and cultural differences clashed with everything he and his generation knew. But even he got to the point where he didn’t defend the war. “Let’s get this thing over with and bring ’em home,” he’d say. In his generation, stalemates and moral victories didn’t count, only winning. But, as he also knew, you can’t win ’em all.

True, he was in the middle of a lot of change. But he was never a get-off-my-lawn guy. He could understand that younger generations had their own lifestyles. That was why in the ’80s players who could have been his children—and one who actually was his child—loved him. But if you would have told him he lived like it was still the ’50s, he wouldn’t have argued with you. Let’s not forget that he once said, “The future ain’t what it used to be.” Just try to argue with that. Yet, within the game itself, he was a part of a different breed. Jumping into Larsen’s arms, that was radical. Watching grainy baseball highlight movies, it always amazes me how little celebrating those guys did. Maybe there’d be a slap on the back, but no one lingered at the plate watching the home run rise or flipped the bat away with a flourish. The unwritten rule was that you didn’t show up the other team. It was called sportsmanship. Well, there’s never been a better sportsman than Yogi Berra. But he made it possible—or necessary, as he would say—to show your emotions when you win, even playing for U.S. Steel.

The Larsen leap wasn’t the first such display of his, nor the last. When the last out of the ’52 Series against the Dodgers was made, he raced out to Yankee relief pitcher Bob Kuzava and piggyback rode him. And let’s not forget that unbelievable back-and-forth game 7 against the Pirates in 1960. When he came to bat in the top of the sixth, two men on, one out, trailing 4-2, he got hold of a 0-1 fastball from Roy Face, a fantastic reliever, and crushed it into the right field seats. Halfway down the first-base line, he shot his fist in the air and vaulted a foot off the ground. I think of that as the model for Carlton Fisk’s “body English” homer in the ’75 World Series. And no one on the Pirates thought he was showing them up. Because he never would have. (If only he could have jumped high enough to catch Mazeroski’s homer.)

Not that he didn’t have a ton of pride, in himself, his team, his league. Back then, your league was like your family, too. When the Yankees came back to win the ’58 Series against the Milwaukee Braves, Dad smirked, “Those National League guys were getting pretty smart,” meaning smart-assed, for their boasting early in the series.

He was stoic, contained, but full of fire inside. He didn’t yell, didn’t spank us. The only time he would show anger was if we were disrespectful to Mom. Then you got the hand, the back of his hand that wore a World Series ring—which he wore on his pinkie, which was as big as most people’s ring finger. You could look in the mirror and see “5”—which was engraved on the ring, for the team’s five straight championships—on your cheek. I’m not kidding. I’m only glad he wasn’t wearing the Hickok Belt they give away to the athlete of the year. That would have been Mom’s job. She used to use a belt, but just on the legs, completely nonabusive but the message was received.

LARRY: He only got mad at me and Timmy one time that I can remember. We lived at Woodcliff Lake, and Timmy and I flooded the bathroom. We plugged up the drain in the tub and it overflowed, and Dad really got mad. It’s the only time he got us with the strap. And it was the last time. Because he could just look at you and you knew it was time to stop. The tough one was really my mother. She would pull your hair, pinch you, all kinds of stuff. She was the disciplinarian. Most of the time when we would ask Dad for something, he’d say, “Go ask your mother.” She could be a softie, though. When I was fifteen or sixteen I wanted to take this girl to the movies. I asked my dad for five dollars and he said, “Go get a job.” But Mom gave me the five dollars and said, “Don’t tell your father.” That was what Mama Paolina told Dad when he asked for money as a teenager. With us, the apples never fell far from the tree.

With both Mom and Dad, if you did something wrong you’d know about it, but in the end it would be “It’s okay, don’t worry about it, you’re a good kid, you’ll be all right.” And you know what? That’s exactly what Dad did when he managed. He never wanted to have anybody mad at him and never wanted to disappoint anybody. If he took a pitcher out, he’d feel bad about it. After the game he would talk to the guy about why. He wouldn’t say, “You gave up four straight hits, what the hell was wrong with you?” He would say, “I want you to know why I brought in the other guy,” and explain that it was because of the percentages, which pitcher had better success against the next hitter. Because he knew all the numbers in his head. He had a computer in there.

Dad would analyze the game and the at-bats, in that internal computer, which also made him a brilliant poker and gin player. He wasn’t a mathematician, but you threw out three or four cards playing gin and he’d tell you what you had in your hand. He was known as the best gin player in every country club he ever played in. Timmy played a lot of gin at the Montclair Golf Club with him. He’d tell me, “Dale, you can’t believe it. Before guys know what they’ve got in their hands, Dad’s shifting his hand around and ready to go. I don’t know how he does that. He’s a freaking machine.”

Machine or not, he was one of a kind. A lot of the stars from that era, DiMaggio, Mickey, Billy Martin, had a little meanness to them, could be pricks at times. It was like a badge of manhood. Billy would say, “I took you out because you’re horseshit.” But Dad wanted to be liked. When he managed me on the Yankees, after one game he even knocked on Dave Righetti’s door at the hotel to make sure Rags knew why he took him out. Dad didn’t apologize, because he wasn’t wrong. But while it sounds trite and corny, his players were like sons to him—which is why he didn’t treat me like any more of a son than them. In Yogi world, you didn’t get points for being anybody’s son.

LARRY: That’s true, but at some time or another people called all three of us “Yogi.” When you met your friends, they’d go, “Hi, Yogi.” I’m going to be sixty-nine, and I still play and manage in a competitive senior softball league. And the guys on my team, when someone asks who the manager is, they’ll say, “Yogi, he’s over there.” We didn’t want that; it just happened. When I was young, I cringed at it. Now, in my old age, I cherish it.

I never felt any pressure. I mean, who can possibly live up to a legend? You don’t even try. And so I never felt that I was going to cash in on being Yogi’s son, and few ever treated me like I was only that. I consciously didn’t wear number 8. That was Dad’s. It’s retired at Yankee Stadium with all the other great Yankee numbers. I wasn’t ever going to be an all-time great. In my heart, I was satisfied I gave all I had, that I was either good or bad on my own. Dad taught me that, and I listened.

I listened to everything he said. I even listened to the music he liked. Mom and Dad would put on Dean Martin, Buddy Greco, the Mills Brothers, the Andrews Sisters. Timmy, Larry, and I would love it. In the ’70s, we’d go from Led Zeppelin to Duke Ellington, from “Stairway to Heaven” to “Satin Doll.” It’s not like we wanted to, but if Dad said, “You’ll like this,” we invariably found a reason to like it. And once in a while, he would sneak a listen to the rock-and-roll stations. That was a small victory.

Unlike most people, Dad only had one “enemy” in his life. That, of course, was George Steinbrenner, who broke a promise not to fire him. But even that feud was repaired. People always called Yogi Berra a player’s manager, which means a manager players love and swear by. He won because his players would run through walls for him—almost literally, such as when Rusty Staub crashed into the right field wall at Shea Stadium in the ’73 World Series, injuring his shoulder. Rusty courageously kept playing, virtually with one arm, just as Dad would have if he had to in his day. And don’t think he couldn’t be tough. He was. He wouldn’t let any player disobey his rules, same as he wouldn’t let his kids. Whatever it was, players responded to him.

The first two times he managed, he won the pennant right off the bat, both times coming from behind in August, with the ’73 Mets from way behind. It was Tug McGraw who coined that team’s creed—“Ya Gotta Believe!” But it was Dad—whose own version was the classic Yogi-ism “It ain’t over ’til it’s over”—who made them believe.

Absentee father? A noncaring father? Forget about it. As insular as he was, he always would make sure we would spend time together. My mind is filled with scattered moments of those times. Not just the road trips. Like when we sat in our den watching Honeymooners repeats, which were on all the time on New York TV. He’d be almost on the floor in laughter, which was something to see because it was infectious. Later, in the ’70s, he saw the Dudley Moore comedy Arthur over and over. He said it was his favorite movie. Since it was about getting caught between the moon and New York City, I guess he could identify with it.

What I knew, but had to relearn, was that Dad had an innate instinct of what was right and wrong as well as one of the sharpest minds ever. The smartest Yogi-ism he ever said was “You can’t hit and think at the same time,” something I found out in my career. Boy, did I find out. I also found out the truth in a similar one: “Slump? I ain’t in no slump. I just ain’t hitting.” Another Yogi-ism? Maybe. But for a man bred as a perfect baseball machine, without ever looking anything like one, these kinds of remarks were a looking glass into why he was. In the mind of Yogi Berra, if he was down, nothing on God’s green earth was going to keep him down for long. And nothing did, until almost every organ in his body shut down. And it took ninety very full and wonderful years for that to happen.