Hear our full chat on my podcast “Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley.”
He won 10 World Series rings as a catcher for the New York Yankees and caught the only perfect game in World Series history in 1956, and yet, Yogi Berra is best remembered for the countless “Yogi-isms” we still quote today.
His remarkable life and career is chronicled in the new baseball documentary “It Ain’t Over,” which premieres in D.C. area movie theaters this week. The film is executive produced by Yogi’s granddaughter Lindsay Berra.
“I have to give full credit to our producer, Peter Sobiloff,” Berra told WTOP. “In the summer of 2018, he was dragged by his wife to go see the Mr. Rogers documentary and he ended up loving it. The next day was my grandfather’s museum golf outing and he saw my dad and uncles and said, ‘Hey, how come there’s no Mr. Rogers documentary but about your father?’ And they said, ‘Well no one’s ever made one,’ and he said, ‘Well can I?'”
The film features intimate interviews with Yogi’s three sons, Tim, Larry, and Dale Berra, who paint a picture of his off-field life. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1925, Berra served in the Navy during World War II, participating in the D-Day invasion, before ultimately settling in Montclair, New Jersey for a 65-year romance with his wife Carmen.
“Grandpa would have been an amazing human being even if he never set foot on a baseball field,” Berra said. “He was a first-generation Italian immigrant … very poor, had to quit school in eighth grade to provide for his family. … He’s playing for the Norfolk Tars in Virginia, World War II is happening and he literally walks over to the naval base to enlist. … He was a machine gun’s assistant providing cover fire for our troops going ashore on Omaha Beach.”
Director Sean Mullin also interviews Yankee greats Derek Jeter, Joe Torre, Mariano Rivera, Willie Randolph, Don Mattingly, Tony Kubek and Ron Guidry, as well as media giants Vin Scully, Bob Costas and Billy Crystal. They all speak to Berra’s on-field greatness with three American League MVP awards and 18 All-Star Game appearances.
“I didn’t know he was such a great player and that’s one of the things we look to rectify in this documentary,” Mullin told WTOP. “The big thing on the field is that he hardly ever struck out. In 1950, he batted .322 with 124 RBIs and 28 home runs in 656 plate appearances with 12 strikeouts, which is just insane. … He was incredible behind the plate. He had a 148-game errorless streak and caught both ends of a doubleheader 117 times.”
He joins Mike Trout as the only two players in MLB history to finish in the top four of MVP voting seven years in a row. He also joins Joe DiMaggio as the only two players with more than 350 home runs and fewer than 450 strikeouts. “People don’t often put grandpa in the same breath as Joe DiMaggio, but he’s right there,” Berra said.
Berra officially retired as a player in 1965, but he went on to win three more World Series as a manager of the Yankees and Mets, bringing his total number of championship rings to 13. He wa elected to the National Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972, the same year that his uniform number, No. 8, was retired by the Yankees. He died at the age of 90 in 2015, leaving behind a lexicon of famous sayings lovingly dubbed “Yogi-isms.”
“The title of the doc is ‘It Ain’t Over,’ which comes from his most famous saying, ‘It ain’t over ’til it’s over,’ but (also) ‘When you come to a fork in the road, take it,’ ‘Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded,’ ‘It’s déjà vu all over again,'” Berra said. “My favorites are the existential ones: ‘If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be’ or ‘the future isn’t what it used to be.’ … They might seem silly on the surface, but they are very profound and kind of genius.”
Beyond the quotable lines, Berra also changed our pop culture in other ways, starring in various TV commercials and inspiring the animated character of Yogi Bear, who first appeared on “The Huckleberry Hound Show” in 1958. Berra even attempted to sue Hanna-Barbera Productions for defamation of character, a case profiled in the film.
“Yes, it was modeled after my grandpa Yogi for sure,” Berra said, to which Mullin added, “It’s no coincidence that in 1958, at the height of Yogi Berra’s fame, Hanna-Barbera comes out with a cartoon called ‘Yogi Bear’ about a bumbling nice guy. It’s absolutely based on him, but there was no way to prove it. He didn’t copyright his name.”
That boo-boo aside, he still was smarter than the average catcher.
Pack your pic-a-nic basket and head to the movie theater.
Hear our full chat on my podcast “Beyond the Fame with Jason Fraley.”
