A Man of Few Words, 90% of Them Memorable

Nearly everyone knows Yogi Berra from his oft-quoted lines, with their circular truth (“It ain’t over till it’s over”) and their creative math (“Ninety percent of baseball is mental; the other half is physical”). To baseball fans, he’s unquestionably one of the greatest catchers in history, a 10-time World Series champion with the Yankees who was elected into the Hall of Fame in 1972.

Now, when the baseball season would normally be in its early days, Jon Pessah’s biography “Yogi: A Life Behind the Mask” arrives to help fill the void. It’s a book that covers the funny quotes and the exceptional career, but also the complicated and sensitive person often obscured by the image. Below, Pessah talks about Berra’s shyness, the abuse he received as an Italian-American and just how great a player he was.

When did you get the idea to write this book?

I wanted to write something that would put a smile on a reader’s face, and as soon as that clicked on in my head, the next thing was: Yogi Berra. When I tell people I’m doing a book about Yogi Berra, even if they don’t know baseball, they smile. It’s probably a coincidence that he was my father’s favorite player, which is why my father played catcher and why I played catcher.

I caught the tail end of Yogi’s career, so I only knew him as a part-time outfielder, although I did see him catch 22 innings against the Tigers when he was 37. He was a physical marvel, even though he looked like he was put together with spare parts: short, stubby legs; big head; long arms; a torso of someone 6-2 and the legs of someone 5-4.

I spent the last four years getting to know someone who people, including myself, think they know so well.

What’s the most surprising thing you learned while writing it?

There were a lot. The thing that most surprised me, especially since it’s such a stereotype with Yogi — this is a guy with more quotations in Bartlett’s than any president — is that he was incredibly shy and quiet. Friends from his playing days say that he was plugged into conversations, really attentive, but barely said anything. Radio announcers used to book him for their shows — especially in the first five to 10 years of his career, when print was the major thing — thinking they were going to get the chatty, funny catcher they had read about it. They ended up being locked into an interview with someone who answered in three or four words.

He volunteered for a secret mission on D-Day, and his group was literally the first part of the invasion of Normandy. Their job was to go 300 yards from the shore and lob rockets into where they thought the machine gun nests were. He manned one of three machine guns on the boat. He ended up getting a Purple Heart.

I knew he was a great player, but I didn’t know how good he was. He was the best player on the best team in baseball between 1950 and 1955. It was the end of Joe DiMaggio’s career, who wasn’t the dominant player he had been, and it was the beginning of Mickey Mantle’s career, who didn’t hit full stride until ’55 or ’56. So the most dominant player in baseball was Yogi, who won three MVPs in that era.

In what way is the book you wrote different from the book you set out to write?

I didn’t think I was going to spend so much time writing about the abuse he took and how he dealt with it, because it really did shape a lot of his life.

Yogi faced a constant stream of insults and slurs — from the fans, bench jockeys, the media and from his teammates. Italians faced a lot of discrimination in those days. He got so much abuse for his vocabulary, his Italian heritage, his looks. He got it from people he respected and liked, not just fans who disliked him. Everyone thought he let it roll off his back, but nothing could be further from the truth. His first manager, when Yogi was all of 17 years old, took him aside and said, “If you respond, it’s only going to get worse.” His advice was to ignore it, and Yogi did; he buried it deep, but he never forgot it.

Who is a creative person (not a writer) who has influenced you and your work?

Springsteen. I love his music, and we’re only a couple of years apart in age. My second job was in Toms River, N.J., which is right down the road from Asbury Park, so I lived the life he wrote about. Sadly I never got the luck some people did, where you were at a bar or club on the shore and suddenly there’s Bruce Springsteen and his band.

I’m a rhythm writer, there’s a drumbeat that pulls you through. If you’re going to write long, which I tend to do, a thriving beat that makes the reading go fast is essential. In Bruce’s songs, there’s a beat that drives you right through, whether it’s a three-minute song or an 11-minute song.

He’s great at telling stories, and obviously I aspire to tell stories in a way people can relate to. I’ve been to many of his concerts, and you just hope, when you write a book or you write anything, that you can bring that kind of joy to people. So that’s where the bar is: Suspend everything in your life, and forget about everything else that’s going on. And at this point in time, where we are, I hope this book will help, because God knows we need a diversion.

Persuade someone to read “Yogi” in 50 words or fewer.

Miss baseball? Want to spend time with Yogi, watch him move from his childhood through war and early disappointment, never losing the certainty that baseball was his life? Want to witness great moments in baseball history from the inside? Want to know who Yogi really is? This is your book.

This interview has been condensed and edited.