Frank's Place: Yogi Berra the everyman was appealing
At Citizens Bank Park during a recent Phillies game, the ennui left plenty of time for eavesdropping. Two 20-somethings behind me were discussing their baseball memories. One was thunderstruck to learn that there used to be two major-league teams in the city and that both played in North Philadelphia.
At Citizens Bank Park during a recent Phillies game, the ennui left plenty of time for eavesdropping. Two 20-somethings behind me were discussing their baseball memories. One was thunderstruck to learn that there used to be two major-league teams in the city and that both played in North Philadelphia.
"No way," he repeated several times. "That's got to be BS."
It seems to me, a few weeks shy of a 66th birthday, that life works something like this: You spend decades accumulating knowledge, heroes, and memories until, either forgotten by you or devalued by others, it all begins to melt away.
Aging sports fans know what I'm talking about. Every time a cherished name or place is subtracted, an important chunk of our lives is diminished. The older we get, the more unrecognizable and less comfortable once-familiar sports landscapes become. The world we so passionately absorbed becomes meaningless to others.
Our natural defense is to catalog the exploits and the stars that thrilled us into an accessible menu of boring stories: "Push 1 for Dick Allen's Connie Mack Stadium homers; 2 for Wilt Chamberlain's statistics; 3 for the Big Five's glory years." As we age, we summon these touchstones more frequently, more desperately.
You can't blame younger fans for tuning us out. They're too busy making their own memories to be subjected to reminiscences that passed their recommended expiration dates in 1987.
What they can't understand, of course, is that by retelling these stories, we're merely trying to validate the importance of our experiences, trying to infuse these tales - and, by extension, ourselves - with a certain immortality.
And it's not just baby boomers like me. At some point, it happens to every generation.
After hearing countless yarns about Indian Bob Johnson, Jack George, or Frank Reagan, I eventually tuned out my father's oft-repeated memories. At the end, when the only place he found references to old heroes was the obituary page, he grew increasingly frustrated by me and what seemed to be the entire culture's refutation of his existence.
"How can these people host a sports talk-show in Philadelphia," he often said when some caller's reference to the city's past was met with ignorance on WIP, "when they don't know a thing about Philadelphia's history?"
Translation: Why aren't the things I cherish important to everyone?
Maybe that's why Yogi Berra's death this past week touched so many of us.
Berra's was a legacy that figures to be remembered long into the future. Years from now, fans will still recognize his catcher's mitt face, marvel at his World Series ring collection, recite the best of the Yogi-isms.
It was after his underrated, Hall of Fame playing career ended that the legend of Yogi Berra took shape. Overnight, the talented catcher became an accidental philosopher, a symbol for '50s simplicity, an avatar of ordinariness.
On the surface, anyway, this ascension to secular sainthood made little sense.
After all, much of America despised those great Yankees teams on which he played. Teammates like Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford, and Roger Maris sucked up most of the headlines. He didn't have a Hollywood face. He wasn't a compelling interview. He wasn't particularly powerful, colorful, or fast. Nobody I knew especially prized a Yogi Berra baseball card. And, sorry, Yoo-hoo tasted like mud.
But Berra's everyman appeal was overwhelming. He made us feel good about being ordinary.
Mantle's greatness - his looks, speed, and power - was unattainable. He appeared to have been sculpted by the baseball gods. DiMaggio was aloof, regal, unapproachable, a hero on a throne.
Yogi, by contrast, was a squat, goofy-looking guy, one who looked less like a great athlete than a cabdriver. He raised a family in the suburbs, worked in the offseason, dressed like a gardener, borrowed roll-on deodorant from teammates. He had no polish, very little education, and while we laughed at his malaprops and oddly illogical logic, we also understood him. Even his nickname, unique and perfect, suggested a blue-collar barfly, not a ballplayer.
So how did this St. Louis schmo transcend his sport and achieve cult status? Well, 10 World Series wins in New York didn't hurt. The city's media and marketing machines that were drawn to the Yankees' success identified his everyman's appeal early and worked to enhance it for the rest of his long life.
His Yogi-isms were widely reported and repeated. Some still suggest that more than a few were invented. Soon any misstated comment that sounded as if it could have come from Berra was attributed to him.
Because the public identified with him so readily, Berra was a sought-after pitch man. And, perhaps most significant in the creation of the Yogi legend, Joe Garagiola, his boyhood friend in St. Louis, broadcast baseball on national TV for nearly three decades, peppering each game with recollections.
Berra's fame kicked up another notch with the 1958 debut of the cartoon character Yogi Bear, the wisecracking Ed Norton knockoff whose street smarts belied his national park home. Curiously, Berra didn't initially see the humor in Bear and sued for defamation.
Though clearly a baseball legend, he had none of a legend's aura. Once, after the opening of his museum in Montclair, N.J., Berra led me on a tour. There was no egotistic bluster. Instead, he was shy, uncomfortable, and sometimes seemingly embarrassed by the task. It was only when recounting the past that his delight grew visible.
In that, Yogi Berra was just like the rest of us.
We like to remember.
And as long as we do, we won't forget him.
@philafitz