Yogi

To come up with a Berraism that rings true, you have to start with some real Berraistic raw material, which, in itself, may not ring true. Take the famous utterance, "It ain't over 'til it's over," which is so distinctively descriptive of a baseball game—a football or basketball game is often over with five minutes to go—and which we would like to think is even true of life.

Research through old sports-page clippings indicates that what Berra probably said was, in reference to the 1974 pennant race, "We're not out till we're out." That quickly became "You're not out of it till you're out of it," which somehow evolved into "The game's never over till it's over," which eventually was streamlined into "It ain't over 'til it's over."

But I wouldn't call that a wholly manufactured product. Berra sprouted its seed. And he did so at a time when the expression "The game is never over till the last man is out" had become hackneyed, even if its meaning still held true. One thing Berra doesn't deal in is clichés. He doesn't remember them.

"Yogi gives short answers. And they're all mixed in with grunts," says Rizzuto, who adds, "but that doesn't mean he doesn't know as much as managers who'll talk forever." Usually these short statements aren't eloquent, and often they're more a matter of finger pointing, nudges, scowls, pats, shrugs and ingenuous grins than of words or grunts. And yet every time I talked to Berra this spring, he said something or other that I couldn't get out of my mind. For instance, giving me directions to the racquetball club he co-owns in Fairfield, N.J., he said, regarding how long I should stay on one stretch of road, "It's pretty far, but it doesn't seem like it."

As I drove to the club, I kept thinking that over. How could he know that a given distance wouldn't seem far to me? I thought it over so much that the distance went by even faster than I'd been prepared for, and I missed the turn. I should have remembered what Berra said about taking the subway to Brooklyn for the World Series: "I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early."

There is a vital difference between an idiot or a lunatic on the one hand, and a yogi striving to achieve a state of mindlessness on the other.
—YOGI B.K.S. IYENGAR

People say I'm dumb, but a lot of guys don't make this kind of money talking to cats.
—YOGI BERRA on receiving a residual check from his Puss 'n Boots catfood commercial, in which the voice of the puss was played by Whitey Ford

In his boyhood, Berra was called Lawdie—a shortening of Lawrence. Had that name stuck, would there now be a cartoon character named Lawdie Bear? At any rate, there is one named Yogi Bear, an amiable, rotund figure who assures people he's "smarter than the average bear."

"They came out with that after Yogi won his third Most Valuable Player award," says Carmen. "And yet they claimed it had nothing to do with Yogi."

"Once somebody came up to me and asked, 'Which came first, you or the bear?' " says Yogi.