Lawrence “Yogi” Berra is a former Major League Baseball player and manager, whose fractured use of the English language gave rise to the term, ‘yogism’. He quit school in the eighth grade, and has simultaneously denied and confirmed his reputation for malapropisms by stating, “I never said half the things I really said.”
Yogi Berra played almost his entire career for the New York Yankees and was elected to the baseball Hall of Fame in 1972. He picked up his more famous nickname from a relative who said he resembled a yoga practitoner holy man from India – a yogi – when Berra sat waiting to bat, with his arms and legs crossed or at times after a losing game when he wore a sad meditative expression. Years later, the Hanna-Barbera cartoon character ‘Yogi Bear’ was named after Berra, something Berra did not appreciate after he started being periodically addressed as “Yogi Bear.”
Not only is Berra widely regarded as one of the greatest catchers in baseball history, he is also a recipient of the Boy Scouts of America’s highest adult award, ‘the Silver Buffalo Award’.
Image: Photo of Yogi Berra New York Yankees Catcher Coach
“You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”
“The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase.”
“You should always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise, they won’t come to yours.”
(Yogi’s response when asked what time it was by Rube Walker, the Met’s pitching coach, while flying from New York to Los Angeles.) “Do you mean now?”
(Yogi’s standard reply to people who said he was bad looking.)
“You don’t hit with your face.”
“You better cut the pizza in four pieces. I’m not hungry enough to eat eight.”
“I don’t remember leaving, so I guess we didn’t go.”
“Steve McQueen looks good in this movie. He must have made it before he died.”
“You can observe a lot just by watching.”
(When asked if he liked the opera one evening.) “I really liked it. Even the music was good.”
(Yogi’s comment when introduced to the writer Ernest Hemingway.)
“Yeah, what paper do you write for, Ernie?”
(Yogi’s comment when asked what he liked best about school.) “Closed.” “Even Napoleon had his Watergate.”
“I think Little League is wonderful. It keeps the kids out of the house.”
“We’re lost, but we’re making good time.”
“I didn’t really say everything I said.”
– Yogi Berra (1925-2015 )