It doesn’t take long for Yogi Berra to find out if he can win an argument with George Steinbrenner.
The answer: no.
That is made abundantly clear the night of April 6, soon after a tough loss to the Rangers in Arlington, Texas—the season’s fourth game. The Yankees battled back from a 6–0 deficit to tie the score, only to lose in the 8th inning when Bobby Meacham, a promising 23-year-old shortstop, bobbles a two-out grounder then throws wildly to first, allowing what becomes the winning run to score.
Soon after the loss, the team’s third in four games, the phone rings in the visiting manager’s office. Yogi picks up the phone, and George starts in immediately. “I want Meacham sent down to the minors,” Steinbrenner shouts. “He cost us the game tonight. He’s not ready.”
“George, I think that’s a mistake,” says Berra, knowing how a decision like this can shatter a young player’s confidence. “It’s just one game.”
“I don’t care what you think,” Steinbrenner says. “Just tell him he’s going down to Nashville.”
Berra waits until the next morning to deliver the bad news, calling Meacham to his hotel room at 9:30 a.m. He gives the rookie his new assignment and tells him to keep his head up. “You’re a good player,” Yogi says. “You’ll be back in New York.”
Berra is far more tight-lipped when the media asks for an explanation. “It’s not my doing and I don’t want to talk about it,” says Berra, grim determination locked on his face.
Who made the decision to banish Meacham?
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Berra repeats.
Other Yankees make clear it was Steinbrenner’s call, and several wonder how much longer Berra will want to remain manager.
After four games.
“Yogi’s upset,” says one player, insisting he remain nameless. “Everybody’s staying away from him.”
The team has played just one week of the regular season and Steinbrenner’s constant meddling—he reversed several of his manager’s personnel decisions the final week of spring training—has already begun to weigh heavily on Berra. The two men could not be more different. Steinbrenner is reactive, thinks every mistake is fatal, and sees every loss as a betrayal of the high salaries he pays. He pits players against each other to spark competition, rages against them, and famously craves attention and respect that is neither earned nor deserved. George generates high drama and seems rarely to have a feeling without acting on it—loudly.
Yogi is his opposite almost completely—his singular achievements have made him a superstar, but he remains modest, centered, and generous in attention to others. He is frank, patient, and encouraging. And most of all, he understands that a baseball season demands strategic stamina: no single bobbled ball or game or even series of games is unrecoverable, so long as everyone on the team is learning and solving problems.
Writers, players, and coaches all thought Steinbrenner would be more careful with Berra than he was with previous managers in deference to Yogi’s popularity. And at first Steinbrenner was hesitant to criticize the Yankee legend. But that changes when the Yankees’ slow start lands them in last place while the Mets rocket to the top of the NL East and their 19-year-old strikeout artist Doc Gooden becomes the new media darling.
By early May, the “Berra in trouble” stories start appearing on a regular basis. New York Times columnist Dave Anderson writes that Berra is smoking again after kicking the habit two years ago. Another writer watches Berra walk alone down the right field foul line before a game at the Stadium, his head down, trying to ease the tension that rises as the Yankees end May at 20–27, a staggering 17½ games out of first place.
The only saving grace: everyone in the American League is looking up at the Detroit Tigers, who win 35 of their first 40 games and are never seriously challenged. Still, Steinbrenner drags Berra and his coaches into meeting after meeting as May turns into June, demanding to know why his team is not in contention. Berra says little at these meetings, just trying to wait out George’s wrath.
But Steinbrenner finally finds Berra’s breaking point. It happens at the Stadium after a loss to Detroit in mid-June that pushes the Yankees 19 games out of first. With his manager and staff sitting around the large oak table in the middle of Steinbrenner’s office, the Boss goes off on a tear, directing most of his ire at Yogi.
“You guys have really let me down,” Steinbrenner says. “I gave you what you wanted. Everything you wanted! This is your team, and look at it. Look what’s happening!”
Steinbrenner continues blasting away, repeatedly claiming these are the players Yogi wanted, they aren’t performing, and asking Berra what he plans to do. Berra listens to the tirade with his head down, staring at his fists, which he keeps clenching, then opening, trying to keep his anger from boiling over. But Steinbrenner says “this is your team” once too often, and suddenly Berra jumps up and fires a pack of cigarettes in George’s direction. The package takes one bounce and hits Steinbrenner in the chest.
Nobody moves.
Except Yogi.
“If you don’t like it,” Berra says, “get another manager.”
“Are you quitting?” Steinbrenner says.
“No!” Berra says. “If you want to get rid of me, you’ll have to fire me.”
Steinbrenner looks poised to renew his tirade when Berra truly opens fire.
“This isn’t my fucking team, it’s your fucking team,” Yogi shouts. “You make all the fucking decisions. You make all the fucking moves. You get all the fucking players that nobody else wants.”
Berra takes a quick breath, and everyone remains silent. “You put this fucking team together,” Berra shouts. “And then you just sit back and wait for us to lose so you can blame everybody else because you’re a chickenshit liar!”
Yogi storms out of Steinbrenner’s office, and everyone left behind sits still, not quite knowing what to say. Before they can decide, Berra returns and once again launches into another obscenity-filled diatribe against Steinbrenner, each sentence punctuated with the word liar. When Yogi is finally yelled out, he stalks off, this time not to return. Steinbrenner, who sat calmly through both verbal assaults without uttering a word, finally breaks his silence.
“Well,” George says, “I guess the pressure of losing is getting to Yogi.”
End of meeting.
With the Tigers running away from the field—they’ll win 104 games and a World Series title—Steinbrenner decides to wait until the end of the season before firing Berra. It’s a decision he’ll regret. The Yankees promote several players from their farm clubs—including Meacham—and the injection of youth transforms the team. Riding the kids’ enthusiasm and the hot bats of Don Mattingly and Dave Winfield—who battle for the batting title right down to the final day of the season—Berra’s boys go 51–29, the best second-half record in baseball. It creates great optimism for next season, and George’s hands are tied.
The atmosphere around the team, so tense in the season’s first three months, improves dramatically as the players adjust to Yogi’s relaxed style. Berra believes it’s his job to decide who plays and where, and it’s the players’ job to play well and win. He’ll keep the Boss off their backs—as best as he can—so they can concentrate on baseball.
The players generally enjoy this arrangement, though at times they think Yogi could be more hands-on. One example: the Yankees have a 1–0 lead with two runners on late in a game and Ron Guidry looks over at Yogi, wondering if his manager will call for a sac bunt or a hit-and-run to set up an insurance run. But it’s clear Berra, standing behind the bat rack with arms folded across his chest, isn’t planning to call a play.
“Hey, Skip,” Guidry calls to Berra. “Don’t you think you might want to make a move here?”
Berra glances over at Guidry, then moves two steps to his left.
“How’s that?” Berra says.
The team is loose enough now for everyone to enjoy a good laugh on September 21 when a reporter tells Yogi he’s mentioned in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations—and has been since 1980.
The following appears on page 903, he’s told.
Yogi (Lawrence Peter) Berra
“The game isn’t over ’til it’s over.”
Attributed.
“Hey,” says Berra, “I said that one.”
It’s also the day the Yankees beat the Tigers to move within a game of second-place Toronto. Winfield goes hitless while Mattingly singles to grab the lead for the batting title—.346 to .344—with 10 games to play. Yankee fans clearly favor Mattingly, and the issue of race has entered the conversation, something Yogi keeps out of his clubhouse. Indeed, Mattingly and Winfield are openly rooting for each other.
The Yankees can’t catch Toronto, but the season ends with a 9–2 win against Detroit at the Stadium, their 87–75 record good for third place. Mattingly singles in the 8th inning—his fourth hit in the season’s final game—raising his average to .343 and clinching the batting title. When Winfield, hitting next, reaches on a force out to finish at .340, Berra quickly sends in a pinch-runner, and the two players jog off the field together to thunderous applause from the 30,602 fans.
“This isn’t announcement day,” Steinbrenner says when asked about Yogi’s status after the game. He has to see who’s available, he tells reporters, before making his decision. Steinbrenner, who hasn’t talked to Yogi since their explosive meeting in June, is still hoping to lure former Baltimore manager Earl Weaver out of retirement. “I don’t know where to rate Yogi as a manager” is all he tells reporters about Berra.
Steinbrenner lets Yogi dangle for another month. He toys with the idea of promoting Lou Piniella, his hitting coach, but keeps remembering Piniella’s answer when he asked him about Yogi late this season. “I think Yogi has rebuilt the pitching staff,” Piniella told him. “Yogi got more aggressive as the season progressed. He’s in better control of the team and turned the place around.”
After an unsuccessful run at Weaver, Steinbrenner releases a statement on October 25, saying Berra will return. “Yogi did a very creditable job blending all of our fine veteran players with some outstanding young talent,” was the best Steinbrenner could say about the first Yankee manager since Billy Martin in 1977 to return after working a full season.
But four days later, Steinbrenner elaborates on Berra’s true status. If the Yankees get off to another slow start next season, George says, he would strongly consider firing his manager.
The year 1984 was one of mixed blessings for Yogi’s youngest son. Coming off another solid ’83 season at shortstop for the pennant-contending Pirates—and a new five-year, $3.05 million contract in his pocket—both Dale Berra and Pittsburgh management expected big things. But Berra didn’t lift his batting average above .200 until mid-June, and he made so many errors both fans and the media began calling him Boo-Boo of Yogi Bear cartoon fame. The nickname stuck.
Berra suffered his first real injury, bursitis in his right elbow, and missed 22 games in September. The Pirates, five years removed from a World Series title, lost regularly and were booed roundly by their fans, who singled out Dale for extra abuse. The fans’ treatment of Dale was so harsh and Berra’s performance so poor—he hit .222 and committed a league-high 30 errors at shortstop in 136 games—that the Pirates decide trading Berra is in everyone’s best interests.
Berra’s personal life is a different story. Dale marries Leigh O’Grady, a local Jersey girl, on December 1, 1984. The newlyweds buy a house in upscale Glen Ridge, a five-minute ride from Carmen and Yogi. By midmonth there is serious talk that the Pirates might trade Dale to the Yankees, and a slew of stories about how Yogi will manage his son quickly follows.
“I know the both of them, and I am sure they will work it out,” Carmen says. Her husband agrees. “If he plays well, he plays,” says Yogi, who plans to move his son back to third base and platoon him with left-handed hitter Mike Pagliarulo if the trade goes through. “And if he doesn’t play well, he sits. It’s that simple.”
Dale Berra knows the spotlight in New York will be far greater, but he feels the atmosphere in Pittsburgh is toxic. The Yankees, who earlier this month acquired Rickey Henderson—the best leadoff man in baseball—are contenders with a real chance to reach the World Series. So he’s thrilled when a five-player deal sending him to New York is completed.
“Playing for my father,” Dale tells the media when the trade’s announced, “is like a dream come true.”
But only days after the trade, that dream takes a dark turn. There were rumors all over Pittsburgh this season of a major investigation into cocaine use by baseball players. A few players were rumored to have cooperated with authorities, but no one in baseball knows for sure. That is about to change. Dale Berra is one of several players who have been subpoenaed to appear before a grand jury to testify about drug trafficking in Pittsburgh.
Berra knows plenty about that. He and several teammates have been buying coke from a group of seven men around the team—including a clubhouse caterer, Curtis Strong, and Kevin Koch, the man inside the team mascot costume—for at least the last four years. Dale started using cocaine at a friend’s 1979 New Year’s Eve party in Montclair, snorting off the end of a car key, then began using it about once a month in Pittsburgh. This is the 1980s, when cocaine is the hip drug for young and wealthy city dwellers, and it is being used—openly—in clubs and bars in cities all over the country. Pittsburgh is no exception.
Berra was using two to three times a week by 1983, and though confident his drug use was under control, he knew he’d lost a split second off his reflex time—the micro instant that’s the difference between a major leaguer and a player in the minors. Losing that split second rarely happens at 27, a player’s prime. When Berra got hurt last summer, his use of cocaine increased, though he remained convinced he still had a handle on the whole thing.
Now he has to tell all this to a grand jury in a federal courthouse in Pittsburgh in early January of 1985. But first he has to tell his parents. They sit in stunned silence as he goes through his story, stopping frequently to insist his drug use is under control. It’s recreational, he tells his parents. He’s not an addict. They don’t have to worry.
And they don’t have to be concerned about his grand jury appearance. He’s a witness, he says, not the target. Don’t worry, Dale repeats. It’s going to be all right.
Yogi stares at his son for a few moments when Dale is done talking. Then he speaks. Mom and me care about you and want to help, Yogi says. Tell us what we can do. Dale reiterates his drug use is not a problem.
Finally, Yogi asks the one question he’s always asked Dale.
“How are you doing?” Yogi says.
“I’m doing all right, Dad,” Dale says. “Everything is fine.”
The man George Steinbrenner wants to fire is sitting at the head table of the White House state dinner honoring King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, listening to President Ronald Reagan regale his guests with stories of his days as a radio announcer for the Chicago Cubs. Announcers did not travel with teams back in the 1930s, Reagan tells those at his table, and his job was to re-create the game from reports coming over the telegraph. But when the wire went dead in the 9th inning of a game against the St. Louis Cardinals of Berra’s youth in 1934, Reagan had to improvise.
It’s a story Reagan tells often, and at this state dinner on February 11, 1985, the President is telling it well. “I had [Billy] Jurges hit a foul ball, then I had him foul one that only missed being a home run by a foot,” he says. “I had him foul one back in the stands and took up some time describing the two lads that got in a fight over the ball. I kept on having him hit foul balls until I was setting a record for a ballplayer hitting successive foul balls and I was getting more than a little scared.”
He pauses. “Just then my operator started typing,” Reagan says. “When he passed me the paper I started to giggle. It said, ‘Jurges popped out on the first ball pitched.’”
The anecdote gets a big laugh. Berra enjoys the story, and the meal—salmon and sole mousse, chicken supreme, asparagus mimosa, lemon soufflé with raspberry sauce, and champagne. He gazes around the room, searching for familiar faces. Norman Vincent Peale is there. So are Pearl Bailey and Rita Moreno. Yogi is the only athlete on the guest list.
King Fahd speaks up, saying soccer is becoming a popular sport in his country. “I played that game as a kid,” Berra says as Reagan beams. The President loves baseball players, and he has one of the best ever at his table.
Nellie Connally, the wife of former Texas Governor John Connally, is sitting to Yogi’s left. She leans over and quietly tells Berra her husband very much wants to switch seats with her. “But I told him no,” Nellie says with a smile.
When the last course of dinner is finished, Reagan signs autographs and insists on getting a signature from everyone at his table. Drinks and dancing to the music of an orchestra follow. It’s not the first evening Berra has spent at the White House, but sitting at the head table and talking sports with a President and a king is one night he and Carmen will always treasure.
The day after the story appears, a newspaper reporter asks whom among the many interesting people at the dinner Yogi had spoken with. Yogi looks perplexed. “It was hard to have a conversation with anyone,” he says. “There were so many people talking.”
A week later, Berra is having a much different conversation in the Yankee spring training compound in Fort Lauderdale. He’s called his coaches together five days before training camp officially opens on February 20 to outline everyone’s roles and responsibilities. Yankee fan favorite Lou Piniella is retired now and will concentrate on his role as hitting instructor. Former manager Gene Michael is back to coach third base. Stump Merrill, the minor league manager Yogi worked under during the 1981 strike, is getting his shot to coach in the big leagues after winning six titles in seven seasons in the Yankee farm system. He’ll take over at first and work with infielders.
Once business is done, it’s time to play golf and get in some fishing before a leisurely dinner. It’s a relaxed afternoon and evening, and everyone seems content. One day later, Steinbrenner makes an announcement. “Yogi will be the manager this year,” Steinbrenner tells the media at Fort Lauderdale Stadium. “I said the same thing last year; I’m saying it again this year. A bad start will not affect Yogi’s status.
“I have put a lot of pressure on my managers in the past to win at certain times. That will not be the case this spring.”
It’s the same message he gave Bob Lemon in 1982; Lemon was fired when the Yankees lost eight of their first 14 games. And it’s the same message he gave to Berra in their first meeting of the spring. Asked by the writers what he thinks about George’s endorsement, Berra says, “You don’t think it means anything, do you?”
As if on cue, the big story the day after camp opens is about who will follow Yogi as Yankee manager. “Lou Piniella will probably be the next manager, but I don’t know about next year,” Steinbrenner tells a writer from his home in Tampa. “It’s not in the cards right now. Yogi’s going to be the manager this season.
“At the end of the year, we’ll sit down and see how Yogi feels. He’s 61. [Actually, Yogi will be 60.] We don’t know if he’ll want to retire. Someday Lou will be the manager. I think everybody realizes that.”
No one is fooled by Steinbrenner’s timetable. Everyone, especially Yogi, recognizes the reminder to pay attention to what George does, not what he says. Berra’s team hasn’t even made it to the exhibition season and he’s already answering questions about his job status.
Yogi is sitting in his underwear in his office early the next morning when Piniella, looking as if he hadn’t slept, knocks on the open door.
“Yogi, I’d like to talk to you,” Piniella says.
“Sure, Lou, what’s up?” Yogi says.
“This manager thing that has been in the papers—”
“Aw, don’t worry about that crap.”
“Yogi, I’m sorry this thing ever happened. The last thing I would do is undermine you. If you don’t want me on your coaching staff, if you think it would be easier without me, I’ll pack my bags now and go home and get out of your way.”
“Hell, no,” Yogi says. “You just stay here and do what you are doing. You work well with the hitters. I want you to stay. I’ll teach you whatever I can. You just watch and listen and do your job.”
Piniella follows Berra’s orders, but it’s hard to work with hitters when they can’t suit up, and the Yankees have a bundle of players sidelined with injuries most of the spring. Don Mattingly is still recovering from arthroscopic surgery on the knee he injured just before training camp. Mike Pagliarulo, slotted to be the left-handed hitting side of the third base platoon with Berra’s son Dale, has a hyperextended elbow. Willie Randolph plays with an injured foot all spring. Dave Winfield and Rickey Henderson hurt their backs on successive days in late March: Winfield is back in the lineup as Opening Day nears, but Rickey will miss the season’s first 10 games.
Steinbrenner keeps Berra and his coaches busy with endless meetings after practices and games, and they’re on edge when their season opens April 8 in Boston. Everyone can feel George’s eagerness to get rid of Berra, and the drumbeat starts when the Yankees lose the season’s first two games in Boston, 9–2 and 14–5. Steinbrenner says the next game—the season’s third game!—is “crucial,” and the Yanks lose that one as well, 6–4.
Worse, the team travels to Columbus, Ohio the next day to play their top farm club and loses 14–5, looking sloppy and uninterested. Steinbrenner rips the entire team but singles out the manager’s son. “Dale Berra is out there laughing,” Steinbrenner says. “I don’t like to see anything taken lightly. Columbus is taking it to us, and he’s out there laughing.”
Steinbrenner’s choice of players was obvious, if not ironic. The father-son story has run its course without incident, and Dale, a starter at shortstop with the Pirates, has taken to platooning at third base without complaint. Yogi could see his son was having trouble fitting in with his new teammates, but Dale was playing well. The Yankees win their next four games, all with Berra playing third base and hitting .300. Steinbrenner is silent. Yogi even delivers a Yogi-ism before the Yankees’ home opener.
“A home opener is always exciting,” Berra says, “no matter if it’s at home or on the road.” Everyone laughs.
But the Yankees follow their four-game winning streak with four losses in five games and the owner’s silence ends. After the Red Sox beat New York in 11 innings to drop the Yankees to 5–6, Steinbrenner tells reporters Yogi’s immediate future is unclear. So much for getting a whole season.
“I haven’t made any decision,” says Steinbrenner, who reveals he’s been back in touch with Earl Weaver. “But I’m not going to be deterred. What I think is best for the team is what I’m going to do.”
What can Yogi say? He’s sure he doesn’t have many games left. “He must think we don’t have feelings,” Berra says. “We don’t like to lose, either. It’s tough to manage when every move you make, you’re wondering what he’s going to say about it. The players are uptight and you can’t play this game when you’re uptight.”
When the writers leave, Berra turns to Piniella. “If they want to get me, why in hell don’t they get it over with?” he says. “Why do they keep hunting me down?”
The Yankees split the next two games with Boston, and the beat writers are on high alert. When the Yankees lose the first two games of a three-game series in Chicago, falling to 6–9, Steinbrenner calls GM Clyde King, who is traveling with the team. We’re making a change, he tells King. Yogi is out! Billy is coming back and will meet the team in Texas, the next stop after Sunday’s game against the White Sox.
“Give Yogi the news after the game,” Steinbrenner instructs King.
The Yankees lose Sunday’s game to the White Sox, who score the winning run on a bases-loaded walk in the 9th inning. Berra is talking to the media when King enters his office and asks the reporters to leave. Everyone knows what comes next. King tells Yogi this is the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, then gives him the news. “He’s the boss,” says Berra, shrugging his shoulders, a look of relief washing over him. His ordeal is over after 16 games. “He can do whatever he wants.”
While King is talking to Berra, Yankee publicity man Joe Safety is handing a four-paragraph statement from Steinbrenner to the media. It’s April 28, and the Yankees are changing managers. Again. “This action has been taken by the Yankees, and we feel that it is in the best interests of the club,” Steinbrenner’s statement reads.
The clubhouse is silent until designated hitter Don Baylor picks up a large trash can and tosses it across the room, garbage flying in every direction. Suddenly almost every player is cursing loudly, upset that Yogi is gone, angry that Billy is coming back. Dale Berra is walking out of the shower, a towel around his waist, when he sees pieces of trash coming his way. “What’s going on?” he asks Mattingly.
“They just fired your dad,” answers Mattingly, who stalks into the trainer’s room and is soon flinging metal containers against the walls. Ashen-faced and still wrapped in a towel, Dale opens the door to his father’s office, walks in, and closes the door behind him. He doesn’t have to say a word.
“Don’t you worry about me,” Yogi tells his son. “I’ve done everything in baseball there is to do. So don’t worry. I’ll be all right.”
Father and son embrace, and Dale is sobbing. His father doesn’t deserve this.
“Look, you’re still young—you have a future,” says Yogi, who pulls back and puts his meaty hands on his son’s shoulders. “Billy’s a good man; you’ve known him since you were a kid. Play hard for him.”
The father forces a smile for his son. “I’ll be watching you.”
Dale hugs Yogi and leaves the office, his eyes red from crying. One by one, Berra’s players come in to talk to their suddenly former manager. Most shake Yogi’s hand, several embrace him, more than a few emerge with tears rolling down their cheeks. Berra walks out to talk to the rest of his players and coaches. Mattingly simply hugs Yogi, unable to speak. Gene Michael, twice fired as Yankee manager, leans over and whispers, “I know how you feel.”
The writers stand and watch as the emotional scene plays out. They’ve all written too many “Yankee manager is fired” stories, but none involved tears. Now they’re in Yogi’s office, listening to a man who does not sound bitter or angry. “He’s the boss,” says Yogi. “I’m used to this. This is the third time I’ve been fired.”
Someone says 16 games is a pretty short season. “Did I have a chance?” Berra says. “He [Steinbrenner] must have thought so.
“Look, I had an inkling. If it happened now or later, what’s the difference? I still think this is a good club, and they’ll turn it around. Me, I’m going to play some golf.”
He’s asked if he’d work for Steinbrenner in another role. “I don’t know,” Yogi says. “He hasn’t asked me. My contract doesn’t say I have to. But I’ll still be at the Stadium to see Dale play.”
His final interview session over, Berra collects his things and reaches for the phone. He needs a cab to take him to the airport for his trip back to New Jersey. But King convinces him to ride with the team, so there is Yogi, sitting in his customary seat in the front row of one of the two team buses, the players sitting silently behind him. The Yankee buses stop at the United Airlines terminal, and the players clap loudly as Yogi ambles down the steps and begins his walk to the terminal.
“Good luck, Yog,” one player shouts, and now the players and coaches are all shouting out encouragement. Yogi turns, gives them a small wave, then continues his walk to the terminal, a short, slump-shouldered, soon-to-be 60-year-old man carrying a small bag, on his way home to talk over the future with his wife.
Carmen Berra is not nearly as calm about the day’s events when her husband arrives home. She’s never forgiven Ralph Houk for firing Yogi after he took the Yankees to a World Series as a rookie manager in 1964. But this? Steinbrenner hounded Yogi for weeks, then fired him after 16 games, most of them played without several of his best players? This is just ludicrous.
“Yogi, don’t you ever step foot in that stadium again,” she tells him. “Not as long as that man owns the team.” Yogi knows not to argue when his wife is this upset, but she’s asking a lot. And she keeps repeating it all night. At least one member of this marriage is fuming, and that isn’t going to end any time soon.
Murray Chass of the New York Times reaches Berra the next day, and Yogi is not ready to cut all ties with his team. He tells Chass he expects to talk to Steinbrenner in the next week and discuss what George might have in mind. He quickly says he’s unsure if he would accept any role.
Berra says it would have been good to see what this team could do at full strength. “We only had my full starting lineup in five of 16 games,” he says, adding he wished he could have talked about this team with Steinbrenner. But the two men still haven’t spoken since their blowup at the Stadium last June. All communication since has been through Clyde King.
Yogi is still mulling over Carmen’s words when he finishes his conversation with Chass. “Steinbrenner paid my salary,” Berra says. “He gave me a chance to manage. Right now I don’t feel good about being fired, but I’ll get over it. Sure, I would’ve liked more time. But I beat Lemon by two games.”
Berra chuckles and hangs up, but the longer he thinks about Carmen’s stand, the more sense it makes. His good friend John McMullen is giving him the same advice, and the salty language Mac uses makes it clear how he feels about what his former partner has done.
By July, Yogi’s position has shifted: he’s not going back to Yankee Stadium as long as George owns the team. He makes no announcement, but the Yankees begin to get the idea when Berra declines an invitation to the Old-Timers’ Game on July 13, saying he would be out of town. Everyone knows the Old-Timers’ Game might be Berra’s favorite day of the season. This will be the first one he’s missed since he managed the Mets a decade ago.
Yogi’s stance is made clearer when a reporter decides to call Berra’s home the day of the game. Carmen answers, and the reporter, who is not at all surprised that the Berras are not out of town, asks if Yogi is in. “No, he’s playing golf,” Carmen says. “We were going to go away, but we decided not to go, so he’s playing golf.”
Yogi and Carmen are in Cooperstown two weeks later for the induction of Lou Brock, Hoyt Wilhelm, Enos Slaughter, and Arky Vaughan to the Hall of Fame. This is another chance to catch up with old friends, and Yogi loves every minute of his time here. Berra is signing autographs under a large tent on Main Street when New York Daily News writer Bill Madden walks over and stops at the table where Yogi is stationed.
“Have you gotten over it yet?” Madden says. No need to explain what “it” is.
“Would you?” Berra says. “Sixteen games.”
Madden sees Berra is more upset now than he was the day he was fired.
“I hope we’ll be seeing you around the park,” the writer says.
“Not as long as he’s there,” Yogi says. No need to explain who “he” is, either.
Berra is right about his former team. It takes some time, but the Yankees do put it all together. And on September 12, they beat first-place Toronto in the first of four games at the Stadium to pull within 1½ games of the Blue Jays. But the Yankees lose the next three, the beginning of an eight-game losing streak that effectively ends their season. And Martin’s fourth tour as Yankee manager is all but over in late September when he gets into a late-night brawl with New York pitcher Eddie Whitson in the team’s hotel bar in Baltimore.
Three weeks after leading his team to a 97–64 record and a second-place finish, Martin is replaced by Lou Piniella. The rookie manager soon asks Yogi to join his coaching staff, but Berra turns him down. He’s not working for Steinbrenner again. Ever. Instead, he takes his friend John McMullen’s offer to be the bench coach in Houston, helping another rookie manager, Hal Lanier, the son of Yogi’s old friend Max, a former St. Louis Cardinal pitcher. For the first time since joining the Yankees in 1947, Yogi Berra will not be wearing the home uniform of a New York baseball team.
Things have not worked out as well for Dale Berra, and his parents are worried. And it’s not related to Dale’s poor season—he played only 37 games under Martin, hitting a meager .176. They realize he’s used cocaine for at least four years and fear for his future and reputation. It’s painful to watch reporters and cameras follow Dale into a federal courthouse for witness testimony in a public criminal proceeding, forced to describe purchasing cocaine and how it made him feel. It’s a sickening, helpless nightmare for his parents.
On September 9, Dale Berra sat on the witness stand in the federal courthouse in Pittsburgh, dressed in gray slacks, white shirt, red tie, and blue blazer, and talked for two hours. He was the fourth player to testify in the government’s case charging clubhouse caterer Curtis Strong with 16 counts of cocaine distribution. In the same courtroom three days earlier, Mets All-Star first baseman Keith Hernandez admitted he used cocaine for three years while playing for St. Louis, using “massive amounts” in the second half of the 1980 season.
“I think it was the love-affair years,” Hernandez said about the use of coke inside baseball. “It was pretty prevalent.”
Like every player in this case, Berra had been granted immunity in exchange for his two days of testimony. Yes, he bought cocaine from Strong when the Pirates played in Philadelphia. “I handed him $100.… He handed me a gram.… I used it in my room and in Lee Lacy’s room,” Berra testified. “It made me feel euphoric; it sharpened my senses. It made me feel good.”
Dale admitted he snorted cocaine with Pirate star Dave Parker and got amphetamines from team leader Willie Stargell—who only hours later would insist Berra’s claim about him was untrue. Dale called his use of cocaine “sporadic” and “occasional” until he was hurt last season and used the drug more frequently. “I just thought it was an opportune time to do something,” he said.
Berra insisted he “absolutely did not” use cocaine after the Pirates traded him to the Yankees. The packed courtroom grew especially quiet when Strong’s defense attorney asked Berra to describe his father’s reaction when he learned his son had a drug habit. “He was very supportive of me,” Dale Berra answered. “Obviously it wasn’t an easy thing to do. But he’s been such a good father to me his whole life. He accepted it and stood behind me.”
His father was still processing everything when he got another surprise. Soon after Berra’s court appearance, Steinbrenner revealed a conversation he had had with Dale about drugs before the season, a talk kept secret from Yogi. If you do anything to embarrass your father—you’re gone, Steinbrenner told Dale, who agreed to be drug-tested twice during the season. Dale is clean, Steinbrenner told reporters, and his job here is safe as long as he stays clean.
The Berra family knows all about the perils of listening to anything Steinbrenner says.
Now they are wondering whether they can believe everything Dale tells them, too.