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Author
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Topic: Yogi Berra, 1925-2015
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted 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!
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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
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Steve Klare
Film Guy
Posts: 7016
From: Long Island, NY, USA
Registered: Jun 2003
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posted 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?
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All I ask is a wide screen and a projector to light her by...
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Joseph Randall
Master Film Handler
Posts: 437
From: Wyckoff, NJ, USA
Registered: Jun 2015
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posted 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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