The greatest eight there ever was: Yogi Berra's career by the numbers

The Hall-of-Fame catcher, who passed away Tuesday night at the age of 90, played the final four games of his career with the Mets in 1965 and was on the coaching staff for a decade.

As manager, he led the 1973 Mets to the National League pennant, knocking off the Big Red Machine in the NLCS before falling to the A’s in seven games in the World Series.

“He wasn’t scientific, but he had a wealth of knowledge,” said Ed Kranepool, whose locker was next to Berra’s at Shea Stadium for nearly a decade. “It was like with Casey [Stengel], the things he said may have sounded strange, but when you thought about them, they made a lot of sense. And he wasn’t a disciplinarian. If you did your job, he let you do your job.”

Berra’s path to the manager’s job in Queens was sudden and unexpected.

Gil Hodges died of a heart attack at the end of spring training in 1972 and the Mets turned to Berra, which was a relief for a team still reeling from Hodges’ death.

“It was a hard thing to deal with,” Jerry Koosman said by phone Wednesday. “It wasn’t like we could stop and mourn for a year. We had to play. Yogi took over and gave us a sense of quiet and confidence that we could keep going. He was the best person for the job.”

Berra had been with the Mets since 1965 when he joined his old manager Casey Stengel’s staff after being let go by the Yankees following a loss in the 1964 World Series.

“He was an icon, even then,” Koosman said.

And when the team asked him to be a player/coach, Berra agreed and went 2-for-9.

“I think they were looking for publicity,” Kranepool said. “He got two hits one game, but he realized he couldn’t do it anymore. Yogi wasn’t one to embarrass anyone and he also wasn’t someone to be embarrassed, so that was it.”

His “laid-back, winning attitude” suited the Mets well, according to Koosman, especially in the 1973 season, when they were riddled with injuries and in last place as late as Aug. 30.

It was midway through the season that Berra said “It ain’t over til it’s over.”

Still, the Mets were 11½ games behind in the NL East on Aug. 5, but finished the season with 21 wins in their last 29 games to capture the division title despite a record of 82-79 and went on to make a memorable playoff run.

“It was a tremendous comeback,” said Rusty Staub, who came to the Mets in a trade right before the 1972 season began, nearly coinciding with Hodges’ death. “Yogi was a great guy to play for. A great person, period.”

Berra was able to stay positive despite numerous injuries and the rotation of Koosman, Tom Seaver, Jon Matlack and George Stone ignited the comeback.

“It was the most exciting six weeks of my career,” Staub said.

Berra was fired on Aug. 5, 1975 despite a 56-53 record and later went on to become a coach with the Astros.

Staub thought it was fitting that the Pope would be visiting New York City so soon after Berra’s death.

“The Pope might be the only man more loved than Yogi,” Staub said.

“You can’t replace him,” Kranepool said. “It’s the end of an era.”

Yankees and Mets fans alike pay tribute to Yogi Berra
DAN BURKE, NEW YORK POST
Midweek foot traffic at the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center is typically light. But Wednesday was not a typical day.

During a week when people from all over the country will flock to New York City hoping to catch a glimpse of Pope Francis, baseball fans from near and far made a pilgrimage of their own to the campus of Montclair State University in Little Falls, N.J., upon learning that Berra, the Yankee icon, had died late Tuesday night at the age of 90.

“I came here today because my heart told me to,” said Bob Groder, a 57-year-old Mets fan from Springfield, N.J., who although a Montclair State alum, had never been to the museum until Wednesday afternoon. “Yogi just stands for kindness and respect. You want respect in life. He gave it. He got it. He was just one of those types of people. … He played in the era when baseball was baseball.”

A steady flow of fans — of the Yankees, of the Mets, of baseball, and of Berra — passed through the 17-year-old museum, which waived its normal admission fee in Berra’s memory. Outside, workers hustled to erect an American flag backdrop behind the statue of Berra that, by midafternoon, had been surrounded with flowers and memorabilia including a baseball, a Yankees cap, and, curiously, a Bobby Richardson trading card. Two bouquets — one carnations, the other roses — rested in the statue’s left arm.

Among those who came bearing gifts were Joshua Raymond and his 9-year-old son, Max, of North Caldwell. Raymond, 46, met Berra when he was 18 and organized a fundraiser at Montclair Kimberley Academy to help fight Lou Gehrig’s Disease. Raymond keeps a photo of himself and Berra, taken in Berra’s dining room, in his cellphone.

“Yogi was very important to me,” he said. “I have always been a big fan, not just because he was a Yankee but because of what he did to help me. Yogi came, he signed autographs and he donated his time.

“I have been here before but it’s been a long time. I wanted to be here today just to pay my respects to the family and to Yogi.”

John Tabor, who was raised in New Jersey, made the trip from Lake Worth, Fla., but the timing was more coincidence than anything. He said he had been planning the trip for about a week.

“He was my favorite player,” said Tabor, 63. “More than Don Mattingly. More than Derek Jeter. … I was hoping he’d go on for a few more years. He had a fantastic career. No one can take that away from him.

“Ninety years. He had a good run.”

David Kaplan, the museum’s director of programs, said he saw Berra earlier Tuesday.

“I’m relieved he’s not in any discomfort anymore,” he said. “He died peacefully in his sleep and I’m glad for that.”

Kaplan said the museum received emails from all over the country once Berra’s death was announced.

“The outpouring has just been outstanding,” he said. “We knew he touched a lot of lives, but nothing like this. … He really transcended the sport. He goes beyond that. He’s one of the few people you can say that about.”

Said Groder: “It’s like losing a member of the family.”

Yogi Berra’s legacy: The most beloved man in baseball
MIKE VACCARO, NEW YORK POST
There are a million stories, and you will hear all of them, and you will want to hear more of them, because when a quintessential American such as Yogi Berra reaches his final reward, there are simply not enough hours in the days that follow to properly celebrate, and commemorate.

This was always my favorite, because it says so much about who Lawrence Peter Berra, who died late Tuesday at age 90 — precisely 69 years to the day after making his debut for the Yankees with two hits and a home run — was. And will remain, in memory, for as long as good men are remembered.

For years, Berra could never understand why fellow baseball immortal Bob Feller never seemed to like him. It placed Feller in a distinct minority, of course. You might have been a Red Sox or a Dodgers fan, and never cared for how Berra used to batter your pitchers one bad ball at a time. Maybe you were a Mets fan, and never much appreciated Yogi’s unorthodox ways as the manager of your club.

But who didn’t LIKE Yogi Berra?

Feller, it turns out. And Yogi, who liked being liked, finally asked him one day, point-blank: “Bob, why don’t you like me?”

Feller, maybe one of the bluntest men ever born, said: “You never served your country. I can’t respect a man like that.”

And all Yogi could do was laugh, before telling Feller he was wrong. Not only had Yogi served, he had been a gunner’s mate in the English Channel on the morning of June 6, 1944. He didn’t storm Omaha Beach, but he could sure see it. He wasn’t close enough to see the blue German uniforms, but he could sure hear the damage they were inflicting.

“Good thing,” he would tell me 59 years later, “or else I guess even a kid like me woulda had to be frightened.”

Berra was 19 years old that day. He’d batted .253 for the Norfolk Tars of the Class B Piedmont League the year before. It was hard to even call him a prospect yet. Or, as Yogi himself would put it: “I guess you could say I hadn’t become who I became.”

“I was just a young guy doing what he was supposed to do back then, joining the Navy, serving my country, fighting the war. I wasn’t a baseball player on that boat. I was a sailor.”

Feller was stunned. He’d never been shy about relating his own experiences in the war. Why had Yogi never expounded on his? Yogi told him more: about the 15 days he spent on that 36-foot-long Landing Craft Support Small rocket boat; about how his base ship, the USS Hayfield, was Dwight Eisenhower’s nautical headquarters during the invasion.

When the shooting started, he’d stood straight up in the boat like he was blocking home plate, only to have an officer ask him in the nicest possible way if he wanted to keep his squat body free of holes, just as his throwing hand was grazed by a machine-gunner’s bullet.

“Me and Bob,” Berra grinned, “we were good after that.”

That is what we will remember most about Yogi: his modesty, his humility, his willingness — his desire — to remain one of us even as he lived the final 65 or so years of his life as one of the most famous names, faces and personalities on Planet Earth. He liked things on this side of life’s velvet rope, a visible member of the Montclair, NJ, community, blending in at his sons’ high school football and baseball games, occasionally thrilling visitors to his museum with a handshake and a hello.

He was that rare Yankee who was also beloved by Mets fans, the only man to manage both teams to the World Series, losing Game 7 both times. He was that rare Yankee who was unmoved by George Steinbrenner’s whims and wealth, staying away from Yankee Stadium for 14 years after Steinbrenner fired him 16 games into the 1985 season after promising him a full year.

Steinbrenner lacked the courage to fire Berra himself, and that was a cowardice Yogi couldn’t brook. So he stayed away. For a while, it looked like it might be a permanent boycott, until Steinbrenner made the pilgrimage to the Yogi Berra Museum in early January 1999, extended a hand and an apology, and Yogi shook it and took it.

“People all over the world know him,” Steinbrenner said that day. “And few guys can say, ‘I was a Yankee and I was Yogi Berra.’ He belongs with us.”

And Yogi remained, as always, Yogi. Joe DiMaggio would die a few weeks later, so when Berra arrived for Opening Day, a rainy, raw day, it was pointed out to him that he was now, by acclamation, the Greatest Living Yankee, a title DiMaggio had always worn like an emperor’s sash.

“No,” Yogi said. “I was just a ballplayer. Not a legend or anything like that, like Joe or Mickey. I just played ball.”

He played ball. He sold millions of gallons of Yoo-Hoo. He owned a bowling alley with his fellow Jersey Yankee, Phil Rizzuto. He won 10 championships as a player, was a coach on the ’69 Mets and the ’77-’78 Yankees, even brought a playoff berth to Houston during a brief foray with the Astros working for his friend, John McMullen, who called Yogi “the greatest good luck charm ever.”

Hanna-Barbera insisted it did not name the character Yogi Bear for Yogi Berra, as implausible as that seems. For a time, Yogi asked for a hearing in court, but ultimately withdrew because the cartoonists insisted it was mere coincidence. And he believed them.

He was a baseball Zelig in so many ways, for so many moments: for Jackie Robinson’s steal of home in the ’55 World Series (into eternity, Yogi will swear he was out); for Bill Mazeroski’s forever blast five years later (as the left fielder, he had the best — or worst — view). He jumped into Don Larsen’s arms, and 43 years later, he stood and cheered when David Cone threw his own perfecto — on Yogi Berra Day, of course.

Once, with Allie Reynolds about to pitch his second no-hitter of the 1951 season, Yogi circled under a Ted Williams foul pop-up that would’ve been the 27th out. He dropped it, and he was crestfallen.

“Jeez, Allie,” Yogi said, “I’m sorry.”

“Don’t worry, Yogi,” Reynolds said. “We’ll get him again.”

And damned if they didn’t do just that, popping Williams up again. Yogi caught it that time. Because even on those days when things didn’t go just right for him, there always seemed to be someone looking out for the kid from The Hill in St. Louis. On the field. In the dugout. All the way back to the USS Hayfield on June 6, 1944.

Let’s finish this with the day I got my very own Yogi-ism. He was telling so many of the stories he’d told almost nobody until Bob Feller dragged them out of him. And it turns out that in 2004, on the 60th anniversary of D-Day, France sent a delegation to the Yogi Berra Museum in Montclair to say thank you for his small part.

“Have you ever been to Normandy?” I’d asked.

“Why?” Yogi said, shrugging his shoulders. “I was already there.”

Anyway, on the special day, speeches were given, wreaths presented, hugs exchanged.

“And then the leader of the delegation, he kissed me,” Yogi said. “He gave me one of those French kisses.”

Godspeed, Yogi.

Q: What was it like joining the Mets as player-coach?

A: OK. Glad to stay in New York and be with Casey [Stengel] again.

Q: What was it like managing the 1973 Mets to the World Series? Who were your favorite players on that team? What do you remember about the young Reggie Jackson?

A: We won so it was good, didn’t see Reggie enough, he was in the other league, but we knew to be careful with him.

Q: What were your emotions the day you were inducted into the Hall of Fame?

A: Very proud, I wish my mom and dad could have been there.

Q: How did “It ain’t over till it’s over” start?

A: 1973, we needed to get hot, and I said, “You’re never out of it until you’re out of it,” then the next day I said it ain’t over . . .

Q: How did “It’s getting late early” start?

A: Playing left field in Yankee Stadium in the fall, that sun was a killer going down.

Q: When you came to a fork in the road, was there ever a time you didn’t take it?

A: Not that I can remember.

Heartbroken Jeter, Hal, baseball world remember Yogi
NEW YORK POST
Yogi Berra was a character, a caricature, a military hero and a baseball giant. He transcended the game, an icon who was as familiar to the baseball-ignorant as the baseball purists.

When news came down in the early hours of Wednesday that the 90-year-old Berra had passed away Tuesday night, people from all walks of life mourned the loss of a Yankees legend, yes, but also an American one.

Derek Jeter, former Yankees shortstop

“To those who didn’t know Yogi personally, he was one of the greatest baseball players and Yankees of all time. To those lucky ones who did, he was an even better person. To me he was a dear friend and mentor. He will always be remembered for his success on the field, but I believe his finest quality was how he treated everyone with sincerity and kindness. My thoughts and prayers go out to his family and friends.”

Hal Steinbrenner, Yankees general partner

“Yogi Berra’s legacy transcends baseball. Though slight in stature, he was a giant in the most significant of ways through his service to his country, compassion for others and genuine enthusiasm for the game he loved. He has always been a role model and hero that America could look up to.

“While his baseball wit and wisdom brought out the best in generations of Yankees, his imprint in society stretches far beyond the walls of Yankee Stadium. He simply had a way of reaching and relating to people that was unmatched. That’s what made him such a national treasure.

“On behalf of my family and the entire Yankees organization, we extend our deepest condolences to Yogi’s family, friends and loved ones.”

Ron Guidry, former Yankees pitcher

“It’s just a sad day. We’re losing a great man and I’m losing a great friend. He was always a very good friend of mine. All I know is every time I hear the word ‘baseball,’ I think of Yogi.”

Joe Torre, former Yankees manager

“We’ve lost Yogi, but we will always have what he left for us: the memories of a lifetime filled with greatness, humility, integrity and a whole bunch of smiles. He was a lovable friend.”

Andy Pettitte, former Yankees pitcher

“What an honor it was to have rubbed shoulders with Yogi. He embraced me from the first day I met him. Heck, he embraced everyone he met. Yogi loved talking baseball and sharing stories, and I was always excited to hear them. He was a special man who brought smiles to the faces of an awful lot of people.

He served our country with honor, and I can’t think of a better ambassador to have represent this game.

He will be sorely missed, and my heart goes out to his family during this difficult time.”

New York Mets

“Yogi Berra was a baseball legend who played a key part in our history. He was kind, compassionate and always found a way to make people laugh. With us he was a player, coach and managed the 1973 ‘Ya Gotta Believe’ team to the National League pennant. Our thoughts and prayers are with his family.”

Tom Seaver, former Mets pitcher

“They threw away the mold in regards to Yogi. He was one of a kind. He loved the game. As a manager, he never tried to complicate things. He let his players play. He respected what you did on the field. He was an utter delight to be around.”

President Barack Obama

“Yogi Berra was an American original – a Hall of Famer and humble veteran; prolific jokester and jovial prophet. He epitomized what it meant to be a sportsman and a citizen, with a big heart, competitive spirit, and a selfless desire to open baseball to everyone, no matter their background. Michelle and I offer our deepest condolences to his family, his friends, and his fans in New York and across the world.”

Rob Manfred, MLB commissioner

“Yogi Berra’s character, talent, courage, extraordinary experiences and inimitable way with words made him a universally beloved figure in Baseball and beyond … Renowned as a great teammate, Yogi stood for values like inclusion and respect during the vital era when our game began to become complete and open to all. ”

Social media lit up immediately with remembrances of the 18-time All-Star catcher, some spilling stories of the good old days, some choosing their favorite Yogi-ism, some simply wishing he rest in peace.