Would there even be a baseball season for Yogi Berra—or any fan of America’s Pastime—to follow in 1942?
That’s the question the owners of the sport’s 16 teams are asking each other soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Able-bodied men are rapidly being drafted and rationing of essential materials—from gasoline to milk, cheese to nylon—will soon begin. The country’s priorities are changing, and even though baseball provided much-needed relief during the Great Depression, the owners wonder about the future of their business in wartime America.
On January 14, 1942, baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis sends a handwritten letter to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt asking for direction. “The time is approaching when, in ordinary conditions, our teams would be heading for spring training camps,” Landis writes. “However, inasmuch as these are not ordinary times, I venture to ask what you have in mind as to whether professional baseball should continue to operate.”
Landis receives the President’s written answer the very next day. “I honestly feel it would be best for the country to keep baseball going,” writes FDR in what quickly becomes known as the Green Light Letter. “There will be fewer people unemployed and everybody will work longer hours and harder than ever before. And that means that they ought to have a chance for recreation and for taking their minds off their work even more than before.”
It’s a clear recognition of the special place baseball occupies in America. The President has only one request: he’d like baseball to play more night games so Americans working the day shift could see a game. Baseball owners, greatly relieved, schedule more night games, move spring training camps north to cut down on travel and the use of fuel, and prepare for a full season, albeit without many of its stars. More than 70 major league players will go to war in 1942, a number that would reach 384 by 1945. Thousands of minor leaguers will go to war as well.
One player who does not leave is Joe DiMaggio, who as a father of an infant son with his singer–movie star wife Dorothy Arnold is exempt from the draft. But the swift and negative reaction to Joe’s decision not to sign up is a reminder that Italians—even baseball stars—are still not completely welcome in America, especially with the old country now the enemy. When DiMaggio stages a well-publicized holdout, the star receives a telegram from a group of soldiers at Camp Blanding, in Florida: “In the event the Yankees don’t kick in with more than $37,000,” they write, “we cordially invite you to a tryout with the 143rd Infantry, 36th Division, the fightingest regiment in this man’s Army.”
DiMaggio faces an avalanche of boos from the moment the season starts. He even hears them in Yankee Stadium, where the Italian flags that dotted the stands throughout his historic ’41 season—when he hit in a record 56 straight games—are nowhere to be seen. His mail is filled with hateful letters with the same theme: Go back to Italy with the rest of the cowardly wops. Or worse.
DiMaggio, who is also grappling with marital problems, gets off to a slow start and endures the worst season in his brilliant career. Weary of the constant criticism, he’ll enlist next February. Like many in baseball, the 27-year-old star will lose three years of his prime to the war.
Life is worse for DiMaggio’s parents, Rosalia and Giuseppe—two of the 600,000 Italians in America who are not US citizens—back home in San Francisco. They’re classified as “enemy aliens” and have to register with the government, which means being fingerprinted and receiving a photo identification card. They cannot travel outside a five-mile radius from home without their ID cards. They live under an 8 p.m.–6 a.m. curfew, and can no longer own a shortwave radio, camera, or gun. Unbeknownst to Giuseppe, the FBI considers arresting him just to prove that parents of a celebrity won’t get special treatment, then decide against it.
Giuseppe’s fishing boat is confiscated—like those of his fellow Italian fishermen—and San Francisco Bay, where they’ve all fished for a living for decades, is off-limits. The bay is now the site of a naval shipyard, so Giuseppe isn’t even allowed to visit Joe’s restaurant on Fisherman’s Wharf. Enemy aliens—and even many Italian-Americans—aren’t allowed near long stretches of California’s coast, where Japanese subs attacked eight American merchant ships, sinking two, in the weeks after Pearl Harbor. Still, the DiMaggios are thankful they’re not among the 10,000 Italians deemed security risks and forced from their homes on the California coast to housing inland.
Things are not quite as bad for Italians on The Hill in St. Louis, though Pietro and Paulina Berra have plenty of neighbors who are classified as enemy aliens. Anxiety runs high as FBI agents comb the neighborhoods for weeks before they’re convinced the Italian community of The Hill poses no threat. What they don’t uncover is the small band of young men from southern Italy who knock on doors asking for gold wedding bands to melt down and send back home to help support Italy’s fight against the Allies. Like all their friends, Pietro and Paulina slam the door when these men come calling. They are Americans and want no doubts about where their loyalties lie.
Everyone on The Hill has heard about the tens of thousands of Japanese immigrants and their children—including some born in America—who’ve been sent to internment camps in remote parts of the nation and worry about suffering the same fate. That worry only grows worse in March of 1942, after the FBI arrests renowned Metropolitan Opera star Ezio Pinza in his Westchester County, New York home. Pinza is interrogated without a lawyer and held in an Ellis Island detention center for 11 weeks, a story that receives heavy play nationwide.
The opera star was four months shy of becoming an American citizen. If the government locks up someone as widely known as Pinza, how can any Italian in America feel safe? Indeed, by June the FBI announces more than 1,500 Italian “enemy aliens” have been arrested.
Parents on The Hill also worry about their sons going off to war, but that’s not on the minds of the Berras’ youngest son and his good friend across the street, who are both too young for the draft. In mid-spring of 1942, Joey Garagiola hugs his family, says goodbye to his best friend, and boards a train to Springfield to begin his professional baseball career. Garagiola’s departure is bittersweet for Yogi, now 17, who is still puzzled that the Cardinals don’t want him, too.
But he’s excited to be back in a Stockham uniform when the American Legion season begins in June, and this time he starts the season behind the plate. “No one else wanted to do it,” Berra tells friends, and he remains there until midseason, when he breaks a finger and splits his time between third base and right field. But no matter where Yogi plays—and Yogi is what all his teammates call him—Berra is hitting the ball even better than last season, broken finger and all.
That’s what American Legion director Leo Browne tells sportswriter Bob Burnes on one of his frequent visits to the sports department of the St. Louis Globe-Democrat. “I’ve got a ballplayer out there I’d like you to see,” Browne tells Burnes, perhaps the city’s top sportswriter. “He does everything wrong, yet it comes out right! We’ve tried him at every position except pitching, and he looks as good at one as he does at the others. He swings at everything in sight. His form is all wrong and coaches can’t make him wait at the plate, but he’s the best hitter I’ve ever seen.
“His name is Yogi something or other.”
Burnes turns up at Forest Park a few days later to see the player his friend is so excited about. “Yogi, this here is Bob Burnes from the Globe-Democrat,” Browne tells Berra, who shakes hands with the writer while watching the pregame action on the field. It’s batting practice, and given Yogi’s scowl, it’s obvious to Burnes the somewhat odd-looking young man standing before him would prefer to be in the batting cage rather than meeting a sportswriter. A few awkward minutes later, Berra returns to the field and Burnes takes a seat, ready to be impressed.
But after five innings, Burnes strolls over to Browne. Berra had trouble with almost everything hit his way at third base, wrestling the ball to the ground rather than catching it. He had one solid hit, but it was the strikeout on a pitch over his head that stuck with Burnes. “Leo, I think you’ve oversold this kid,” says Burnes, who walks away, never thinking one day he and Berra would become fast friends.
Yogi has precious few bad days as Stockham once again rolls to the city and state titles, winning a spot in the American Legion national tournament. Wearing old uniforms borrowed from the Cardinals, Stockham opens by crushing East Chicago, Indiana, 25–0, in St. Joseph, four hours away in the northwest corner of the state. Berra astounds everyone in Phil Welch Stadium right from the start, blasting a three-run first-inning homer over the 345-foot sign in right field and clear out of the stadium. No teenager has ever done that. By the regional title game’s end, Yogi’s hit for the cycle—knocking out a single, double, and triple to go along with his home run—and batted in 10 runs.
Berra is just as lethal in the Legion sectionals in Russell, Kansas, the following week, slamming four doubles, a triple, and another home run as Stockham sweeps both games to reach the national final four in Hastings, Nebraska, for the second straight season. And that’s where Stockham’s season ends again, losing two of three games to a team from Los Angeles led by star shortstop Gene Mauch, who would become a journeyman infielder for nine major league seasons before embarking on a 26-year managerial career. Los Angeles goes on to win the national title, but many fans leave talking about Berra’s steal of home, which Yogi managed without a slide.
Berra heads back to The Hill with both his reputation and his awareness of the world outside St. Louis blossoming. After two seasons, he’s grown close to many of his teammates, the first non-Italian friends he’s ever had. He heard some ethnic slurs from the stands in Kansas and Nebraska, but he also met people from different backgrounds he liked very much. His father might still think baseball is a lazy man’s game, but Yogi’s travels with Stockham have given him a glimpse of the world outside The Hill. And he’s intrigued.
He’s eager to trade stories with his best friend when Garagiola returns from Springfield, where he hit .254 in 67 games, playing catcher well enough to earn a promotion to Double-A ball for next season. The two friends fall back into their regular pattern, playing cards with their pals, taking in movies, and keeping a close watch on the Cardinals, who are having a great season while rumors swirl that GM Branch Rickey will soon be leaving. Rickey’s squabbles with owner Sam Breadon have spilled onto the pages of the local papers, and the Dodgers, whose current GM Larry MacPhail is rejoining the Army as a lieutenant colonel, are said to be interested. Neither Yogi nor Joe knows what to make of the Rickey rumors.
Despite the loss of players to the military, it had been an interesting baseball season. Major league baseball held many fund-raisers for the war effort, the most memorable coming in August when Babe Ruth, now 48 years old, donned a uniform for the first time in seven years and faced 54-year-old Hall of Fame pitcher Walter Johnson at Yankee Stadium. The Babe had enough left to send a ball sailing into the right field stands, tipping his cap repeatedly as he rounded the bases to thunderous applause. The game raised $80,000 for the Army-Navy relief fund.
There were also signs all around the fences telling fans where they should go if their stadium came under attack. While baseball did indeed schedule more night games, as FDR had asked, teams along the Eastern Seaboard played most of their games during the day. They were concerned their stadium lights would create silhouettes of nearby shipyards, making them easy targets for German submarines lurking off the US coast.
Ted Williams puts up a Triple Crown season—leading the American League with 36 home runs, 137 runs batted in, and a .356 batting average—but his Red Sox finish nine games behind the Yankees, and he soon leaves to train as a fighter pilot in the Navy. Future Hall of Famer Paul Waner raps his 3,000th hit. And African-Americans Jackie Robinson and pitcher Nate Moreland have a one-day tryout with the Chicago White Sox during spring training that’s kept secret for years.
Despite Joe DiMaggio’s subpar season—his 21 home runs, 114 RBI, and .305 batting average are all the lowest totals of his career to date—the Yankees won 103 games, clinching the American League pennant early. They were favored to win the World Series against the Cardinals, who won 43 of their last 51 games to overtake the Brooklyn Dodgers for the NL pennant in the final two weeks of the season. The Cardinals lost the first game of the Series at Sportsman’s Park, won the next day, then stunned all of baseball by sweeping three games in New York to take the title. Cardinal rookie Johnny Beazley, a 21-game winner during the season, hurled two complete-game wins against New York, then left to enlist in the Army Air Corps.
“Dig that cowbell out of the whatnot closet, neighbor, and dust off that horn,” writes Roy Stockton, who’s covered the Cardinals for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch since 1918. “Those Cardinal baseball players are coming home and they are champions of the world. Think of it. Ten games behind the Dodgers in early August. Conquerors of the fabulous Yankees in early October. What strange things can happen.”
What strange things, indeed. Unbeknownst to Yogi, Leo Browne has sent a letter to his old friend George Weiss, whom the Yankees hired to build a farm system to rival that of the Cardinals. And that is what Weiss has done. The two men go back to Browne’s days as an umpire decades earlier in the Eastern League, where Weiss owned and ran a team in New Haven, Connecticut.
“He’s better than the Garagiola kid the Cardinals signed,” Browne wrote to Weiss. “All he wants is a $500 bonus. Whatever you want to pay him a month, he’ll take it.”
Weiss, a smart, driven man who battles his weight and maintains an indifference to the feelings of others, is the rising star of the Yankee organization. He tells bullpen coach John Schulte, a resident of St. Louis, to sign Berra to a minor league contract—with a $500 bonus—if Browne’s story checks out. Schulte talks to Browne, Stockham manager Jack Maguire, and a few other St. Louis friends and learns that Browne’s take on Berra is shared by all. In late October, he knocks on the door at 5447 Elizabeth Avenue, introduces himself, and tells Yogi the Yankees want to offer him a contract to play for their minor league team in Norfolk, Virginia.
“We’ll pay you $90 a month,” the Yankee coach says, “with a $500 bonus.”
Yogi can hardly believe this is happening. These are the Yankees, the team of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, and, of course, Joe DiMaggio, the most famous Italian in all of baseball. Fact is, the Yankees have a long history of signing Italian players, starting with second baseman Tony Lazzeri in 1925, then shortstop Frankie Crosetti five years later. The two infielders were known as the Big Dago and the Little Dago for the six seasons they anchored the Yankee infield. DiMaggio was simply the Dago. Up-and-coming shortstop Phil Rizzuto has played in Yankee pinstripes the last two seasons and will soon leave for the Navy. If Pietro doesn’t quite appreciate baseball and its role in America, he understands his son will be among many of his own people.
And he understands the value of what the Yankees are offering. Most of the houses on The Hill still cost about $2,500. The bonus New York has just put on the table will pay off most of the mortgage remaining on Pietro’s home. Maybe there is something to playing this game of baseball after all.
Pietro signs the contract—Yogi is still underage—not noticing the terms for the bonus are make good: Berra has to be on the Norfolk roster at season’s end to get the $500. But there’s nothing that will distract Yogi now. He knows he’ll turn 18 on May 12 of the 1943 season and will have to sign up for the selective service, but he’ll deal with that when the time comes. Right now, his American Dream is about to become a reality.
Yogi goes back to his job as a tack puller for women’s shoes at Johansen Bros. shoe factory for the winter, and this time there is no wandering off and getting fired. Berra knows he’ll be leaving for spring training in a few months, and his parents can use the money. The job is easy enough: the tacks are there to hold the sole in place until the cement used to attach it to the shoe has dried. His job is to pull out the tacks when the shoe is ready, and he gets paid for each shoe he completes. Yogi makes $35 a week when he starts and $45 by the time he leaves, all of it going to his mother. At least Paulina increases his allowance a full dollar, to $3 a week.
Berra and Joe Garagiola slip outdoors when the temperature permits just to throw the ball around and keep their arms in shape. They hang out with their friends on Elizabeth Avenue, playing cards, talking about the latest radio episode of The Adventures of Superman, and, of course, reliving the Cardinals’ World Series win over the Yankees.
They also listen to the adults worry about the war that many of the older boys on The Hill are already fighting. Yogi’s two oldest brothers, both family men, are exempt. His older brother John is one of several recruits from The Hill who enlist in the Army Air Corps and are stationed at nearby Lambert Field for the duration of the war.
America’s entry into World War II has been rough. In the first 10 months of 1942, German submarines sank more than 500 American merchant ships. In the South Pacific, the Japanese captured the Philippines and controlled most of the western Pacific and large parts of eastern and southern Asia. Rumors that Hitler has ordered the mass killing of Jews in Auschwitz and other death camps spread by the summer and are confirmed by year’s end. For three years, the Allies would never develop a strategy to prevent the Holocaust.
One piece of good news: on October 12, 1942—Columbus Day—Attorney General Francis Biddle announces that Italian nationals are no longer considered enemy aliens. Many on The Hill are relieved but still wary. Things are changing fast: gas is now being rationed—three gallons a week; auto manufacturers stop making cars and start making machines for war; and the draft age soon drops from 21 to 18.
As the days grow warmer, Yogi and Joe have their minds set on baseball. Occasionally Joe would be off on a date; he is very popular with the girls. Yogi is still too shy for dating. But who cares? All he wants to do is count down the weeks and days before his first training camp and listen to his friend describe the quality of players he will face.
“Don’t worry, Lawdie, it’ll be just like the neighborhood,” Joey tells him. “You’ll be the best player on the field.”
And then, a week or so before Berra’s set to leave, there’s a knock on the front door. It’s a man with a telegram from the new Brooklyn Dodger GM, Branch Rickey. Mr. Larry Berra, the telegram reads, the Dodgers request that you report to our spring training camp in Bear Mountain, N.Y. There is a contract with an unspecified bonus to play for the Dodger organization.
Well, don’t that beat all? First no one wants to sign him. Now he has a second offer—from Mr. Rickey, no less. Guess old Branch needs players, with even more minor leaguers than major league players drafted or enlisting in the armed services—more than 4,000 in all. But Rickey is too late. Larry “Yogi” Berra is about to start his career in the Class B Piedmont League, a New York Yankee prospect playing for the Norfolk Tars.
Timing, it appears, is everything. What a difference two years make.
A tired but excited Yogi arrives from St. Louis to the Norfolk Tars’ stadium, finds his way to the clubhouse and then the equipment room. “Hi, I’m Yogi Berra,” he tells the equipment man. “I need my uniform.” The man gives the 17-year-old Berra a quick once-over, then digs out an old, beat-up uniform, cleats, and a rumpled hat. Yogi looks at the well-worn clothes and asks if this is the best he can get. “That’s what we give kids here for a tryout,” the man tells him.
Berra shakes his head and explains he’s the team’s new catcher. The equipment man gives Yogi another look, thinks for a moment, then presents him with a fresh uniform.
The scent of war is everywhere in this small town along the coast of the Chesapeake Bay, which is now home to a wartime Atlantic Fleet and the Fifth Naval District. Both the shipyards and the airfield are expanded, and in a blink Norfolk’s gone from a town of 180,000 to a home for almost 800,000, putting a strain on resources, services, pocketbooks, and sanity.
Hundreds of thousands of young men are here, some building the ships of war, many training to fight the Axis powers and wondering if they will return home alive. German U-boats lurk off the coast of Virginia; two were sunk and its prisoners held at the naval base only weeks before Yogi arrives. A depth charge goes off in a shipyard accident and dozens more ignite, leaving 40 dead—including Elizabeth Korensky, the first WAVE killed in the line of duty—and 18 buildings leveled. The explosion shatters windows in buildings seven miles away.
Restaurants—good and bad—are filled around the clock, and so are the taverns. The town’s buses and trolley cars are so packed that conductors often give up fighting through the crowd to collect tickets. The sidewalks of Granby Street, the town’s main drag, are barely passable, and with all the alcohol flowing in the town’s bars, Yogi is witness to plenty of drunken brawls.
Berra soon finds he can hold his own on the baseball field. Still a month shy of 18, he’s the team’s youngest player, but he’s not bashful about taking charge and plays with such enthusiasm and intensity he often startles his teammates. And sometimes his eagerness amuses them, like the time he crouched behind the plate before realizing he’d forgotten his catcher’s mask. He took good-natured ribbing about that one for weeks.
Same with the foul pop in his very first game. Berra tosses his mask and calls for the ball, circles under it, then watches it fall 10 feet away. But he soon learns how to track a pop-up in the stadium lights against a night sky, and Tars manager Shaky Kain is the latest to marvel how this raw kid can do everything so wrong but have it all turn out so right. It’s not long before Kain makes Berra his starting catcher and a middle-of-the-lineup hitter.
It’s the business of baseball that is Berra’s true education. First is the lesson of his bonus. After a few weeks pass and there’s no mention of his $500, he asks Tars GM Jim Dawson when he’ll get the money. Dawson is surprised. Don’t you know you have to be on the roster at season’s end to collect? he asks Berra, who is clearly surprised—and upset. That’s not what John Schulte told him, he’s sure of that, but it’s right there on the first page of the contract his father signed. This is the last time he’ll ever trust management.
Berra’s not worried about lasting the season, but that $500 sure would have come in handy. The flood of defense workers into this town has sent the price of everything soaring, further than his $90-a-month paycheck—about $75 after taxes—can stretch. He splits a boardinghouse room with pitcher Bob Sucky for $7 a week and eats at luncheonettes and hot dog wagons outside the stadium. But he still finds himself hitting up first baseman Jack Phillips, who always seems to have some extra money, for a few bucks before their twice-monthly payday just so he can eat.
Thank the Lord for women. An older woman comes to every Sunday home game and presents Yogi with a big Italian hero filled with lunch meats and cheese. He has to resist gobbling it down too fast. And he can always count on Momma, worried that her son is going hungry, to send $10 or $15 every few weeks. Paulina never fails to include a note.
“Don’t let your father know about this,” she writes in Italian, “or he’ll make you come home.”
Still, Yogi gets so desperate one night he decides to stage a strike. Knowing the team’s two other catchers are injured and cannot play, Berra rolls on the clubhouse floor and moans until his manager rushes over to find out what’s wrong.
“It’s my stomach; it hurts,” Yogi says. “I don’t think I can play tonight.”
Shaky Kain reaches into his pocket, pulls out a few dollars, and stuffs them into Berra’s hand. Yogi rushes out, buys a few burgers at the first stand he finds, and wolfs them down between gulps from two bottles of Coke. Fully sated, he belts out a couple of hits in a Norfolk win.
Yogi is convinced the league is using a deadened ball—more than once he swings, connects, and thinks the ball is headed over the fence only to see it settle into an outfielder’s glove. And that makes a two-game stretch against Roanoke almost unexplainable. Berra takes a wrecking ball to the Roanoke pitching staff, belting two home runs, two doubles, and two singles in seven at-bats in the first game, knocking in 13 runs. The next day he goes 5-for-5—a homer, two doubles, two singles—and knocks in 10 more runs. That’s 23 RBI in two games. His bonus never looked more secure.
About the only thing that could keep him from finishing the season is the war, which continues to rage in both Europe and South Asia. Berra turns 18 on May 12, but the St. Louis draft board is able to fill its quota without ending the first baseball season of a favorite son. They’ll wait until the season is all but over before sending Yogi’s paperwork to Virginia, and if he’s lucky, maybe he can play exhibition baseball for the troops, as so many major leaguers are doing.
Indeed, President Roosevelt’s belief in the benefits of baseball extends to all branches of the military, which are instructed to form teams of pro baseball players under their command and stage exhibition games to entertain the troops. And one of the very best teams is playing right up the road at the Norfolk Naval Training Station. Base commander Captain Henry McClure wasn’t much of a baseball fan when the war started, but he recognized straightaway how much the game lifted the spirits of the 16,000 officers and sailors under his command. McClure puts Chief Warrant Officer Gary Bodie in charge of finding any professional ballplayer in a Navy uniform and bringing him to Norfolk to play ball for the Bluejackets, the base team.
And Bodie doesn’t disappoint. He brings in Yankee Phil Rizzuto to play shortstop and Red Sox star Dom DiMaggio—Joe D’s younger brother—to man center field. Cleveland’s Eddie Robinson arrives to play first base, and Bodie gets Cardinal catcher Don Padgett to handle a pitching staff that features Detroit’s Freddie Hutchinson. The Bluejackets are good enough to beat many of the major league teams who come down to Norfolk to play exhibition games and raise money for the war. Oftentimes, the 3,500-seat brick-walled stadium cannot handle the demand for tickets.
Berra and the Tars play three exhibition games against the Bluejackets at McClure’s stadium in the early spring of ’43. After the final game, Bodie seeks out Yogi. “Son, when are you going to be eligible for the draft?” Bodie asks him.
“My birthday is May 12, but I’m hoping not to be drafted until after the season,” Yogi answers. “I asked them to send the paperwork here to Virginia.”
“Tell them you want to join the Navy,” Bodie says. “I may be losing some of my players and you could have a chance to play ball.”
Yogi almost floats back to the boardinghouse that day, but there is one more lesson to be learned in Norfolk. The better Berra plays, the harder the opposing bench jockeys—and the loudest and most foulmouthed fans—go after him. He’s used to being mocked for his looks, but this is different. These taunts are directed at his heritage. Wop, dago, and guinea are about the kindest things he hears.
Kain watches his prized player’s frustration rise as the slurs grow louder, nastier, and more frequent. Too often, Berra’s face is flushed with rage, and he’s slamming bats when he returns to the dugout. It doesn’t help that the Piedmont League’s six ballparks are cozy, with oh-so-close-to-the-field stands, so everyone can hear the verbal assaults. Many in this part of the country still consider Italians nonwhite; only blacks and Jews are held in lower regard.
Finally, Kain decides to intervene. “Look, this is going to happen, more to you than others because you’re Italian,” Kain says, “and in language worse than what you’ve already heard.” Kain tells Yogi the more he reacts, the worse it’s going to get. “They’re the characters who pay your salary. Let ’em holler all they want. Figure they’re entitled.
“If you ever show them, or show anyone, that they’re getting to you, you’re dead. Ignore it. That’s what you gotta do. Ignore it.”
Berra grits his teeth and heeds his manager’s advice. The Tars finish third, good enough to make the playoffs, and Yogi hits .253 in 111 games, with seven home runs—one behind teammate and league leader Jack Phillips—and 17 doubles. He shows off his speed with eight triples and a strong but scattershot arm, which accounts for most of his league-high 16 errors. He adds four home runs in the 10 games it takes Norfolk to win the league’s two-round playoff. It’s a performance that stamps Yogi as a bona fide prospect—and gets him that $500 check, too.
Soon after the playoffs end, Berra receives a letter instructing him to report to Richmond for his preinduction physical. His number has come up, and it’s time to serve in a different uniform. But at least he won’t have to fight against the country of his ancestors. Italy formally surrendered on September 8, 1943—Mussolini fled to lead the resistance against the Allies in German-held northern Italy—and on October 13 the new Italian government declares war on Germany.
Yogi remembers Bodie’s advice when the admitting officer in Richmond asks what branch of the military he wants to join.
“The Navy,” Yogi answers quickly. But wait. Berra asks when he has to report back to Norfolk. One week, he’s told. How long would it be if he joins the Army? “Four weeks,” the officer says.
Four weeks of Momma’s cooking—and all that time with his family—is just too hard to turn down. Baseball can wait.
“Well, I changed my mind,” Yogi says, “I want to join the Army.”
Alas, it’s already too late.
“Sorry son,” the officer tells him.
“You’re in the Navy now.”