Yogi Berra, an American Success Story (by George Will)

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For more information, visit blackeffect.com slash Nissan. This is Lee Habib and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people. Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will has written extensively about baseball and has said this about America's attraction to it. Quote, sports serve society by providing vivid examples of excellence. One of those examples is New York Yankee catcher and cultural icon Yogi Berra.

Here's George Will. A high drive, that's trouble. And Yogi Berra, belt one, high, over the screen and into Bedford Avenue. Lean over till it's over. The 90th Center's game is half medal.

When you come to the fork in the road, take it. It's deja vu all over again. And the Yankees are champions. And look at Farrell, taking back riding Pops Cozola. The 18-year-old U.S. Navy enlistee, thinking it sounded less boring than the dull training he was doing in 1944, volunteered for service on what he thought an officer had called rocket ships. Actually, they were small, slow, vulnerable boats used as launching pads for rockets to give close-in support for troops assaulting beaches.

The service on those boats certainly was not boring. At dawn on June 6, 1944, that sailor was a few hundred yards off Omaha Beach. Lawrence Peter Berra, who died at 90, had a knack for being where the action was. Because he stood, when he stood, as a catcher, he spent a lot of time crouching at baseball's most physically and mentally demanding position, 5 foot 7 inches. He confirmed the axiom that the beauty of baseball is that a player does not need to be 7 feet tall or 7 feet wide. Berra swings, and that one's going to leave the ballpark.

Well, what do you know? Larry Berra, the exalem Yogi, his very first time at the plate in the major leagues against the A's. And what does he do? He hits a home run. The shortstop during Yogi's first Yankee years was an even smaller Italian-American, 150-pound Phil Rizzuto listed at a generous 5 feet 6. Yogi had, as sportswriter Alan Berra says in his book Yogi Berra Eternal Yankee, the winningest career in the history of American sports. He played on Yankee teams that went to the World Series 14 times in 17 years. He won 10 World Series rings. No other player is more than 9. He won three MVP awards. Only Barry Bonds has more with seven, but four of them probably tainted by performance-enhancing drugs. In seven consecutive seasons, 1950 through 1956, Yogi finished in the top four in MVP voting.

Only Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics, 11 NBA championships, five MVP awards, and Henri Richard of the Montreal hockey team, 11 NHL championships, have records of winning that exceed Yogi's. He grew up in what he and others called the Dago Hill section of St. Louis when the Italian-Americans who lived there did not take offense at the name. They had bigger problems.

Biographer Alan Berra notes that in an 1895 advertisement seeking labor to build a New York reservoir, the ad said whites would be paid $1.30 to $1.50 a day, colored workers $1.25 to $1.40, and Italians $1.15 to $1.25. The term WAP may have begun as an acronym for the phrase without papers, as many Italians were when they arrived at Ellis Island. American sports and ethnicity have been interestingly entangled. The name Fighting Irish was originally a disparagement by opponents of Notre Dame, which for many years had problems filling its football schedule because of anti-Catholic bigotry. But sports also have been solvents of a sense of apartness felt by ethnic groups. In 1923, the sporting news, which for many decades was described as the Bible of baseball, except by baseball fans who described the Bible as the sporting news of religion, called the national pastime the essence of the nation. Quote, in a democratic, Catholic, real American game like baseball, there has been no distinction raised except tacit understanding that a player of Ethiopian descent is ineligible. The Mick, the Sheeny, the WAP, the Dutch and the Chink, the Cuban, the Indian, the Jap, or the so-called Anglo-Saxon, his nationality is never a matter of moment if he can pitch, hit, or field.

Ah, diversity. In 1908, the sporting news said this about a Giants rookie, Charlie Buck Herzog. Quote, the long-nosed rooters are crazy whenever young Herzog does anything noteworthy. Cries of Herzog, Herzog, good boy Herzog, go up regularly.

And there would be no let up even if a million ham sandwiches suddenly fell among these believers in percentages and bargains. David Moranis, in his biography of Pirates of the Pirates, Roberto Clemente, the first Puerto Rican superstar, notes that as late as 1971, Clemente's 17th season, one sportswriter still quoted him in phonetic English. Quote, if I have my good arm, the ball gets there a little quicker. In 1962, Alvin Dark, manager of the San Francisco Giants, banned the speaking of Spanish in the clubhouse. Today, with three of the most common surnames in baseball being Martinez, Rodriguez, and Gonzalez, some managers speak Spanish. Yogi's great contemporary, the Dodgers catcher Roy Campanella, another three-time MVP, was the son of an African-American mother and Italian-American father. With two Italian-Americans on the Supreme Court, it is difficult to imagine how delighted Italian-Americans were with their first national celebrity, the elegant center fielder on baseball's most glamorous team, Joe DiMaggio, the son of a San Francisco fisherman. DiMaggio was big daygo to his teammates. Yogi was little daygo and became the nation's most beloved sports figure.

As Yogi said when Catholic Dublin elected a Jewish mayor, only in America. And a great job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to George Will for sharing the story of Yogi Berra.

Indeed, only in America. Yogi Berra's story here on Our American Stories. This is Lee Habib, host of Our American Stories. Every day, we set out to tell the stories of Americans past and present, from small towns to big cities, and from all walks of life doing extraordinary things. But we truly can't do this show without you.

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