Yogi Berra - 9780393062335

Yogi Berra is America's most popular former athlete and the most quoted American since Mark Twain. The press saw him as part folk hero, part clown; his competitors knew him as the winningest player in the game's history.
In this revelatory biography, best-selling author Allen Barra presents Yogi's remarkable life and career as never seen before, from his childhood in St. Louis's "Dago Hill" to the greatest of baseball dynasties ever, to his clash and final peace with George Steinbrenner. As a boy, Yogi sold newspapers on street corners and worked in a shoe factory before joining the Navy and earning a Purple Heart at Omaha Beach on D-Day. Mocked for his ungainly appearance and stocky build - "a body only an anthropologist could love," as one sportswriter crudely phrased it - Berra seemed to be the unlikeliest of Yankee prospects, dismissed by many as jester to Casey Stengel's court.
Passed over by the great Branch Rickey for a contract with the St. Louis Cardinals - for want of a mere $500 bonus - Yogi joined the Yankees in 1946 at a time the franchise seemed on the verge of decline. Finding himself a teammate of Joe DiMaggio, Tommy Henrich, and Phil Rizzuto, Yogi, with the aid of the great former Yankee catcher Bill Dickey, revived the team. By 1949 he was a superstar, the cornerstone of the 1949-1953 championship Yankees, the only team ever to win five consecutive World Series, He was also the most popular Yankee since Babe Ruth.
Think of the greatest moments in baseball during this glorious era and you think of Yogi Berra - his snag of a windblown pop-up in Allie Reynolds's second 1951 no-hitter, his leap into Don Larsen's arms after the only perfect game in World Series history, and his two dramatic home runs off Don Newcombe in the finale of that amazing 1956 fall classic.
Allen Barra brings to life the salad days of the greatest team in baseball history - when Yogi, Casey Stengel, Mickey Mantle, and Whitey Ford were household names, icons of baseball's real golden era.
After the 1963 season, Yogi embarked on a new career as a manager, winning pennants in both the American and National Leagues (with the Yankees in 1964 and the New York Mets in 1973, when he told the world, "It ain't over till it's over"). Returning to the Yankees as a coach and manager, he was fired just sixteen games into the 1985 season and promised he would never return as long as George Steinbrenner was owner, a vow he kept until George asked for forgiveness in 1999.
Allen Barra's remarkable biography is an unforgettable portrait of a man, his family - particularly his partner in greatness, his wife, Carmen - and an exemplary baseball life. Drawn from hundreds of personal interviews, Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee - complete with a Yogi chronology, a dissection of classic Yogiisms. and a provocative statistics appendix conclusively proving that Yogi Berra was the greatest catcher of all time - is required reading for any fan of the game.