Yogi is seen here above relaxing amongst what passed for luxurious, ultimate gifts on Yogi Berra Day in 1959 at Yankee Stadium. Yes, televisions did once look like that (and probably a black and white set at that) and I can tell you it looks an awful lot like the one that every fall seemed to find itself at the edge of the stage in our auditorium at P.S. 22 in Flushing.
The explanation was simple. The teachers explained that the maintenance people (those that shoveled coal into the furnaces) hauled a television onto that stage and watched the World Series, generally always with the Yankees playing someone. I can't think of that scene in our auditorium and not think that baseball games were being watched in our assembly auditorium as we were trying to master subtraction.
And I can't think of that era without seeing the photos of Yogi's leaping leg-lock hug on Don Larsen after the only perfect game in a World Series was completed. I then always thing of the announcement that the winners' share per man in that series was $11,000, I think, more that what F.D.I.C. insurance would insure a savings account for, which at the time was $10,000. I marveled at the riches you could earn playing baseball. The loser got $7,000 I believe. Maybe $8,000. Richer that Croesus.
The Don Larsen game was a game my father was at! His boss took him. I ever so jealous of that. And the man never even thought to even at least hold onto his ticket stub. He wasn't very sentimental.
Day games during the golden era and during the week were fairly filled with fans, even regular season games. The attendance at those games would make any owner envious in today's era. It was truly like the scene in 'Pat and Mike' where the Spenser Tracey character Mike, a sports promoter, takes Pat, the Katherine Hepburn character, to a day game at the Stadium. She remarks that there seem to be a lot of people there for a weekday, doesn't anyone go to work? Mike snidely tells her, "Yeah, their grandmothers all died."
As kids we couldn't believe that Yogi was president of a company that produced a chocolate drink of, to me, questionable taste, called Yoo-hoo. The drink came in small bottles and had a yellowish-brown label. To me it looked disgusting, but I guess someone bought it. I think Yoo-hoo is one of those things I never liked, like Tootsie Rolls. Yogi was also a businessman? I don't think we ever got that out of our heads.
I never got the Yogi Berra baseball card. I did get Whitey Ford, duplicates, that enabled some trading, but never Yogi. And never Mickey Mantle. I never chewed the gum that came with the cards either. I don't think anyone I knew put that pink shingle in their mouth.
One of my oldest friend's memory of Yogi was watching Yogi turn and look at Bill Mazeroski's 7th Game World Series walk-off home run sail over the left field fence where Yogi was playing in the bottom of the 9th. Of course this gave the Pirates the 1960 World Series win and permanently made Bill Mazeroski the most hated man in New York.
Oddly enough, in that Series the fifth game at the Stadium was that same friend's (who I didn't know at the time) first World Series game. He and his brother had been taken to Yankee games as early as 1953. The father wanted to make sure they grew up loving America and its pastimes and didn't drift into Communism. It was my first baseball game. We both saw the Yankees lose that day. Portents of things to come. There were 62,753 people at that Monday afternoon game. My grandmother hadn't died yet, but I guess others had.
I remember watching infield practice early at a game being played at Shea, perhaps 1964, 1965, when the Pirates came to town. I remember being close to the field, before they chased you back to your seats, where you could hear the ball zip on the infield grass and see the seams, and Bill Mazeroski deftly fielded the ball and threw to first. Still the most hated man in New York.
Lots of people quote the things Berra said, or didn't say, but were attributed to him. My favorite, because it's so believable, is the one that has New York City's Mayor Wagner down in Florida at Yankee spring training with his wife Phyllis. This has to be in the 50s, and the Mayor and his wife are introduced to Yogi, who is not in uniform, but rather civilian clothes, wearing a typical floral-Florida style shirt that screams relaxation, or retirement.
Phyllis takes in Yogi's leisure attire and tells him, "Yogi, you look so cool." Yogi, ever polite, says, "Thanks Phyllis, you don't look so hot yourself."
My own best memory of Berra is a little more layered than watching him. Berra was a fantastic pitch hitter. He worked a walk, or generally got a hit. No one kept an inning alive like he did.
For whatever reason, my father chose to paint the back of the house at night, shining a spotlight on the area he was working on. We had a clapboard house on Flushing that demanded its share of maintenance. A lot of maintenance. I first learned to paint on that house with Dutch-Boy paint, made by the National Lead Company. Guess what that paint had in it? You never picked up a heavier brush of paint until you picked up a brush dipped in lead paint. I continued to paint the entire house after my father passed away, using lighter and safer latex paint.
Why my father was painting at night is something I can't explain. He worked Monday through Friday at a day job at the Brooklyn Navy Yard and chose to help out at the family flower shop after work, probably a lot more after his father passed away in 1956. My father always did do strange things.
I don't remember the year, and I don't remember the day of the week, but it was probably a summer Saturday night, and here's my father painting the house at night with the aid of a spotlight he's jury-rigged to shine on a ground floor window, and we're listening to a Yankee game on the radio.
I'm sure by then I had helped him paint the house, but I guess I didn't get the call to do night painting. I don't know who the Yankees are playing, but it's a close game. Perhaps it's the 9th inning, top or bottom, I don't know, but the Yankees are up and making the game tense. I go for ice cream, Breyers (then made not so far away in Long Island City) at the candy store, Siegel's, two blocks away.
I come back. It doesn't take too long and I didn't run, but some time has elapsed and my father seems happy. The Yankees are still up. "How did that happen?" I ask. "Berra got up and got a pinch hit," he explains.
Yogi Berra passes away at 90. The only time he didn't make someone happy or laugh.
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