Yogi Berra is sitting in a chair across from J. G. Taylor Spink, one of baseball’s most influential men, in the plush lobby of the Hotel Adams in Phoenix. Yogi has a wide grin on his face, and for good reason. It’s the second week of March, and he’s finally joined his teammates in spring training for the 1951 season. His wife is three months pregnant with their second child, still a closely held family secret.
And in the pocket of his jacket is a Yankee contract for $28,500, making the 25-year-old the highest-paid catcher in team history and one of the highest-paid players in the game.
Berra doesn’t like doing interviews, but he doesn’t mind talking to the 62-year-old Spink, the editor and publisher of the Sporting News, whom he’s known for years. Spink was all of 26—the age Yogi will reach this May—when he took over the weekly baseball-centric newspaper after his father died suddenly in 1914. Spink quickly became known for his love of the game, his dedication to detail, and his long hours of work.
The result: his St. Louis–based publication is so indispensable to players, coaches, and the game’s fans it’s now known as “the Bible of Baseball.” Each week, players eagerly await the arrival of the Sporting News to check out how their competitors in the minor leagues are progressing. Spink is widely recognized as Commissioner Happy Chandler’s unofficial chief adviser, and all news that comes out of the Commissioner’s office appears in the Sporting News first. This would upset the nation’s top newspaper writers more if so many of them didn’t freelance for Spink’s publication.
Yogi reads the Sporting News cover to cover every week. He knows this interview will be a Page 1 story. Last season established him as one of the finest players in the game, the best player on a team that won the World Series for the third time in his four-year career. Now he’s ready to answer any question Spink wants to ask.
Spink, long one of St. Louis’ leading citizens, starts by telling Yogi he’s disappointed the star catcher is leaving his hometown, a decision the Berras announced one day after Yogi signed his new contract. “But I understand,” says Spink, acknowledging the opportunities to cash in on fame in New York City.
“I got responsibilities,” Berra says. “I got to support my mom and dad. My three brothers are married and have their own financial problems. I support the house. I have a wife and a son.
“And I have to dress like a Yankee, live like a Yankee, act like a Yankee. That takes dough.”
Yogi is not the only Berra who has to present well in public. Many of the players’ wives come to home games and sit in their own special rows of seats in the loge section. They, too, are expected to dress well, especially Carmen Berra, whom General Manager George Weiss often refers to as “the perfect Yankee wife.” Carmen always dresses in the latest style, has her hair done at a top salon in Manhattan, and gets clothes and makeup tips from the fashion-model wife of a close friend.
Well, Yogi tells Spink, all that takes dough, too.
“St. Louis is a great place,” Berra says. “The Hill, my friends—it won’t be easy to pull up stakes and move east. But if I spend my winters in New York, I believe I can make better connections than I could in St. Louis.
“Carmen likes New York, and I love the place. We’re going to buy a home in New Jersey where Larry Jr. can grow up in the country and I can take the George Washington Bridge to the Stadium in about half an hour.”
Berra had to stage another holdout to get the contract he wanted, and this time he did not leave home until Weiss hit his number. Carmen and Yogi wanted $40,000 and were willing to settle for $28,000. The Yankees’ first offer—$22,000—wasn’t even close. So the Berras wrote a letter to Weiss, telling the GM it was time to stop telling Yogi he was too young to be highly paid and to stop counting the World Series check as part of his salary—as if winning the title each season was a given. Players should be rewarded for winning the World Series, they wrote, not penalized.
If the Yankees weren’t going to pay big after Berra turned in a season for the ages, Carmen and Yogi reasoned, when would they? Weiss sent back another offer and a letter of his own. “The club appreciates what you are doing for us and wants to be fair,” Weiss wrote. “We hope you will find this adjusted contract satisfactory.” The offer was $25,000.
This time Berra responded with a phone call to New York.
“I want $40,000,” Berra said.
“No,” Weiss said.
End of discussion.
Yogi spends the next few weeks playing golf with Stan Musial and cards with his friends when he isn’t going to hockey and basketball games. Sometimes he and Carmen go to her family’s farm in Howes Mill; Yogi enjoys getting up early and collecting eggs from the henhouse with Carmen’s mother Barbara, then pitching hay later in the day with Carmen’s father Ernest Short. Yogi likes the work and loves the anonymity and solitude.
Berra was splitting his time between The Hill and the farm in mid-February when the Yankees opened training camp in Phoenix—co-owner Del Webb traded training sites with Giants owner Horace Stoneham so he could show off his championship team in his hometown. The silence was broken a week or so later when Yankee Assistant GM Roy Hamey flew into St. Louis to see Berra. Meet me at Ruggeri’s on The Hill, Yogi told him.
Berra greeted Hamey as if Yogi were still Ruggeri’s headwaiter. “I can give you a good seat. Or would you prefer sitting with a few guys who like to talk baseball?” Berra said.
“I don’t want to eat,” a flustered Hamey said. “I just want to talk to you about your contract.”
Yogi didn’t blink. “The steak here is good,” he said, “and the spaghetti is marvelous.” After several more tries, Hamey finally succeeded in getting Yogi to talk business.
“I want $40,000,” Berra told Hamey.
“We’re not going higher than $25,000,” Hamey said.
Sorry, Berra replied, but that wasn’t nearly enough.
“Well,” Hamey said, “we are at an impasse.”
“What the hell is an impasse?” Yogi asked.
Berra stood his ground, and on February 28—a full 13 days after pitchers and catchers reported to training camp—Weiss called again.
“Look, why don’t we compromise a little bit?” he said. Yogi said sure, he’d sign for $35,000. Weiss countered with $26,000—almost a $10,000 raise. After some additional discussion—and raised voices—Weiss boosted the offer to $28,500. “Done,” said Yogi, who jumped on a plane to Phoenix the very next day.
“You’ve come along pretty fast financially,” says Spink.
“They always told me I would get money if I did the job. Well, I did the job, and I wanted my money,” says Yogi, who knew he had plenty of leverage. He’s the most popular player for a franchise undergoing a transition, something Joe DiMaggio made abundantly clear the night of March 3, when he told a small group of reporters this would be his last season. The story caught everyone—especially Yankee management—by surprise.
“Joe has not discussed this with any club official,” Weiss told reporters who woke him up with the news. “We certainly hope he reconsiders.” Stengel also said he hoped his center fielder would change his mind, even though every Yankee beat writer knew Casey was counting the days until he no longer had to endure the big guy’s mood swings.
DiMaggio’s been walking back his words ever since, insisting he meant this could be his last season, but it’s been clear in these first few weeks of spring training that Joe’s 36-year-old body is betraying him. Yes, he finished last season fast, raising hopes of more good years to come, but so far Joe has never looked so ordinary.
“How many games will DiMaggio play this season?” Spink asks.
“It’s hard to predict anything with Joe,” says Berra, who’s managed to steer clear of the barely concealed feud between Stengel, whom he respects, and DiMaggio, whom he still holds in awe. “He’s a great athlete with a lot of determination. He can do anything he puts his mind to.”
Both men know that Yankee management is hoping teenage phenom Mickey Mantle, who spent last year playing shortstop and hitting .383 for their Class C team, will soon be ready to take DiMaggio’s place in center field. Longtime DiMaggio sidekick Tommy Henrich, who retired right before spring training and signed on as a coach, has been tasked with transforming Mantle into an outfielder.
Berra met Mantle soon after reporting on March 1 and liked him instantly. They’re both midwestern boys who are intensely competitive on the field, shy and withdrawn everywhere else. And neither man has much of an education. But that’s where the similarities end. Mantle is blond, blue-eyed, and handsome. Berra is still enduring jokes about his appearance. The 19-year-old Mantle launches majestic fly balls—from both sides of the plate—that seem to disappear on the horizon. Yogi’s home runs are line drives that rocket over the fence. Berra still has surprising speed; Mantle is the fastest player anyone in this camp has ever seen.
But while Mantle is dripping with star power—and Stengel wants him on his roster for the 1951 season—Weiss insists jumping four levels from Class C to the big leagues is just too much. A decision won’t be made until the end of camp.
And there is a great deal at stake behind every decision Stengel and Weiss make—a place in baseball history and the big crowds that go with it. Only one team has won three straight World Series titles—the Joe McCarthy Yankees, who won four championships in DiMaggio’s first four seasons. But the young DiMaggio—who hit .341 from 1936 to 1939 while averaging 198 hits, 34 home runs, and 140 RBI—is a distant memory. This DiMaggio is suffering all sorts of aches, pains, and injuries and can no longer dominate a season.
This team’s defining star is Berra, the one player who has to produce—both at the plate and behind it—if this team is going to make history. And Berra doesn’t have DiMaggio’s supporting cast. Sure, Phil Rizzuto should still provide stellar defense at shortstop. And there’s every reason to believe the Big 3—All-Star pitchers Vic Raschi, Allie Reynolds, and Eddie Lopat—can duplicate last season’s combined 55 wins and 46 complete games.
But reliever Joe Page looks as bad as he did last season; he will be released in mid-May. Left-hander Tommy Byrne is as wild as ever; he’ll be traded by midseason. And rookie sensation Whitey Ford, 9–1 after being called up in late June last season, was drafted by the Army this past November for the rapidly escalating Korean War.
With all these questions, Spink says, is it any wonder most baseball writers are calling Boston the team to beat—again—in the American League?
“No question about it,” Berra tells Spink, “the Red Sox are going to be really tough.”
Spink asks Berra how many banquets he attended this past offseason. About a dozen, Yogi says, and at each one people are disappointed to find out Berra is neither talkative nor funny.
He asks the catcher about his weight. “I’m right where I should be,” Berra tells him. “I minded my diet, but it wasn’t easy.”
How does Yogi explain the exceptional performance he turned in a year ago? “I didn’t get hurt so much,” he answers. “Maybe because I have more experience.”
The two men have been talking for almost an hour, and Yogi has a question of his own to ask before he leaves for the ballpark. He reaches into his jacket pocket, pulls out a newspaper clipping, and shows Spink the headline: BABE RUTH HAD HIS LOU GEHRIG, JOE DIMAGGIO’S GOT HIS YOGI BERRA.
Spink is not surprised to see a headline placing Berra beside the three greatest players in Yankee history. But Berra is puzzled.
“What does this mean?” Berra asks him. “Is it a boost or a knock?”
The journalist assures Yogi the headline is a compliment. “Sometimes it’s tough to tell what these guys write about me,” Yogi tells Spink. “My wife, she don’t like stories which make me out to be a dope. I don’t like them myself.”
Spink smiles. “Yogi,” he says, “anyone who’s pulled himself up from five grand to almost $30,000 hardly belongs in the dopey class.”
Berra laughs, a look of relief spreading across his broad face. Then he puts the clipping back in his pocket, rises, and sticks the comic book that’s been at his side into the back pocket of his pants. It’s time to head to the ballpark.
“You know, I like spring training,” Yogi says as the writer and the catcher walk toward the door. “I suppose in another 10 years I will be grousing about it like them veterans around here do now. But not yet.
“Baseball is still fun.”