The Yankees break their Phoenix training camp in mid-March for a 12-game exhibition tour through California, playing in all the Pacific Coast League parks Joe DiMaggio starred in as a teenager. This is supposed to be a victory tour for DiMaggio, but the fans who pack every stadium to see Joltin’ Joe are instead treated to the Yankee superstars of the present and future: Yogi Berra, who rains base hits at every stop, and Mickey Mantle, who belts booming home runs from both sides of the plate. Yogi is hitting better than .400 and is delighted when the team spends a day in Hollywood. Berra tours the studios and chats with Spencer Tracy, Red Skelton, and Greer Garson, a baseball fan who will soon become a pen pal; the two stars will exchange letters for years.
The return to familiar surroundings does little to help DiMaggio find his hitting stroke, and he grows increasingly annoyed when reporters ask him about Mantle at every stop. But there’s plenty to discuss. At San Francisco’s Seals Stadium, Mickey hits one over the bleachers and clear out of the park. At the University of Southern California, Mantle belts a home run from each side of the plate, one sailing out of the stadium and over an adjoining field house, leading to a new Stengel superlative.
“I have my outfielder, Mr. Mantle,” says Casey, “who hits balls over buildings.”
Stengel also wins his battle with Weiss. Mantle, who finishes spring training hitting .387 with a team-high nine home runs and 28 RBI, will be the team’s starting right fielder for the 1951 season home opener against the Red Sox on April 17. It seems everyone in New York wants to see the teenage star, including Carmen Berra, who can’t help but wonder about the player who is stealing headlines from her husband. The writers have described Mickey as an Adonis in pinstripes, and Carmen is eager to meet the new kid when she arrives at the Concourse Plaza Hotel in the Bronx for the team’s annual Welcome Home Luncheon.
Carmen is waiting for Yogi in the lobby when an elevator door opens and out walks Mickey, bashfully staring at the floor as he walks past Mrs. Berra.
“Oh, my God,” Carmen says to herself. “Look at this boy!”
The Yankee season opener in front of President Harry Truman in Washington is rained out, but Opening Day at Yankee Stadium is a festive affair, with 44,860 fans watching Casey raise another World Series banner up the flagpole in center field. American League President Will Harridge presents the MVP plaque to Rizzuto. Ford, on leave from the Army, throws out the first pitch three days after marrying his hometown girlfriend Joan Foran, and Vic Raschi shuts out Boston on six hits for a 5–0 win.
Berra, again hitting fifth behind DiMaggio, has a single and a run batted in, then drives into Manhattan with Rizzuto to wave to the audience on Milton Berle’s Texaco Star Theater, the top-rated show on television. Berle has never paid celebrities to appear on his one-hour variety show, but Frank Scott negotiated a $500 fee for each of his two clients, with the promise of more paydays to come.
It only takes a few games to confirm Yogi is more than able to carry the offense for this team. The Yankees grab the league lead on April 29, the day after Berra begins a 13-game hitting streak during which he hits .407 with four home runs and 12 RBI. Yogi plays 44 of the team’s first 45 games as Stengel again leans heavily on the player he continues to call his “assistant manager.” Yogi catches both games of doubleheaders against the A’s on May 13—the day after he turns 26—and again on May 27. Three days later he catches a doubleheader against the Red Sox—all 15 innings of an 11–10 loss that knocks the Yankees out of first place—then the entire 9–4 second-game loss.
Despite the heavy workload, Berra hits .324 for the month of May and starts June with four homers in eight games. On June 2, Yogi hits a 12th-inning home run to beat Detroit, 8–7, breaking a four-game losing streak. Another homer starts an 8–2 rout of Cleveland and snaps a three-game losing streak. Berra’s only real rest comes when he misses three games after suffering a one-inch gash over his left eye on June 7 in a pregame relay-throw competition gone awry.
Berra uses his downtime to sign papers for a house in Woodcliff Lake in upscale Bergen County, New Jersey, a seven-room ranch on a half-acre lot that should be built by the time Carmen, now almost six months pregnant, delivers their second child. All his St. Louis pals who predicted Yogi would never leave The Hill misjudged their friend and his ambitions. The poorly educated kid who used to swipe fruit and vegetables during the Depression will soon be living among New York City executives who are thrilled just to claim they know a famous baseball player.
Berra’s new life on the East Coast—and as the prime hitter in the Yankee lineup—is quickly taking shape.
Yogi is back in uniform on June 10 to catch another doubleheader, collecting four hits in a split of the two games against the White Sox. Berra’s superior play, the pitching of the Big 3—Vic Raschi, Allie Reynolds, and Eddie Lopat—and Stengel’s clever mixing and matching of lineups have the Yankees in second place, just 2½ games behind Chicago. But theirs is an unhappy clubhouse.
One source of discomfort: Mickey Mantle—whose bat goes cold as pitchers learn his weaknesses—reveals an explosive temper. On May 18, Mickey was still the superstar in waiting, hitting .316 with four home runs and a team-high 26 RBI. But he hits just .197 without a homer in his next 21 games, striking out 21 times and smashing dugout bat racks and water coolers as his failures mount. Mantle’s problems at the plate lead to defensive lapses in the field, prompting Lopat to corner him in the dugout after one especially bad mistake.
“You want to play?” the veteran pitcher shouted. “If not, get your ass the hell out of here. We don’t need guys like you. We want to win.”
Berra and Rizzuto, who have befriended the rookie, watch helplessly as writers report Mantle’s every temper tantrum and the fans boo his every mistake. And they’re relieved when Weiss mercifully sends Mickey to Triple-A Kansas City on July 13 after a three-strikeout game.
Yogi is still convinced Mantle, who won’t turn 20 until late October, is destined to be a star. He’s less certain that DiMaggio will even make it through this season. DiMaggio misses the first half of May with neck spasms and another two weeks in June with pulled muscles in his legs. On June 16 he learns his ailing mother has slipped into a coma and flies to San Francisco to be at her side when she passes two days later. He returns June 23 and continues his mediocre play, entering July hitting .278.
From his spot in the on-deck circle, Berra sees DiMaggio’s problem: Joe just can’t get around on a good fastball, which is all pitchers are throwing him. Not that Yogi—or any Yankee—will dare tell Joe, who grows more withdrawn with every poor performance. But how much longer can a Yankee team seeking another World Series title afford a cleanup hitter who hit just three home runs in May and one the entire month of June?
It almost makes Yogi uneasy when he congratulates DiMaggio on the rare day the Big Dago gets a key hit, like his two-run homer that breaks open a tight game against the Tigers on May 24. The hit raises DiMaggio’s average to .310. It’s the last time Joe’s average will be .300 or better.
Still, nothing prepares Yogi for what DiMaggio tells him on an early July afternoon when he finds himself alone in a postgame clubhouse with Joe and Phil Rizzuto. DiMag looks around to make sure the room is empty, then quietly tells his two teammates he’s finished.
“This is my final season,” DiMaggio says. “I’m done.”
“Joe,” Yogi says, “you’ll never quit.”
DiMaggio stares at Berra before replying. “If I play one game with the Yankees next season, I’ll give you $500,” DiMaggio says. “And you don’t have to give me anything if I don’t.” DiMaggio and Berra shake hands on their bet, and Yogi laughs as the three men leave the clubhouse, secure in his belief that Joe will turn this season around and return next year.
But his certainty vanishes on July 7, when Stengel does the unthinkable: he humiliates DiMaggio before a big crowd at Fenway Park. Yogi is on the bench with a sore back, the last of five games he’s missed after a collision at the plate, when the Yankees take the field in the home half of the third. And he’s stunned when he hears Casey tell rookie Jackie Jensen to run out to center field and replace Joe D—though not nearly as stunned as DiMaggio. Joe listens to Jensen in disbelief, stands in place for a few seconds, then jogs to the Yankee dugout, down its steps, and straight into the clubhouse.
DiMaggio and Stengel don’t discuss the manager’s decision—Casey later tells reporters he thought his aging star was limping—but no explanation will satisfy Joe, whose quiet rage will hang over this team for the rest of the season. None of this is lost on the media. The atmosphere around the Yankees, writes Milton Gross of the New York Post, “is a frigid one—all because Joe, always a strange man, is now living in a shell that is virtually impenetrable.”
The July 10 All-Star Game in Detroit should have served as a temporary respite from the tension-filled atmosphere around his team. But Stengel again insults DiMaggio, adding him to the All-Star team only to keep him riveted to the bench. It doesn’t help that Casey told reporters he planned to rest Berra, the fans’ overwhelming choice to start at catcher, then plays Yogi the entire nine innings—his sore back wrapped in a corset—in the AL’s 8–3 loss.
Allie Reynolds opens the season’s second half by throwing a no-hitter against the Indians. Reynolds also supplies a bit of much-needed comic relief. The big right-hander tries so hard to strike out Bobby Avila for the final out that he falls flat on his face after his delivery. Berra rushes out to check on his pitcher, only to find Reynolds, one of the team’s most serious men, lying on the ground laughing.
“Get up and let’s finish this!” Yogi says. Reynolds strikes out Avila on the next pitch, and this time Yogi runs out to the mound and jumps on his pitcher’s back in celebration.
The Yankees move in and out of first place in July and August, with Reynolds, Lopat, and Raschi nearly unbeatable—the three pitchers will combine for 15 shutouts and 51 complete games. While the press continues to write glowingly about Stengel’s skillful use of his entire roster—the word genius is used liberally—it’s Berra who huddles with the starting pitcher before each game to plot strategy. The same pitchers who once mocked Yogi’s catching skills now rely on his remarkable knowledge of every hitter in the league and his strategic savvy.
Berra continues his heavy workload through the heat of August, catching all but one game—and five of six doubleheaders—while hitting .301 and driving in 23 runs. He also finds time to appear as a mystery guest on the popular television show What’s My Line?—in which four blindfolded celebrities try to guess his identity—as well as sit for a photo shoot for the cover story of Sport, the nation’s most popular sports magazine, and read over copy for a print ad for Prest-O-Lite car batteries.
The prediction Bucky Harris made back in 1947 has come to pass: Yogi Berra is now the most popular Yankee. When people see Yogi on the street, they point, stare, and wave. When headwaiters see Berra and Carmen walk into their restaurants, they promptly escort the couple to the best table, those waiting in line be damned.
Berra opens the final month of the season playing back-to-back doubleheaders, hitting .341 with 10 RBI and five home runs in 12 games. The fifth homer—Berra’s team-high 27th—is a grand slam that beats the Tigers on September 14, ending a three-game slide and pulling second-place New York to a half game behind Cleveland with 15 games to play. Mantle is back from the minors and hitting well, but it’s rookie infielder Gil McDougald—the eventual AL Rookie of the Year—whose bat supports Yogi, hitting .323 after the All-Star break and driving in 34 runs.
The man still not producing is the team’s cleanup hitter. DiMaggio has managed only two home runs in the last 35 games and driven in just 20 runs while leaving almost too many runners in scoring position to count. And when the Yankees drop the next game to Detroit—falling a full game behind the Indians ahead of their crucial two-game showdown at the Stadium—Stengel finally shakes up his lineup. Yogi is now batting cleanup, the spot in the lineup DiMaggio had held for more than a decade. DiMaggio will hit fifth.
Stengel’s moves pay off immediately when Berra opens the first game against Cleveland’s Bob Feller with a booming, run-scoring triple. The Yankees add two more runs and Reynolds holds the Indians to a single run as the game reaches its turning point in the 5th inning. With Mantle on second and two out, Feller intentionally walks Berra to get to DiMaggio, yet another insult for the aging Yankee great.
Feller, still the hardest thrower in the game, quickly gets ahead of DiMaggio—a ball and two strikes—and decides to throw another fastball to finish off Joe. But this time DiMaggio catches Feller’s pitch perfectly and slams a line drive over the head of All-Star center fielder Larry Doby, who chases it all the way to the 457-foot sign, the farthest part of Yankee Stadium. Mantle and Berra trot home while Joe cruises into third with a triple and thunderous applause from the crowd of 68,760. Reynolds makes the four-run lead stand up for a 5–1 win, and now the Yanks are back in first place, .003 percentage points ahead of the Indians.
The Yankees win again the next day, 2–1, with DiMaggio scoring the winning run in the 9th on a daring suicide-squeeze bunt by Rizzuto, and the Yankees take sole possession of first. With 12 games left to play, New York is closing in on history.
Berra and Rizzuto are standing in the Yankee clubhouse, cigars clenched between their teeth, as photographers from every New York newspaper snap their picture. Casey Stengel poses across the room, surrounded by Vic Raschi, Allie Reynolds, and Eddie Lopat, a big smile on each man’s face. It’s September 25, and the Yankees have much to be happy about. They’ve just received word the White Sox beat the Indians—Cleveland’s fourth straight loss—boosting the Yankees’ league lead to three full games with just six left to play. Barring a sudden collapse—like the one Berra’s friends on the team in Brooklyn are now experiencing—Yogi will soon be playing in the fourth World Series of his five-year career.
Every player has a cigar courtesy of Yankee management, a nice gesture to celebrate the birth of Berra’s son Tim, who arrived the night of September 23 as the Yankees were traveling back by train from Boston. The last week of Carmen’s pregnancy had taken a toll on Yogi, who managed just four hits in 28 at-bats. The Yankees were off yesterday, giving Berra a chance to visit with Carmen at the hospital and spend time with his growing family.
“Maybe now you’ll start hitting again,” Stengel shouts over to Berra, who just smiles in agreement. Berra, whose 27 home runs are one shy of his career high, is the only Yankee who will finish with more than 15 homers. And Stengel knows just how fortunate he is that this was only the second time Berra went as many as three games without a base hit all season. Yogi is hitting .291 with 27 home runs and 85 RBI, and is a favorite to win his first MVP award.
Five days later it’s Yogi’s glove that everyone in Yankee Stadium is focusing on as Berra settles under a pop-up behind home plate off the bat of Boston’s Ted Williams. There are two outs in the 9th inning, the Yanks hold an 8–0 lead, and once Berra catches this ball, the team will clinch a tie for the AL pennant in the most extraordinary way—the final out will make Allie Reynolds only the second pitcher to throw two no-hitters in the same season.
And history is all anyone is thinking about as Yogi pounds his glove, ready to make the catch. “Berra’s underneath it,” announcer Mel Allen shouts into his microphone. “This could be it!” But just then, a sudden gust of autumn wind catches the ball and Berra realizes he’s in trouble. Out stretches Yogi’s left arm as the ball drifts away, bounces off his glove, and both Berra and the ball fall to the ground.
“Yogiiii!” screams Carmen Berra, who’s listening to the game in her hospital bed. Several nurses rush into her room. “My husband dropped the ball,” she tells the relieved medical staff.
Reynolds, who made a late dash to catch the ball and wound up stepping on Berra’s right hand, reaches for Yogi’s arm, pulls up the distraught catcher, and puts his right arm around his teammate’s shoulder. “Don’t worry about it, Yog,” says Reynolds. “We’ll get him.”
Williams, waiting for Berra at the plate, is not nearly as kind. “You son of a bitch, you’ve put me in one hell of a fix,” the game’s best hitter tells Berra. “Even though your man has a no-hitter, I’ve got to bear down even more than before. You blew it!”
Berra squats down and calls for a high fastball, the same pitch Reynolds just threw. Williams is an excellent fastball hitter, but Reynolds nods in agreement, winds up, and delivers a hard fastball in the same spot as the previous pitch. Incredibly, he gets the same result, as Williams sends a towering pop foul back toward the Yankee dugout. Every Yankee is on his feet, shouting encouragement or instructions to Yogi as the ball descends just a few feet from the New York dugout.
“You got plenty of room, Yogi,” Berra hears as he moves perilously close to the edge of the dugout.
What if I drop this one? Berra thinks as the foul pop seems to take forever to come down. But there is no gust of wind this time, and when the ball finally hits Yogi’s mitt, he squeezes it tightly. This time Reynolds gives his catcher a big bear hug, and soon the entire team is jumping on Reynolds and Berra, excited to be part of baseball history.
The Reynolds no-hitter is the first game of a doubleheader. The Yankees make quick work of the Red Sox in the second game, winning 11–3 to wrap up the pennant. There’s the usual backslapping, hugs, and shouts in the postgame locker room crowded with media, celebrities, and well-wishers. But it is hard not to notice this season’s pennant celebration is more subdued than the previous two, the feeling more like relief than excitement.
Berra sits in front of his locker, his first-game blunder still fresh in his mind. A few lockers down he hears reporters peppering DiMaggio with questions about his future. “I honestly don’t know about next year,” Joe says wearily. “Right now we have some unfinished business—the World Series—and I don’t care whether it will be against the Giants or Dodgers.”
It’s the New York Giants who emerge as the last team standing between the Yankees and another championship. The Giants trailed the Dodgers by 13 games on August 11, then won 37 of their final 46 games to tie Brooklyn for the pennant and force a three-game playoff. Berra is in the Polo Grounds on October 3 for the third and deciding game. He watches the Dodgers take a 4–1 lead in the top of the 8th, then leaves to beat the traffic. He’s crossing the George Washington Bridge, listening to the game on the car radio, when the Giants’ Bobby Thomson hits baseball’s most famous home run, a three-run blast off Berra’s friend Ralph Branca that gives the Giants a 5–4 victory and a shot at the Yankees.
Berra will remember this World Series for many reasons, but there are three images he will never forget:
• It’s the 5th inning of Game 2 when he sees Mickey Mantle racing after a short fly ball in right-center off the bat of Giants rookie Willie Mays. Even this late in the year, Mantle’s speed is breathtaking. But Yogi sees Mantle suddenly drop to the ground as if he is shot. The reason: Mickey tries to pull up when he hears DiMaggio call for the ball at the last second, catches his right foot in a plastic sprinkler cap, and blows out his knee. There’s an ache in the pit of Yogi’s stomach as he watches Mickey carried off the field on a stretcher, a shard of bone poking through the side of his leg. Mantle will never possess that blazing speed—or play a single game pain-free—for the rest of his career.
• It’s moments before Game 4 when Berra hears Stengel call the team together in the locker room. Yogi has rarely heard Casey give a pregame speech, but the Yankees have looked listless while losing two of the first three games to a Giants team they all think they should beat. “Fellas, I just want to mention one thing to you,” Casey says, showing little emotion. “You are not playing these guys 22 games—you only have four left to play. What the hell are you going to do, let them run you out of the ballpark?”
Stengel looks at every group of players standing around him, letting his words sink in, and says simply, “Okay, let’s go.” Raschi, Reynolds, and Lopat dominate the Giants in the next three games. Yankee hitters pound out 23 runs, and Stengel’s team sweeps the next three games to secure their place in history with their third straight title.
The postgame celebration is complete bedlam, and Berra is right in the middle of it. “Ear-splitting yells rent the air,” James Dawson of the New York Times writes about a Yankee team finally letting loose. It’s hard to even move with so many writers, photographers, and well-wishers crammed into the clubhouse.
• What Yogi remembers most happens more than an hour later, when every nonplayer has left the clubhouse and the Yankees are quietly sitting in front of their lockers, letting their accomplishment sink in. Suddenly pitcher Spec Shea walks across the locker room and sits down next to DiMaggio.
“What about it, Joe?” Shea asks quietly.
“I’ve played my last game,” DiMaggio says just as quietly, but every player hears his words.
No one moves for a moment, but soon every Yankee walks over to Joe, each carrying a glove, a ball, a bat, a uniform, all things they ask DiMaggio to sign. Yogi brings over his own collection for Joe and can’t help thinking about the bet Joe D made with him way back in July. He wants to keep playing with the best there ever was, but he knows DiMaggio is serious, and that turns this great day bittersweet.
It’s late in the afternoon of November 8, 1951, and Yogi Berra is sitting in the den of his suburban New Jersey split-level home, relaxing with one of his favorite comic books. It’s an off day from his job as a part-time salesman at the American Shops, an upscale men’s clothing store in Newark. And he’s already spent two hours at the Seventh Regiment Armory teaching hitting and catching at the American Baseball Academy, the brainchild of Phil Rizzuto. Berra is one of a handful of major leaguers Rizzuto recruited to teach baseball to 1,500 teenagers—two one-hour shifts, five days a week—to pick up a little money for the next three months.
Yogi is one of the best-paid players in the sport—and he figures to get another raise for next season—but owning a nice house in suburbia and raising a family takes more money than all but a select few earn just playing baseball. A week of golf with the guys at the famed Pinehurst courses in North Carolina is about all the offseason Berra can usually afford.
Yogi lifts himself from his chair when he hears the doorbell ring and is surprised to find a group of New York photographers when he opens the door. “Come on in,” he tells the half dozen men carrying cameras. “What are you doing out here?”
Now it’s the visitors who are surprised. “You don’t know?” one of them says. “You’re the American League MVP. We’re here to take your picture.”
Berra is a bit taken aback. No, the news had not reached him yet. “Is this a joke?” he asks. Assured they are serious, Berra quickly calls out to his wife to join them. “Hey, Carmen,” says Yogi when his wife appears. “They say I won the MVP!”
“Are you kidding?” Carmen says. Both Berras thought Yogi would get a lot of consideration for the award. But Yogi’s bat went cold the final two weeks of the season as he concentrated on guiding the pitching staff to the pennant, and they figured that would cost him too many votes to win. They were convinced Allie Reynolds—with his 17 wins, two no-hitters, and league-high seven shutouts—was almost a lock for the award.
They figured wrong, the photographers explained as they set up their equipment. Berra, Reynolds, and Ned Garver, the Browns’ 20-game winner, each received six first-place votes in one of the tightest competitions since the award was started in 1931. But Yogi had more support on the rest of the ballot from the 24 writers—three from each American League city—who decide the MVP.
“I ain’t biting the hand that feeds me, but I think they shoulda picked Allie Reynolds,” Berra says as the cameras click away. “In the meantime, I ain’t gonna throw the award back in the lake. It’s big—very big—and I thank the baseball writers for being so good to me.”
A few television crews arrive, and Yogi grows silent as they set up their lights and position their cameras for interviews. Suddenly, a different look crosses his face, and he breaks his silence.
“Hey,” he says, smiling. “I guess I must of been pretty good!”