Yogi Berra, Hall of Fame baseball player and coach, has died at age 90, Newsday reported earlier today. The death was from natural causes. The news came from Dave Kaplan, the director of the Yogi Berra Museum. If you want to know just how beloved Yogi was, ask yourself how many people get their own museum. Yogi was certainly legendary — not just for his baseball career, but for his constant habit of saying some of the most absurd and unintentionally hilarious quips in modern history.
Yogi certainly had a great career, as the Toronto Star pointed out. “ Berra played in more World Series games than any other major leaguer, and was a three-time American League Most Valuable Player.”
To celebrate Yogi’s life rather than mourn his death, here are just a few of Berra’s many sound bites, sound bites that made “Yogi-ism” a word of its own.
“Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical.”
“A nickel ain’t worth a dime any more.”
“Even Napoleon had his Watergate.”
“I think Little League is wonderful. It keeps the kids out of the house.”
“It’s like deja vu all over again.”
“The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase.”
“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
“Nobody goes there any more. It’s too crowded.”
“In baseball, you don’t know nothing.”
“You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going because you might not get there.”
“If you ask me anything I don’t know, I’m not going to answer.”
“I’m not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.”
“It was impossible to get a conversation going, everybody was talking too much.”
“In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is.”
“Half the lies they tell about me aren’t true.”
“A lot of guys go, ‘Hey, Yog, say a Yogi-ism.’ I tell ’em, ‘I don’t know any.’ They want me to make one up. I don’t make ’em up. I don’t even know when I say it. They’re the truth. And it is the truth. I don’t know.”
“You should always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise, they won’t come to yours.”
“I don’t mean to be funny.”
Yogi Berra may not have meant to be funny, but he certainly was. Berra was a baseball player and manager who transcended baseball. When his wife asked him if he wanted to be buried in St. Louis, where he was born, New Jersey, where they lived, or New York, where he played, his response was perfect Yogi. He simply said “I don’t know. Surprise me.”
[Photo by Jim McIsaac / Stringer / Getty Images]