Yogi Berra Biography - Childhood In St. Louis, Signed With Yankees, Chronology, Developed Star Qualities, Coach And Manager
baseball player world moments
1925-
American baseball player
As a player, manager, and linguist of sorts, Yogi Berra has endeared himself to baseball fans since World War II as a hard-working, rough-edged original. As a New York Yankee he developed into a masterful catcher as well as an outstanding hitter. He won the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award in 1951, 1954, and 1955, and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972. Including his work as a coach and manager, Berra has been involved in a record twenty-one World Series. His influence on the sport is reflected by a list of "25 Greatest Moments" in baseball compiled by The Sporting News in 1999: Berra figures in ten of the moments in one fashion or another. Throughout his career, Berra has also been famous for uttering "Yogi-isms," which pass as malapropisms except for their often strange, but persuasive logic. His best-known utterance is probably the assertion "It ain't over till it's over." He now appears in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, has published several books of his own, and is quoted in many contexts other than baseball.
Sketch by Paula Pyzik Scott
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Yogi Berra grew up wanting to be a ballplayer, but first had some serious obstacles to overcome. Born Lawrence Peter Berra and raised in St. Louis, Missouri by his parents Pietro and Paulina Berra, he had three older brothers who also were passionate about baseball. However, they were all needed to help support the family. Berra left school after the eighth grade and worked in a coal yard, drove a…
Berra polished his skills on the diamond playing for the Stockham Post American Legion Junior team beginning at age fourteen. He most often played left field for the team. In 1942 he and Garagiola tried out for the St. Louis Cardinals, who were then managed by Branch Rickey. Garagiola was signed, but Berra turned down a $250 signing bonus, half of what his friend had been given. Rickey is reported…
Playing for Stengel, Berra became a star on the Yankees team and was, in the manager's opinion, second only to Joe DiMaggio among the best players he had ever managed. Berra's awards and statistics bear this out. In addition to his three MVP awards, he was voted to the All-Star team fifteen times. During a nineteen-year playing career he hit over .300 in four seasons, had more than t…
After retiring as a player at the end of 1963, Berra was introduced to the tumultuous existence of major league managers as head of the Yankees. He took the team to the 1964 world championship, but was fired after losing the seven-game series to the Cardinals. He then accepted a coaching job with the New York Mets under Casey Stengel, who called Berra his "assistant manager." In 1972…
Joe Garagiola became an extremely popular broadcaster following a nine-year major league baseball career that included play with the St. Louis Cardinals, Pittsburgh Pirates, Chicago Cubs, and New York Giants. An injury to his left shoulder in 1950 hurt his effectiveness on the field and resulted to his transfer to baseball announcing booth, where he first appeared in 1955 working for his home team…
Firings and personal dramas have little to do with public interest in Berra. At five feet, eight inches and 185 pounds, Berra was teased about his physique as a player; he also attracted attention with his love of comic books, movies, and ice cream. But by far the greatest source of amusement has been Berra's verbal inventions, which have been remarked on since the beginning of his career. …
Address: Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center, Montclair State University, 8 Quarry Rd., Little Falls, NJ 07424-2161.
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(With Ed Fitzgerald) Yogi: The Autobiography of a Professional Baseball Player, Doubleday, 1961.
Yogi Berra, crossing home plate
(With Til Ferdenzi) Behind the Plate, Argonaut, 1962. (With Tom Horton) Yogi: It Ain't Over, McGraw-Hill, 1989. The Yogi Book: I Really Didn't Say Everything I Said! Workman, 1998. (With David Kaplan and Dale Berra) When You Come to a Fork in the Roa…
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