Baseball Legend Yogi Berra Passes Away

Yogi Berra, a combat-wounded World War II veteran and one of baseball’s greatest catchers and characters, who as a player was a mainstay of 10 Yankee championship teams and as a manager led both the New York Yankees and New York Mets to the World Series — but who may be more widely known as a lovable cultural figure, inspiring a cartoon character and issuing a seemingly limitless supply of unwittingly witty epigrams known as Yogi-isms died on Tuesday. He was 90.

After a very promising start in professional baseball, World War II put his career on hold. Berra joined the U.S. Navy. He took part in the invasion of Normandy and, two months later, in Operation Dragoon, an Allied assault on Marseilles in which he was bloodied by a bullet and earned a Purple Heart.

Berra also had a stint with the Houston Astros as a coach back in the 80's which is where I first was familiarized with the legendary player.

Over the years he had quite the list of Yogi-isms. Here are a few of my favorites:

1. “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

2. “It’s deja vu all over again.”

3. “I usually take a two-hour nap from 1 to 4.”

4. “Never answer an anonymous letter.”

5. “We made too many wrong mistakes.”

6. “You can observe a lot by watching.”

7. “The future ain’t what it used to be.”

8. “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.”

9. “It gets late early out here.”

10. “If the people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them.”

11. “Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical.”

12. “Pair up in threes.”

13. “Why buy good luggage, you only use it when you travel.”

14. “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”

15. “All pitchers are liars or crybabies.”

16. “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”

17. “Bill Dickey is learning me his experience.”

18. “He hits from both sides of the plate. He’s amphibious.”

19. “I always thought that record would stand until it was broken.”

20. “I can see how he (Sandy Koufax) won 25 games. What I don’t understand is how he lost five.”

21. “I don’t know (if they were men or women fans running naked across the field). They had bags over their heads.”

22. “I’m a lucky guy and I’m happy to be with the Yankees. And I want to thank everyone for making this night necessary.”

23. “I’m not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.”

24. “In baseball, you don’t know nothing.”

25. “I never blame myself when I’m not hitting. I just blame the bat and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn’t my fault that I’m not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?”

26. “I never said most of the things I said.”

27. “It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility.”

28. “I think Little League is wonderful. It keeps the kids out of the house.”

29. “I wish everybody had the drive he (Joe DiMaggio) had. He never did anything wrong on the field. I’d never seen him dive for a ball, everything was a chest-high catch, and he never walked off the field.”

30. “So I’m ugly. I never saw anyone hit with his face.”

31. “Take it with a grin of salt.”

32. (On the 1973 Mets) “We were overwhelming underdogs.”

33. “The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase.”

34. “You should always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise, they won’t come to yours.”

35. “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

Rest in Peace Yogi....you will be sorely missed.