On the day before his 80th birthday, Yankees great Yogi Berra got to throw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium before the Bombers 13-9 win over the Mariners. In yesterday's Newark Star-Ledger, Jerry Izenberg wrote about Berra and his enduring relationship with his childhood friend from St. Louis, Joe Garagiola:
Both of them say they cannot recall the day when they did not know each other. Yogi is a Baseball Hall of Famer who played on 10 world championship teams, won the American League MVP Award three times and managed in two World Series.But this won't be about that. This will be all about a slice of Italian-American geography in St. Louis they still call The Hill. Garagiola will be calling from his home in Scottsdale, Ariz., and Berra will be sitting in this living room in Montclair.
But in their collective mind's eye, they never left The Hill back in St. Louis, where the world would be forever young and their boyhood team, the Stags A.C., would rule. Sublett Park with Lefty Tony in the outfield, Garlic Mike at third and Yogi popping fly balls over the short right-field fence game after game.
One of my earliest baseball memories comes from NBC's pre-game show before Game Seven of the 1973 World Series. On that day, Garagiola was interviewing Berra and Oakland A's manager Dick Williams before the A's and the Mets would take the field for what would be a 5-2 series clinching victory for Oakland. I can even still remember Garagiola saying he'd like to wish both managers good luck, but he really couldn't since his old pal Yogi was involved.
And looking back, it's impossible to imagine anyone even remotely familiar with the man not pulling for him too.
For me, Yogi will always be about that 1973 pennant winner, a scrappy bunch that had no business winning the NL East, never mind derailing the Big Red Machine in the NLCS, and extending the A's dynasty to seven games in the World Series.
But what do I love about Yogi most of all? In the end, he's the only person who ever forced George Steinbrenner to say uncle. Their fued, one during which Yogi refused to appear at Yankee Stadium as long as Steinbrenner owned the team, began after the dictatorial owner fired Berra only 16 games into the 1985 season. And Yogi stuck to his guns until 2000, when Steinbrenner finally apologized during a visit to the Yogi Berra Museum.
Could anyone else have pulled that off? Not on your life, and it's an enduring tribute to his popularity that Steinbrenner was finally forced to give in.
