Yogi

"No, that one wasn't funny," said Carmen.

"Oh," said Yogi affably.

"How about the one about the restaurant being so crowded nobody ever goes there?" I asked. "You didn't really say that, did you?"

Yogi smiled. "Yeah! I said that one," he assured me.

"You did?" I said. "About Charlie's in Minneapolis?"

"Nahhh, it was about Ruggeri's in St. Louis. When I was headwaiter there." That would have been in 1948.

"No," said Carmen, "you said that in New York."

"St. Louis," Yogi said firmly.

So there you are.

"My favorite Yogi story," says Yankee first baseman Roy Smalley, "is about the time he went to a reception at Gracie Mansion [the residence of New York's mayor]. It was a hot day and everybody was sweating, and Yogi strolled in late wearing a lime-green suit. Mayor Lindsay's wife, Mary, saw Yogi and said, 'You certainly look cool,' and he said, 'Thanks. You don't look so hot yourself.' If that isn't true, I don't want to know it isn't."