8mm Forum: Yogi Berra, 1925-2015

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Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on September 23, 2015, 02:08 PM:

Today we found out baseball has lost it's Patron Saint: Yogi Berra.

You need to understand: I'm not particularly a great baseball fan. I was raised a Mets fan in an area where you are either a Mets fan, a Yankee Fan, or some kind of heretic. (Families have literally split across this divide!) Lately I've settled into a kind of baseball-agnosticism, but I'm still going to miss Yogi.

It didn't take nine innings at a time to love the guy. He was gentle, decent and humble: he played, managed and generally won for decades and didn't kick dirt on an umpire even once!

He even had a fairly major cartoon character named after him: What's not to love?

This man was a Hall of Fame athlete and a baseball hero from the time before heroic athletes kept getting tarnished by steroid use, domestic violence charges and other troubles with the law, but my favorite thing about Yogi Berra was he had this almost poetic talent for mangling the language. I don't know how far past New Jersey these are celebrated, but here they are called "Yogi-isms".

-It's the kind of material writers might spend hours on, but they just poured out of Yogi Berra!

Here's a few of my favorites:

"Nobody goes there anymore: It's too crowded."
"It aint over until it's over"
"90% of this game is half-mental."
"It's like deja vu all over again."
“Pair up in threes.”
"You can observe a lot just by watching."
"The future ain't what it used to be."

-and when they asked him about these:

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

These make you think! (maybe even wince!)

So here's from a lapsed Mets fan: Yogi, we're gonna miss you!

Posted by Janice Glesser (Member # 2758) on September 23, 2015, 03:00 PM:

Yes, Steve we have indeed lost a baseball legend. I am a BIG baseball fan. The San Francisco Giants is my team... I am an "Authentic Fan" and a "Gamer Babe." But even more than just rooting for my team...I love the game of baseball and respect the efforts of all the other teams (well maybe not the Dodgers so much) and the players. Yogi Berra was a baseball institution. What was there not to like about Yogi. He was a great baseball player and a genuine human being. He will be missed, but always remembered.

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on September 23, 2015, 03:29 PM:

Janice,

My read of you is somewhere in your collection you must have some baseball-themed films: do-tell!

My main sport is actually canoeing (to do, not to watch!), and as obscure as that is I managed to find about three films that are at least close!

Dad was a Dodger fan, back from the days when they were the Brooklyn Dodgers. When they left town what was he to do? Becoming a Yankee Fan had a feel of defection to it, so he had to live in exile until the Mets showed up, just around the same time I showed up!

Remaining a Mets fan back then was almost an act of penance: they were pathetic, and yet you still had to maintain your self-respect even though you identified with them.

-all the while, just across the water in the Bronx there was that other team that had World Series trophies by the truckload.

These days I'm kind of in limbo: I live a lot further East than back in boyhood days, and we have a minor league team of our own in this vest-pocket ball park.

The hot dogs and the beer are fine once or twice a year...but can I really become a Long Island Ducks fan after my upbringing?

Posted by Panayotis A. Carayannis (Member # 1220) on September 23, 2015, 05:33 PM:

But nobody mentioned where a certain tv cartoon star got his name from !!

Posted by Steve Klare (Member # 12) on September 23, 2015, 05:47 PM:

From what I've seen, Yogi Bear came to be at the time Yogi Berra was a catcher for the Yankees. This was during the era when the Yankees were almost undefeatable and won one world series after another. Yogi Berra was a celebrity from coast to coast.

That smarter than average bear reached the screen and the Catcher sued. Hanna-Barbera claimed it was just a coincidence and managed to escape having to rename their bear.

-still the same, most people didn't believe the coincidence and still don't.

Posted by Joseph Randall (Member # 4906) on September 28, 2015, 03:35 PM:

When manager of the Mets, Berra appeared on Kiner's Korner after a game. He was paid for the appearance by check, which was made out to "bearer." Berra said to Kiner: "Ralph, all these years you know me and you don't know how to spell my name?"

One day, Berra was trying to call his wife, Carmen, all day with no success. When he finally reached her, he asked her where she was. "I went to see DR. ZHIVAGO," she said. Berra replied, "Geez, what's wrong with you now?"

Berra went to the pizza parlor. Asked if they should cut the pie in 4 or 8 slices, Berra replied, "4, I can't eat 8."

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