After a rainout, a snow-out, and an owners’ lockout, the New York Yankees open the 1990 season on April 12, beating the Cleveland Indians 6–4 before 50,114 fans. Whitey Ford is there for a touching Opening Day ceremony—Billy Martin Jr. throws the first pitch in honor of his father, who died in a car crash this past Christmas Day. Phil Rizzuto is starting his 34th season in the broadcast booth. Both old Yankees had asked their friend and former teammate to end his boycott and join them at Yankee Stadium. And both received the same answer.
“No way!” Yogi Berra vowed.
Berra hasn’t been to an Opening Day, Old-Timers’ Day, or any other day at Yankee Stadium since George Steinbrenner fired him by messenger after 16 games in 1985. Even the opportunity in 1988 to stand beside his mentor Bill Dickey when the Yankees affixed plaques for both men at Monument Park couldn’t change his mind. Instead, Berra spends his first Opening Day in 44 years out of an MLB uniform playing golf and watching the Yankees on television.
Rizzuto and Ford are far from the only ones wondering when Yogi will relent, a situation Yankee players, officials, and fans all blame on Steinbrenner. Joe DiMaggio remains the greatest living Yankee, and Mickey Mantle is still the idol of the baby boom generation. But there’s little question Berra is the most beloved Bronx Bomber, and his every absence from the Stadium is a story.
It happens again on July 15, when the Yankees honor Rizzuto on his 50th year with the team as both player and broadcaster. Joe D is there. So are old friends Whitey, Bill Skowron, and Tommy Byrne. Berra, who received an invitation, replied he would be on the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise off the Virginia coast with his friend John McMullen, a former naval commander.
“I had dinner with Yogi about three weeks ago,” the 72-year-old Rizzuto says. “He told me he’ll never set foot in Yankee Stadium as long as George Steinbrenner owned the team. I told him I respected how he felt.”
There is speculation Yogi will return a few weeks later when news breaks that Steinbrenner has accepted a lifetime ban imposed by Commissioner Fay Vincent on July 30, George’s punishment for paying $40,000 to a gambler to dig up dirt on Yankee star Dave Winfield. Berra dismisses that, too.
“To me, I don’t think he’s out of it yet, so I don’t know when I’ll come back,” Berra tells a reporter in late August, a week after Steinbrenner resigned as managing partner of the Yankees. Has he had any communication with the Boss? “I waved at him in a [winter] meeting once,” acknowledges Berra. “But speak? Nope.”
Berra says it hurts watching his good friend and six-time All-Star Don Mattingly endure this awful Yankee season—the team will finish 67–95, its worst record since 1913—but insists he’s enjoying his first year of retirement. He’s busy playing in charity golf tournaments nationwide, running the family racquetball business, and spending time with his grandchildren.
“Carmen hasn’t thrown me out of the house yet,” he says. “So it’s been all right.”
Berra again refuses an invitation to the Yankees’ Opening Day in 1991, this one delivered by GM and good friend Gene Michael. It’s the first question Claire Smith of the New York Times asked him in late March during Yogi’s second season as an Astro spring training coach. Smith, who reported on the Yankees for the Hartford Courant in 1983, was the first African-American woman to cover any baseball beat. Claire was smart, savvy, and fair, and Yogi liked and trusted her.
Does he miss being at the Stadium? Smith asks.
“Sure,” he tells her. “Heck, I played there 17 years.”
Smith probes: Will he go to this season’s Old-Timers’ Game?
“You mean on July 17?” says Yogi, who’s missed the date by 10 days. “Nope.”
Sure, he’ll miss being with Mickey, Whitey, Moose, and the rest of the old gang. That’s the tough part, he agreed. But at least he sees them at charity golf tournaments, including one he started in New Jersey in June of 1991 for Boy Scouts with special needs.
And Yogi sees some of his former teammates—as well as old opponents like Ted Williams and Bob Feller—at Cooperstown for the annual induction of new entrants to the Hall of Fame. Now that he’s no longer working during the baseball season, Induction Weekend highlights Berra’s summer. The next one, on July 21, is special: Joe Garagiola has been honored by the media with the Ford C. Frick Award for baseball broadcasting.
The two men’s paths have not crossed often in recent years. But their bond endures, even though Garagiola still occasionally uses Yogi as a good-natured punch line. “Joe is not the only one who has used me as a stooge,” Berra says in a second autobiography, Yogi: It Ain’t Over, written with friend and author Tom Horton in 1989. They used one chapter to distinguish the Yogi-isms Berra actually said from the ones concocted by others—including Garagiola. “It was good for him to say all he has said about me,” Berra wrote, “and it has been good for me, too.”
Yogi understands Garagiola’s stories have helped to make him a beloved national personality, so he’s not surprised this summer when he’s told The New Yorker magazine wrote, “Hardly anyone would quarrel that Winston Churchill has been replaced by Yogi Berra as the favorite source of quotations.” Garagiola and Berra still call each other on their birthdays, and when they get together, they are suddenly back on The Hill, nagging their parents about playing baseball.
On the sunny third Sunday of July, Berra is one of 31 Hall of Famers on a platform before the National Baseball Library in Cooperstown as Garagiola delivers his acceptance speech. “I don’t remember ever not knowing Yogi,” Garagiola tells the audience. “And when I called Yogi, I said, ‘Yog, I’m going to get the Ford Frick Award.’ And as only Yogi would put it, he said, ‘What took you so long?’”
The audience loves it, and Garagiola tells more Yogi stories before replying to the question his friend had asked.
“Well, to answer him, I don’t know, Yog. We’re in different buildings, but we’re in Cooperstown together,” says Garagiola, choking up a bit. “I can bet you that Poppa Peter and Momma Paulina Berra, and Poppa John and Momma Angelina, are pretty proud.
“And we can both say, we told you not to worry about us. Look who we’re hanging around with now.”
It’s the cold early weeks of 1992, and Yogi Berra is preparing for his final season as an Astro spring training instructor. And that’s when the family gets word from friends that Yogi hoped—prayed—he’d never hear: his son Dale is using cocaine again. He and Carmen knew Dale was going through a tough time. His marriage to Leigh had fallen apart almost two years ago—Dale admits his drug use drove them apart—and their divorce was made official on January 8. And he still hasn’t found his niche after leaving baseball more than three years ago.
But going back to drugs? Again? That just isn’t acceptable—indeed, it’s time for the family to have a very serious talk with its youngest member. The Berras’ two older sons are alerted and on their way to the big house on Highland Avenue when Yogi picks up the phone and calls Dale.
“Get up and get over here” is the first thing Yogi says. “I want to talk to you” are his only other words. Dale doesn’t ask any questions. He hasn’t heard this tone in his father’s voice in a very long time, but he knows Yogi is angry and that can only mean trouble.
Dale walks into his parents’ house and finds his father, mother, and two brothers sitting quietly in the living room. Larry and Tim talk first, telling their little brother they all know about his drug use. There are words of support from his family, but words of disappointment, too. When Dale looks back on that day, he’ll remember his brothers looking grim, his mother crying, and his father telling him something he never thought he’d hear.
If this continues, Yogi said, Dale would no longer be part of the family.
Dale knows how stubborn his father can be, and can tell from the tone of his voice and the expression on his face that this is no idle threat. His father, who has supported him through all his troubles, has just drawn the line. Dale, shaken, swears he’ll never use cocaine again, and years later said publicly it was a promise kept.
Yogi and Carmen are grateful their friends spoke up. No one in the Berra family ever discussed it with friends again and none of their friends asked. They knew Yogi and Carmen were crushed to learn Dale was using cocaine in 1985. And their devastation was again evident when Dale was arrested and faced a judge four years later.
The friends are happy—and amazed—that news of Dale’s relapse doesn’t leak to the press or law enforcement. Montclair is a small town, and tales of trouble—especially involving the town’s most famous residents—tend to travel fast. But the only news comes several months later from the New York Times, which reports Dale’s court-ordered supervision has ended on June 25, 1992. The original charges have been dismissed and the record of his arrest has been expunged.
A chapter in the Berras’ life closes.
Another opens when Carmen calls an old friend. Concerned about Dale’s future, she phones Tom Villante and asks whether the advertising exec can meet with Dale and Tim. Of course, responds Villante, who meets the two Berras in his Manhattan office. After a handful of questions, Villante suggests Tim and Dale form a company to market their father, handling everything from card shows to commercials to all the hundreds of requests for autographs.
The Berra family loves the idea and by early 1993, Larry, Tim, Dale, and Tim’s wife Betsy form LTD Enterprises. The selling of Yogi Berra is now a family business.
Yogi will one day tell his good buddy Ron Guidry that the half dozen years following his last spring training with the Astros in ’92 were just about the worst time of his life. He missed the game—the clubhouse banter, sharing his knowledge with younger players, even the smell of the perfectly cut grass as he walked onto the field. Mostly he missed seeing his old teammates and competitors. He only had to return to Yankee Stadium to fill that void, but as long as George Steinbrenner owned the Yankees, that path was closed.
Still, there is plenty of happiness in his life. His grandchildren are a joy. He loves playing golf at Montclair Golf Club and looks forward to his Wednesday night poker game in the club’s Grill Room; Carmen knows never to schedule anything for that night. His circle of friends grows wider, and couples like makeup executive Bobbi Brown and her husband Steve Plofker, a real estate developer, become regulars at their dinner parties. Carmen loves to entertain, and an invite to a Berra party is a prized possession.
Yogi becomes a member of the Hall of Fame’s Veterans Committee and has the joy of telling Phil Rizzuto on February 25, 1994, that the Scooter will finally enter the Hall. “Did Yogi call collect?” Rizzuto asked his wife upon learning Berra was calling with important news.
And he continues to see some of his former teammates at card shows, which become considerably easier to manage beginning in 1993 when his sons recruit Kevin McLaughlin—a young collector and Yankee fan—to organize the long autograph sessions. McLaughlin becomes Yogi’s trusted assistant and friend for life.
After two seasons, Steinbrenner’s lifetime ban from baseball is commuted on March 1, 1993, and just after midnight that evening George tells New York sports radio host Suzyn Waldman and her WFAN audience that he wants Yogi back. “I’m planning to work through Yogi’s wife,” he says, “to get Carm to intercede for me.” But nothing changes.
Berra sees Steinbrenner from time to time at somber occasions. Some of Yogi’s teammates and baseball friends have begun to die: Eddie Lopat and Sandy Amoros in 1992. Roy Campanella and Bill Dickey in 1993. Allie Reynolds in 1994. On August 13, 1995, Yogi is playing at the Bob Hope Desert Classic in Palm Springs when he learns Mickey Mantle has surrendered to liver cancer at age 63. Dolores Hope offers Yogi her husband’s private plane to attend the funeral in Dallas and serve as pallbearer. Steinbrenner attends, leading Yankee officials.
The two men see each other again at the funeral of fabled Yankee announcer Mel Allen in June 1996, where they exchange a few words. “I talk to him when I see him,” Yogi tells reporters.
Has he ever said “Please come back?” they ask.
“No,” Yogi says. “He’s never said that.”
Berra’s boycott endures.
When Yankee manager Joe Torre, a longtime friend, asks Yogi to present him with his first World Series ring on Opening Day of 1997, Berra declines. Don Mattingly implores Yogi to come when the team retires Mattingly’s number later in ’97, but he demurs again. “You deserve to be there,” Mattingly insists. Yogi is unmoved: “I said no to Phil, and you’ll have to do with that, too.”
Little did Berra—or any of the Yankees who miss him dearly—know that plans are spinning to bridge the Yogi-George divide.