Perfect: Don Larsen's Miraculous World Series Game (30 page)

Public miscues like that may have enhanced Yogi’s reputation for garbled speech, but they had no impact on the camaraderie he enjoyed with the other Yankees. And none of those relationships with teammates was more important in those early years than the one Berra had with Joe DiMaggio.

Their first memorable encounter was on a station platform in September 1946 as the team was getting ready to board the train to Boston for a series with the Red Sox after Berra had hit his second home run in two days. DiMaggio kept studying the young catcher and then laughed. Berra smiled back, saying, “So what? I can hit homers too.” That was the closest Yogi came to a conversation with the Yankee center fielder in those first days. Like Yankee rookies before and after him, Yogi remembered that “you were scared to talk to him.” In contrast to Billy Martin’s experience a few years later, Yogi explained that “you didn’t play jokes” on the great DiMaggio.

Still, the Yankee Clipper was obviously intrigued by this twenty-one-year-old catcher who made funny comments and swung a potent bat. Yogi stayed at the Edison Hotel in Manhattan during his first full season in 1947, and there were many times when DiMaggio would invite him to breakfast, saying that he was making more money than the rookie. And DiMaggio would be there to provide guidance on the proper etiquette for a Yankee player. After he had popped up for an easy out in a game at Yankee Stadium, a frustrated Berra meandered out to right field, where he was playing that day. DiMaggio trotted up beside him. “Always run to your position,” he advised the rookie. “It doesn’t look good when you walk. The other team may have gotten you down, but don’t let them know it.” Berra took that and other advice to heart, and, for his part, the Yankee center fielder developed a fondness for this young player that transcended the relationships he had with most of his other teammates. And so, when Tom Horton approached the retired Hall of Fame outfielder in the 1980s about an interview for Berra’s autobiography, DiMaggio was happy to cooperate. “If you were doing a book on anybody else in baseball,” DiMaggio told Horton, “I would tell you to go to the library. That should tell you how I feel about Yogi.”

However much he may have appreciated DiMaggio’s support, Berra could not use it to avoid a poor catching performance in the first two games of the 1947 World Series against the Dodgers. Robinson and Reese stole second without much difficulty in the first game, and there were three additional steals in the second game. (“The Dodgers stole everything on me but my chest protector,” Yogi later confessed.) Although the Yankees won both games, the reviews on the Yankees’ new catcher were not positive. “Worst World Series catching I ever saw,” said Connie Mack, a former catcher as well as a veteran of almost fifty baseball seasons as the Philadelphia Athletics’ manager.

There was some redemption in the third game. In the seventh inning, Bucky Harris asked Yogi to hit for Sherman Lollar (the Yankees’ new catcher), and Berra then became the first player in World Series history to slam a pinch-hit home run. But the guilt returned in the fourth game. Yankee pitcher Bill Bevens was on the verge of the first no-hitter in the World Series when he walked the fleet-footed Al Gionfriddo with two outs in the ninth inning. No doubt aware of the Yankee catcher’s shortcomings, Gionfriddo abruptly tried to steal second, and, as he had hoped, Berra’s throw to shortstop Phil Rizzuto did not catch him. When Dodger third baseman Cookie Lavagetto later broke up the no-hitter with a double that scored the winning runs, Berra was almost as heartbroken as Bevens. If the Yankee catcher had nailed Gionfriddo at second, Lavagetto never would have had a chance to stand in the batter’s box. “He should’ve made history,” Yogi later said of Bevens, “but ended up with a defeat.”

Still, Harris was eager to keep Berra’s bat in the lineup, and he had the St. Louis native play right field in the remaining series games. But the beleaguered catcher could find no relief there. In the last game of the series, Dodger outfielder Gene Hermanski hit a drive off the low right-field wall in Yankee Stadium that the sometime catcher had difficulty fielding. “Yogi Berra wobbled like a drunk in a hurricane,” wrote one sportswriter, “as the ball caromed crazily off the low fence. It went one way and he went the other way, and he fell down. Yogi looked funnier than most of the comic book characters he enjoys.”

Despite the comedy of errors, the Yankees won the World Series. And so Yogi was able to take his frustrations and his World Series check back to St. Louis, where he found some solace. Her name was Carmen Short, a confident, brown-eyed, dark blond woman two years younger than the Yankee rookie. He saw her one evening when she was waiting tables at the Club 66, a local restaurant owned by Yogi’s friend, Biggie Garagnini. “I was bashful, nervous, and not good-looking,” Berra remembered. So he asked Biggie to see if Carmen would go out with him. Biggie did as he was told and, pointing at Yogi across the restaurant, said to the young waitress, “He’d like to meet you and take you out.” For reasons that even she did not understand, Carmen thought that the bashful prospect was Terry Moore, the Cardinals’ center fielder and, more important, a married man. So Carmen had a quick answer for Biggie. “You go right back and tell him,” she said, “I do not go out with married men.”

After Biggie assured her that Yogi was indeed single, the two began spending time together, often just sitting at a table in the restaurant talking. Yogi could not have been happier, later saying, “I could hardly believe my luck that Carmen liked me as much as I liked her.” An engagement ring was ultimately given (although there were conflicting recollections about how it happened—Carmen telling a reporter in August 1949 that Yogi had given it to her while she was eating a pork chop at the restaurant, and Yogi saying in one of his books many years later that he placed the ring on her plate after she had finished a sumptuous meal at his parents’ house). The two were married on January 26, 1949, and for sixty years Carmen has remained Yogi’s most trusted confidante. “Carmen is,” said Dave Kaplan, “a huge part of who Yogi is.”

Yogi certainly needed some moral support when he married Carmen. Despite his hopes to the contrary, he had not eliminated doubts about his catching abilities during the 1948 season. During spring training, Bucky Harris told the press that the St. Louis native would be the Yankees’ regular catcher for the entire season. “He knows his failings and is working hard to improve himself,” Harris said of Berra. “There will be no more experimenting with Yogi as an outfielder.”

It proved to be unfounded optimism. Yogi did improve, but not enough to make Harris feel comfortable. As a result, Berra caught only seventy-one games. He did display considerable success at the plate (with fourteen home runs and a .305 batting average) and an ability to drive in runs (98 in 125 games), but Yogi worried after the season—which saw the Yankees finish third in the standings—when he heard rumors that he might be traded to another team.

Fortunately for Berra, the marriage to Carmen was not the only fundamental change he experienced in 1949. Bucky Harris was fired and Casey Stengel assumed the managerial reins for the Yankees. For reasons never made clear, Casey was prepared to do whatever was necessary to turn Berra into a capable catcher. The first step he took was to hire a new coach to teach the fundamentals of catching to this émigré from the Hill.

Yogi learned of the decision on the first day of spring training when he met Stengel for the first time. “I got Bill Dickey to come in with us, son,” said the new Yankee manager. “He’s going to help you out.” Few men could have been better tutors. A six-foot-two-inch native of Louisiana, Dickey had amassed a sterling record with the Yankees that included a .313 lifetime batting average and an American League season home-run record for catchers (twenty-nine). And more than that, he knew how to catch.

Dickey began by telling Yogi that catching was his ticket to a long career. Good catchers, he explained, were hard to find, and Dickey was going to make Yogi a good catcher. Hour after hour during spring training he showed Berra how to block pitches in the dirt or away from the plate, how to make a clean and accurate throw to each of the bases to pick off runners or to prevent them from stealing, and how to take control of the game by working the pitchers. “He worked my tail off,” Berra later remembered. “But I enjoyed doing it.” The instruction did not end when the season commenced. “Dickey worked him harder after the game,” recalled Yankee outfielder Gene Woodling, “than Yogi had to work during the game.” (Years later, Berra would say of Dickey, “Without him, I would have been nothing.”)

Berra caught 109 of the Yankees’ games during the season and made only seven errors. (Perhaps the best proof of Dickey’s tutorial success was the 1949 World Series against the Dodgers. Yogi threw out the first three runners who tried to steal on him, and the only successful attempt during the five-game series was a steal by Pee Wee Reese.) But Berra’s growth as a catcher involved more than knowing how to field the position. He also learned how to call the pitches that would enhance a pitcher’s chances of success. Part of that effort included a careful study of batters. “I used to watch the hitter,” he later explained, “where they’d stand, how they’d stride, and everything.” As one example, he was quick to notice that Ted Williams had a batting stance that was slightly different when he played in Yankee Stadium than when he played in Boston’s Fenway Park. (And he didn’t hide his knowledge from Williams. “Hey,” he said as the Boston outfielder settled into the batter’s box in a game at the stadium. “What’s going on?”)

The Yankee pitchers recognized Berra’s growing skill as a catcher. “I very seldom shook him off,” said Whitey Ford, who began his pitching career with the Yankees in 1950. “I think he knew the batters probably better than I did.” Most of the pitchers also appreciated their catcher’s ability to ease the pressure in tense situations. The last game of the 1949 season epitomized that ability. The Yankees and the Red Sox had identical records, and the winner of the game would take home the American League pennant. Pitching in relief in the late innings with the score tied, Joe Page had two men on base and Vern Stephens—the hard-hitting Boston shortstop—at the plate. Yogi called time and walked out to the mound. “How long you been married?” the catcher asked a surprised Page. “Eleven years,” the pitcher replied in bewilderment. “Any kids?” Berra inquired. When Page said he had no children, Berra added, “You gotta have kids, Joe. Best thing in the world for a family.” Page laughed, and Yogi returned to his position behind the plate. And with that, a more relaxed Page proceeded to strike out Stephens. (Not all the Yankee pitchers were receptive to Berra’s attempts at psychological counseling. Vic Raschi, one of the Yankees’ leading pitchers in the late 1940s and early 1950s, would get angry if he saw Yogi call time and start to come out to the mound. “Gimme the ball, Yogi,” he would invariably say, “and get back where you belong.” But Berra knew that getting Raschi angry was sometimes the best way to make the Yankee pitcher more focused, and later Yogi would admit that “I never went out to talk to him unless I wanted to fire him up a little.”)

Berra’s improved performance behind the plate was complemented by consistency in the batter’s box. Although he played in only 116 games in 1949 (seven as a pinch hitter), he hit twenty home runs and drove in ninety-one runs—more than any other Yankee. And so he was not pleased when Yankee general manager George Weiss sent him a contract for the 1950 season that included only a $4,000 raise to a salary of $16,000. Yogi sent the contract back with a note saying that he deserved $22,000 (although he told Carmen he would settle for $18,000). Weiss sent his renegade player another contract, which Berra again returned without opening it (assuming, correctly, that it did not include the raise he wanted).

Spring training began with Yogi still in St. Louis. When he saw Berra at a bowling alley one evening, a local sportswriter inquired whether the Yankee catcher was going to join his teammates in Florida. Berra shook his head. “If I go down there,” said Yogi, “I’ll sign. I know it. So I gotta stay here till I get what I want.” Weiss finally called Yogi in St. Louis and, in reassuring tones, urged him to come to Florida for a chat, finally saying that the Yankees would raise his salary to the $18,000 that Yogi wanted.

It was a good investment for the Yankees. Yogi continued to excel in the field and produced a record at the plate that placed him among the league’s top hitters—twenty-eight home runs, 124 runs batted in, and a .322 average in 151 games. In other years, it might have been enough to capture the league’s MVP award, but Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto received the honor because of sterling play in the field and a .324 batting average.

There was a certain irony in the loss of the MVP award to the five-foot-six-inch Rizzuto. The Yankee shortstop was Berra’s closest friend on the team. Both of Italian descent, the two players had a natural affinity for each other. They would talk in the clubhouse, socialize after the games, and share rooms on the road. More than that, Rizzuto was able to guide his friend on how to improve his appearance and expand his off-season income. “Phil does everything right,” Yogi explained to one sportswriter at the time. “He dresses like I’d like to dress and can’t. On him, collars and ties look good. He says the right thing.”

Having been with the Yankees since 1941, Rizzuto had come to appreciate the value of being a recognized commodity in the country’s largest city. He urged Yogi to move to the New York metropolitan area on a full-time basis so that he could take advantage of business opportunities that would not be available in St. Louis (thus inspiring Yogi and Carmen to purchase a home in the nearby New Jersey suburbs). Phil and Yogi sold clothes in a fashionable men’s store in the off-season and made investments in bowling alleys and other businesses that proved profitable over the years. Rizzuto also encouraged his friend to supplement his reading of comic books with newspapers and novels. “Rizzuto made Berra wise in the ways of the world,” said one sportswriter in early 1951. “Yogi has learned how to handle himself in hotel dining rooms, how to receive the press, how to maneuver an interview, how to handle the fans. And how to solve certain problems on the field and in the home too.”