Yogi and Me

HERE'S AN OP-ED I WROTE FOR OUR LOCAL PAPER AFTER YOGI BERRA DIED....

When you grew up in New York in the 50’s and 60’s you rooted for one of the major league teams at the time in that area:  the Giants, the Dodgers or the Yankees.  There was no such thing as switching loyalties and God forbid you should even whisper that you might have sympathy for one of the other two.  To do so was to cause a firestorm of derision from your friends.  This, in NY at that time, was absolute treason.

When you greeted new kids you met on the playground, someone perhaps who had moved into the neighborhood, you did so with only one question:  “Giants, Dodgers, Yankees?”  The words clearly a question of importance and the answer all you had to hear to determine if the new friend was indeed to be a friend or foe.  And if the poor kid happened to come from Boston or St. Louis and had the guts to say he still rooted for the Red Sox or Cardinals, it might take ten or twelve years before any of us would have trusted him.

While this loyalty was essential to kid-life in 50’s and 60’s in NY, you were allowed to occasionally express admiration for a player on the other teams.  Never the team, but sometimes a player.  As a catcher from age 9, I often talked about Yogi Berra as one of those players I liked.  Oh, Wes Westrum of the Giants was still my favorite catcher because he was a Giant, but there was something about Yogi I could relate to. I would never have his picture on the wall, but when one of my Yankee friends talked about him I was often to be found nodding my approval.  Though the amount of information we had about players and teams in those days could fit on the proverbial ‘head of a gigabyte pin’ today, there were lots of newspapers and we got to know players to some extent.  (And it was all good because the writers had unwritten rules to not write about the private lives of players in those days.)  And I somehow just always liked Yogi.  He seemed to be a regular guy, he played every single day and he was good. I liked Yogi Berra even though he played for the hated Yankees.

Later in life when I was consulting to nonprofits for a living about fund raising and marketing, I had an opportunity to spend some time with Yogi at his museum and education center in NJ and to actually have a tour of that facility given by Yogi himself.  The center was doing okay, but it needed some professional help in the fund raising and Board Development area.  Frankly I can’t even remember who put me together with Yogi, though it was probably our mutual friend, and former PR Director for the Yankees Marty Appel, but I spent some time at the center and did what I could to convince them they had to do things a little more formally than just waiting for Yogi to bump into a rich guy who would write him a check, something that had kept the center alive up to that point.  (I remember sitting at a conference table with Yogi and his wife Carmen along with staff people from the center.  When I was done describing some of the things they needed to do for the future of the museum, Carmen turned to me and said, ‘why do we have to do this stuff.  We’re doing okay up to now with Yogi doing the fund raising.’  Yogi, who was chewing tobacco at the end of the table, spit into a little cup and confirmed Carmen’s opinion by saying ‘yea, they still give me money.’  My response, which I hesitated to provide somewhat startled them, because I pointed at Yogi and said ‘because he’s gonna die.’  I had made my point but seemed to be suggesting something completely out of the realm of possibility that Yogi would ever actually die.)

When our meeting was over I had the wonderful experience of having Yogi himself give me a tour of the museum and education center.  This was the second time I got to spend quality time with a baseball hero, all by myself, the other was sitting for a full 20 minutes with Hank Aaron once as he told me stories about the Negro Leagues and his early life in baseball…these kinds of opportunities were heaven for a baseball junkie like me.

During our tour Yogi was Yogi.  Around the ceiling of the center they had all his Yogi-isms, those crazy things he is supposed to have said like ‘it ain’t over til it’s over,’ and ‘when you get to the fork in the road, take it.’  I remember, as he pointed them out I asked ‘you didn’t really say all that stuff did you?’  ‘yea, I pretty much did I think,’ was the Yogi-ism response.

What I remember the most though about that tour was the shock I had that this museum about a baseball icon and beloved American figure was as much about race relations as it was baseball.  I don’t know if it is still that way, but display case after display case was full of pictures of the negro league players and the information on the walls was about people getting along and the awful nature of race discrimination.   I was surprised to tell you the truth.  And Yogi was passionate about it.  He didn’t sound like Martin Luther King on these issues, he sounded like Yogi Berra. But in many ways he was just as eloquent.

But finally we got to the iconic picture of Jackie Robinson stealing home in the 1955 World Series.  This well-known photograph has Robinson sliding, leaning to the left and hooking his leg into home plate and being called safe by umpire Bill Summers.  Then and only then did Yogi Berra change from the tour guide and conciliatory opponent to the partisan I knew he was.  ‘HE WAS OUT,’ he said to me emphatically, looking me right in the eye.  ‘He was out!’

And up to the day of his death if you asked Yogi about Jackie Robinson he would tell you he was a great man, he would say he did much for America and race relations.  But he would also tell you “he was out!”

This beautiful icon of America, not just American baseball, is gone.  But unlike almost every single other athlete in the world…think about it, I’m right about this…he will be remembered as the very good player with an eighth grade education who said more things that are remembered by more people than kings and world leaders.  And he will be remembered for making us happy to watch him play baseball and happy to be in his presence.

Kurt Aschermann had a short and un-illustrious career in the Chicago Cubs minor league system, a team he has switched loyalties to and has died with for 45 years. He lives in Leesburg, Virginia.