Pinch hitter
Report: DiMaggio helped end Berra-Steinbrenner feud
Posted: Thursday January 07, 1999 11:30 AM
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Berra says "14 years is enough" and agrees to end his feud with Steinbrenner AP |
NEW YORK (AP) - Joe DiMaggio, fighting lung cancer in a Florida
hospital, prompted New
York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner to end his 14-year feud with
Yogi Berra, the Daily News reported Thursday.
Dr. Rock Positano told the newspaper that DiMaggio urged Steinbrenner
to settle his differences with Berra during a 45-minute meeting at Memorial
Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Fla.
"It shouldn't be a personal thing," DiMaggio told Steinbrenner,
according to Positano.
"It should be first for the fans, then for the game, then for the
Yankees. That should be more important than two men having a feud."
DiMaggio and Berra were teammates on the Yankees.
The Daily News said Steinbrenner's spokesman, Howard
Rubenstein, confirmed that the meeting took place.
The feud started when Steinbrenner fired Berra as manager only 16
games into the 1985 season. Ever since, the man who popularized the phrase
"it ain't over 'til it's over" has stayed away from Yankee Stadium.
"Fourteen years, I'd say, is long enough," Berra said Tuesday. "He
apologized again."
Steinbrenner flew in from Florida on Tuesday and apologized for the
way in which he dismissed Berra - sending a club executive to deliver the
word rather than doing so in person.
The reconciliation, arranged by radio station WFAN, came at an
appropriate setting - the Yogi Berra Museum on the campus of the Hall of
Famer catcher's adopted alma mater, Montclair (N.J.) State University.
"I didn't realize how much I'd screwed up. It was a major screw-up. It
was a stupid thing on my part," Steinbrenner said. "It was a monumental
mistake on my part. Sometimes, it takes a long time to get things right.
Yogi is a highly principled man. I messed up."
Copyright 2003 Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
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