An evolving list of Yogiisms - true and apocryphal
Today would have been the 100th birthday of Lorenzo Pietro Berra – better known to friends as Lawrence Peter Berra, and to the world as Yogi.
A 13-time World Series champion and three-time MVP, Berra was arguably the greatest catcher of all-time. A Hall of Famer whose uniform number is retired by the Yankees, Yogi was also a war hero who served as a Navy machine gunner during World War II.
All that acknowledged, pop culture still remembers Yogi more for what he said (or didn’t say) than what he did. Almost a decade after his death, Berra remains synonymous with ‘Yogiisms’ – pithy and often confounding quotes devoid of logical consistency yet somehow bearing a lyrical relevance.
It is all but impossible to verify the provenance and accuracy of many Yogiisms, which veer from the believable to the obviously apocryphal. After a while, once his penchant for humours malapropisms was established, the phenomenon gained a life of its own. Hyperbolic writers often used creative license to buttress the mythological aura, padding columns with fictional things Berra could, conceivably, have uttered. But, as Yogi himself pertinently surmised, “I never said half the things I said.”
Nevertheless, Yogi Berra is one of the most-quoted Americans who ever lived – a transcendent figure cited by Barrack Obama and George W. Bush, among other luminaries. Accordingly, to mark a century since his birth, I ventured to collate one comprehensive list of comedic quotes attributed to Yogi – correctly or otherwise. The following is the fruit of that endeavour, ordered from the most believable to the least:
· "If you get hurt and miss work, it won't hurt to miss work." – in an Aflac insurance commercial.
· "They give you cash, which is just as good as money." – also for Aflac.
· “If you don’t have it, that’s why you need it.” – Aflac again.
· “Chocolate chip cookies: you can taste how good they are just by eatin’ ‘em.” – in an Entenmann’s commercial.
· “Who the heck is Phil Harmonic?” – in an ad for the New York Philharmonic.
· “I want to thank everyone for making this day necessary.” – on Yogi Berra Day in St Louis.
· “This is great. You either have to be dead or gone to get one of these.” – on opening the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center.
· “We made too many wrong mistakes.”
· “He must have made that one before he died.” – on Bullitt, a Steve McQueen film.
· “He’s done more than that.” – when asked by a reporter if Don Mattingly had exceeded expectations.
· “Nobody did nothing to nobody.” – on an infamous 1957 brawl involving several Yankees at the Copacabana nightclub.
· “Bill Dickey learned me all his experience.”
· “I hope I never see my name up there.” – on an Old Timers’ Day video honouring former Yankees who passed away during the previous year.
· “Surprise me.” – when asked where he would like to be buried.
· “If people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s gonna stop ‘em.”
· “I don’t know. I haven’t read it yet.” – when asked how his autobiography turned out.
· “I don’t know. I haven’t caught anything yet.” – when asked by Casey Stengel, during a first inning mound visit, what a struggling Whitey Ford was throwing.
· “I wish I had an answer for that question, because I’m tired of answering that question.”
· “If you ask me anything I don’t know, I’m not going to answer.”
· “If I could do that, I’d be famous.” – on being asked to invent a new Yogiism at a meet-and-greet event.
· “I only go when I’m there. When I’m not there, I don’t go.” – when asked if he ever attended ice hockey games in New York.
· “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
· “He overly nonchalanted it.” – on a misplayed groundball.
· “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”
· “It gets late early out there.”
· “The future ain’t what it used to be.”
· “It’s déjà vu all over again.”
· “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
· “I ain’t in no slump. I just ain’t hittin’.”
· “I’m wearing it to keep warm. I got a little cold.” – on facial stubble.
· “It ain’t like football. You can’t make up no trick plays.”
· “I can’t think and hit at the same time.”
· “I always thought the record would stand until it was broken.”
· “Better make it four. I don’t think I can eat eight.” – on how many slices he wanted a pizza cut into.
· “If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be.”
· “This is a really good crowd for a Monday night. There are no ‘no shows’ here tonight.”
· “There are some people who, if they don’t already know, you can’t tell ‘em.”
· “I don’t know. I’m not in shape yet.” – when asked his cap size.
· “He’s a big clog in their machine.” – on Ted Williams.
· “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”
· “You don’t look so hot yourself.” – when told he looked cool in a snazzy suit.
· “I only talk when I have something to say.”
· “Closed.” – when asked how he liked school.
· “Ninety percent of the game is half mental.”
· “You can observe a lot just by watching.”
· “Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t go to yours.”
· “You know how they usually give you just five shrimp in a shrimp cocktail? That night, they gave us eight!” – on dinner with Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe.
· “How’d your book come out?” – upon reuniting with Bobby Brown, a minor league teammate, who was often surrounded by books and papers when they roomed together. Brown was studying to become a cardiologist.
· “You better be careful if you don’t know where you’re going. You might end up someplace else.”
· “If you don’t know where you’re going, you might not get there.”
· “Half the lies people tell about me aren’t true.”
· “In baseball, you don’t know nothing.”
· “The only reason I need a glove is because of my hands.”
· “It ain’t the heat. It’s the humility.”
· “Why buy good luggage? You only use it when you travel.”
· “The thing with five-star hotels is, the towels don’t fit in your suitcase.”
· “Never answer an anonymous letter.”
· “We were overwhelming underdogs.”
· “We’re lost, but we’re making good time.”
· “Hello, Pope.” – upon meeting Pope John XXIII.
· “I couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman. They had a bag on their head.” – on a Yankee Stadium streaker.
· “The bullpens used to be in the bullpens.”
· “How can you say this and that when this and that hasn’t happened yet?”
· “We have deep depth.”
· “Take it with a grin of salt.”
· “Great pitching beats great hitting, and vice versa.”
· “You wouldn’t have won if we’d beaten you.”
· “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
· “It was impossible to get a conversation going. Everyone was talking.”
· “Love is the most important thing in the world, but baseball is pretty good, too.”
· “What’s a Yogiism?” – after being told he used a Yogiism.
· “You tell the stupidest questions.”
· “Don’t get me right. I’m just asking.”
· “If I didn’t wake up, I’d still be sleeping.”
· “I’d give my right arm to be a switch hitter.”
· “You mean right now?” – when asked for the time.
· “When you’re out there by yourself, that’s when you’re really alone.”
· “I knew exactly where it was. I just couldn’t find it.”
· “If he’s so popular, why is everyone talking about him?”
· “If you didn’t hear that, you’re blind.”
· “Every morning, I get up at 6am, no matter what time it is.”
· “What’s wrong with him now?” – on being told his son went to see Dr Zhivago.
· “I usually take a two-hour nap from one to four.”
· “If you can’t imitate him, don’t copy him.”
· “Don’t you have those big red trucks anymore?” – to the fire department, when asked how to get to a callout.
· “I love home openers. Even on the road.”
· “Pair up in threes.”
· “Most of the putts that come up short don’t go in.”
· “A verbal contract ain’t worth the paper it’s written on.”
· “It showed nothing. Absolutely nothing.” – on an X-ray of his head following a hit-by-pitch.
· “Even Napoleon had his Watergate.”
· “I’m not going to buy my kids an encyclopaedia. Let them walk to school like I did.”
· “Little League is a very good thing. It keeps parents off the streets.”
· “Mantle’s a switch hitter. He’s amphibious.”
· “What time is three o’clock mass?”
· “Give 100% in the first half. And if that’s not enough, in the second half, give the rest.”
· “I’ve never seen anyone muddy the waters so clearly.”
· “In theory, there’s no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.”
· “Line up alphabetically by height.”
As you will surely agree, many of these lines are likely fabricated – especially those towards the end, which strike me as fairly disrespectful towards Yogi in their indulgent portrayal of him as a bumbling bumpkin, when, in reality, his baseball acumen has rarely been surpassed. Still, in the spirit of that time-honoured creative license, I asked ChatGPT to create some new fictional Yogiisms, channelling the great man into a second century. Here is what it produced:
· “The sooner you wait, the quicker it happens.”
· “Sometimes the hardest part of winning is not losing.”
· “If you wait too long, it’s already later than it was.”
· “I didn’t forget — I just can’t remember right now.”
· “It’s hard to beat a team that doesn’t lose.”
· “I remember forgetting that.”
In closing, I want this to become a living, breathing shrine to Yogiisms – good and bad, genuine and fictional, iconic and absurd. Feel free to send in any stray Yogiisms you unearth – ideally with a trustworthy citation – and I will add them to the list. It is the least Yogi deserves – a small tribute to an immortal great. And long may it illuminate future generations to the whimsical genius of this everyday hero.
Sources
· Yogi Berra, The Eternal Yankee by Allen Barra
· Pinstripe Empire by Marty Appel
· Green Cathedrals by Philip Lowry
· 101 Baseball Places to See Before You Strike Out by Josh Pahigian
· Storied Stadiums by Curt Smith
· Red Smith on Baseball by Red Smith
· Did Babe Ruth Call His Shot? by Paul Aron
· HuffPost
· The Best Writing on Mathematics 2017 by Mircea Pitici
· The Dickson Baseball Dictionary by Paul Dickson
· Yogi Berra: An American Original by the New York Daily News
· The Hubble Wars by Eric Chaisson
· A Companion to Applied Philosophy by Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, Kimberley Brownless and David Coady
· Exploring Missouri Highways by Michael Heim
· The 776 Stupidest Things Ever Said by Ross Petras and Kathryn Petras
· AFLAC
· Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center
· Diamond Are Forever by Dennis Mangrum
· Just Play Ball by Joe Garagiola
· Yankee Shorts by Glenn Liebman
· The Bill James Goldmine by Bill James