Remembering Yogi: Berra By The Bay

An MMO Fan Shot by James H. Burns

There was an interim Yogi.

The Berra that is almost always forgotten about, the Berra of my, and so many other childhoods.

The Berra who was simply a friendly presence in the First Base coaching box for the New York Mets.

The Berra who was there for the Mets’ 1969 World Championship, and who would be the first person to congratulate all of those players so many of us loved once upon a time, when they would get a base hit.

Berra, in the eternal role of the first base coach, would utter encouraging words to Tommie Agee, and Ken Boswell and Cleon Jones and Art Shamsky and Ed Kranepool and Ron Swoboda and Bud Harrelson and Jerry Grote and Donn Clendenon…

And then he’d make sure that the player knew the correct number of outs, and what the game situation was.

As Mets fans, we knew that Berra had been a great Yankee, and if the Mets announcers — Lindsey Nelson, Ralph Kiner and Bob Murphy — were to be believed, one of the best catchers of all time. During Yankees games, their broadcasters – Phil Rizzuto, Bill White and Frank Messer would certainly make reference to Berra’s legendary career with the Bronx Bombers.

And during the Game of the Week, on NBC — a baseball fan’s only chance, back then, to see out of town ballgames that didn’t feature one’s home team — the lead broadcaster, Joe Garagiola, himself a former major league catcher, was an unending source of Yogi stories.

But then, they had been boyhood friends, in their native St. Louis.

It was Garagiola’s tales of Yogi’s witticisms that helped propel the myth of Berra as the baseball savant who somehow said the darndest and funniest things, a charming image, but one that perhaps had the unfortunate, unintentional side effect, of drawing attention away from Berra’s legitimate baseball acumen.

For many years, Berra took advantage of his image as a lovable baseball icon. Because if you grew up in the 1960s and 1970s, you were also likely to see Berra’s face in print ads for Yoo-Hoo chocolate soft drink.

(According to the New York Times, Berra became Yoo-Hoo’s “vice president without portfolio,” and “owned substantial stock” in the company.)

Berra had first come to the Mets in the most unusual of ways. After a Hall of Fame playing career with the Yankees, Berra was the manager of the 1964 Yanks, and took the club to the seventh game of the World Series. But after their loss, to the St. Louis Cardinals, Berra was fired,

And he was only 39-years old.

The Mets hired him as a player-coach, hoping he could bring a much needed offensive presence to their lineup. He debuted on May 1, 1965 but eight days later, after only four games, and nine at-bat, Berra retired again as a player.

Berra was there for the debut seasons of Tom Seaver and Jerry Koosman and so many of the classic Mets. Most significantly, he remained with the team, when the Mets traded with the Washington Senators to acquire their manager, Gil Hodges, for 1968, and Hodges brought along many of his staff.

With Hodges at the helm, the Mets coaches were now virtually a celebration of some of the great teams in New York baseball history, from across both leagues. (Hodges, of course, had been one of the all-time Brooklyn Dodgers, and Rube Walker and Joe Pignatano had also played for the team.)

When Hodges died, tragically young, two days shy of his forty-eighth birthday, just before the start of the 1972 season, the Mets promoted Berra to manager

If Berra’s tenure as Mets skipper wasn’t as exemplary as one would have hoped, it must be noted that he is one of only five managers ever to bring them to the post-season, and one of only four to make it the World Series.

(The Mets fell one game short of a World Championship, in 1973, to the Oakland A’s.)

One of the oddest views was when this gentleman so associated with baseball in the boroughs of Manhattan, was a coach for the Houston Astros, during the 1986 National League Championship series, against the Mets. (Berra had joined the Astros coaching staff in 1985, and remained with the club through 1989.)

But then, it was strange in the intervening years, and most of the decades since, that Berra’s lengthy stay with the Mets was frequently overlooked in so many tellings of his career. After all, Berra, wore the lighter blue pinstripes, for eleven years.

Thanks to Berra’s tenure with the Mets, over one fourth of his major league baseball years were spent in the happy climes of Flushing Bay.
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And it was lovely when during the last ceremony ever at Shea Stadium, after the Mets’ closing game in 2008, Berra was again in his Mets jersey, taking his place on the field, with so many of the franchise’s all-time players and other personnel,

Berra will be a New York Yankee for eternity. But if you grew up at a particular time in the Tri-State era, he was one of the friendliest faces one would ever see, just beyond the baselines, of so many of our Mets childhoods.

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This MMO Fan Shot was contributed by James H. Burns, who is a writer/actor living in Long Island. He has written for such magazines as GENTLEMAN’S QUARTERLY, ESQUIRE, HEAVY METAL and TWILIGHT ZONE; and more recently, Op-Eds or features for THE VILLAGE VOICE, THE SPORTING NEWS, CBS-NY.COM, and THE NEW YORK TIMES.