How Yogi Berra Became an American Original

Lee Habeeb (00:00):
This is Lee Habeeb, and this is Our American Stories, the show where America is the star and the American people.

Lee Habeeb (00:19):
And all month long, we’re celebrating the Italian-Americans who helped shape our nation, from Columbus to Capra. Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist George Will has written extensively about baseball and once wrote that, quote,

Lee Habeeb (00:42):
“Sports serve society by providing vivid examples of excellence.” End quote. Few embody that excellence quite like Yogi. Let’s get into the story. Take it away, George.

Archival baseball broadcast (00:42):
And the Yankees are champions! And look at Berra piggyback riding Bob Kuzava!

George Will (01:09):
The 18-year-old U.S. Navy enlistee, thinking it sounded less boring than the dull training he was doing in 1944, volunteered for service on what he thought an officer had called rocket ships. Actually, they were small, slow, vulnerable boats used as launching pads for rockets to give close-in support for troops assaulting beaches.

George Will (01:29):
The service on those boats certainly was not boring. At dawn on June 6, 1944, that sailor was a few hundred yards off Omaha Beach. Lawrence Peter Berra, who died at 90, had a knack for being where the action was. Because he stood, when he stood, as a catcher, he spent a lot of time crouching at baseball’s most physically and mentally demanding position, 5-foot-7.

George Will (01:54):
He confirmed the axiom that the beauty of baseball is that a player does not need to be seven feet tall or seven feet wide.

Archival baseball broadcast (02:09):
Berra swings, and that one’s going to leave the ballpark!

Archival baseball broadcast (02:12):
Well, what do you know? Larry Berra, they call him Yogi, his very first time at the plate in the major leagues against the A’s. And what does he do? He hits a home run.

George Will (02:12):
The shortstop during Yogi’s first Yankee years was an even smaller Italian-American, 150-pound Phil Rizzuto, listed at a generous 5-foot-6.

George Will (02:32):
Yogi had, as sportswriter Allen Barra says in his book Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee, the winningest career in the history of American sports. He played on Yankee teams that went to the World Series 14 times in 17 years. He won 10 World Series rings.

George Will (02:53):
No other player has more than nine. He won three MVP awards. Only Barry Bonds has more, with seven, but four of them probably tainted by performance-enhancing drugs. In seven consecutive seasons, 1950 through 1956, Yogi finished in the top four in MVP voting.

George Will (03:17):
Only Bill Russell of the Boston Celtics, 11 NBA championships, five MVP awards, and Henri Richard of the Montreal hockey team, 11 NHL championships, have records of winning that exceed Yogi’s. He grew up in what he and others called the Dago Hill section of St. Louis, when the Italian-Americans who lived there did not take offense at the name.

George Will (03:39):
They had bigger problems. Biographer Allen Barra notes that in an 1895 advertisement seeking labor to build a New York reservoir, the ad said whites would be paid $1.30 to $1.50 a day, colored workers $1.25 to $1.40, and Italians $1.15 to $1.25.

George Will (04:06):
The term ‘wop’ may have begun as an acronym for the phrase ‘without papers,’ as many Italians were when they arrived at Ellis Island. American sports and ethnicity have been interestingly entangled. The name ‘Fighting Irish’ was originally a disparagement by opponents of Notre Dame, which for many years had problems filling its football schedule

George Will (04:27):
because of anti-Catholic bigotry. But sports also have been solvents of a sense of apartness felt by ethnic groups. In 1923, The Sporting News, which for many decades was described as the Bible of baseball, except by baseball fans who described the Bible as the Sporting News of religion, called the national pastime the essence of the nation.

George Will (04:49):
Quote: “The Mick, the Sheeny, the Wop, the Dutch and the Chink, the Cuban, the Indian, the Jap, or the so-called Anglo-Saxon, his nationality

George Will (05:15):
is never a matter of moment if he can pitch, hit, or field.” Ah, diversity. In 1908, The Sporting News said this about a Giants rookie, Charlie “Buck” Herzog. Quote: “The long-nosed rooters are crazy whenever young Herzog does anything noteworthy. Cries of Herzog, Herzog, gut poi, Herzog go up regularly,

George Will (05:39):
and there would be no letup even if a million ham sandwiches suddenly fell among these believers in percentages and bargains.” David Maraniss, in his biography of the Pirates’ Roberto Clemente, the first Puerto Rican superstar, notes that as late as 1971, Clemente’s 17th season, one sportswriter still

George Will (06:01):
quoted him in phonetic English, quote, “If I have my good arm, the ball gets there a little quicker.” In 1962, Alvin Dark, manager of the San Francisco Giants, banned the speaking of Spanish in the clubhouse. Today, with three of the most common surnames in baseball being Martinez, Rodriguez, and Gonzalez,

George Will (06:23):
some managers speak Spanish. Yogi’s great contemporary, the Dodgers catcher Roy Campanella, another three-time MVP, was the son of an African-American mother and Italian-American father. With two Italian-Americans on the Supreme Court, it is difficult to imagine how delighted Italian-Americans were with their first national celebrity, the elegant center

George Will (06:47):
fielder on baseball’s most glamorous team, Joe DiMaggio, the son of a San Francisco fisherman. DiMaggio was Big Dago to his teammates. Yogi was Little Dago and became the nation’s most beloved sports figure. As Yogi said when Catholic Dublin elected a Jewish mayor, ‘Only in America.’

Lee Habeeb (07:11):
And a great job on the production, editing, and storytelling by our own Greg Hengler. And a special thanks to George Will for sharing the story of Yogi Berra. Indeed, only in America. Yogi Berra’s story, here on Our American Stories.

This is Lee Habeeb, host of Our American Stories. Every day,

Lee Habeeb (07:33):
we set out to tell the stories of Americans past and present, from small towns to big cities, and from all walks of life, doing extraordinary things. But we truly can’t do this show without you. Our shows are free to listen to, but they’re not free to make. If you love what you hear, go to OurAmericanStories.com and make a donation to keep the stories coming. That’s OurAmericanStories.com.