It Ain't Over 'Til It's Over (The Yogi-isms Thread)

[Guest themetfairy]

In homage to Yogi, let's list some of his famous quotes here.

Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical.

[Guest d'Kong76]

I have a cute little book somewhere, can't find it.

One of my favorites, "I never said half the things I said."

The other is, "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."
This one makes sense and doesn't which is why it's so great.

[Benjamin Grimm]

d'Kong76 wrote: The other is, "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded." This one makes sense and doesn't which is why it's so great.

I thought of Yogi and that quote just yesterday, not knowing that it was during the final hours of Yogi's life. I was thinking that maybe nobody would go to see the pope because it would be too crowded.

[Guest LeiterWagnerFasterStrongr]

"I'm not gonna buy my kids an encyclopedia; let 'em walk to school, like I did."

"The future ain't what it used to be."

[MFS62]

"Deja vu all over again."

"When you come to a fork in the road, take it."

Later

[Ceetar]

"They give you cash, which is just as good as money."

[RealityChuck]

d'Kong76 wrote: The other is, "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded."

That wasn't Yogi. It was attributed to movie producer Sam Goldwyn in the 1930s. Whether Goldwyn actually said it is another issue; like Yogi, there were many things attributed to him that he never said.

[Guest d'Kong76]

"I never said half the things I said." Rinse. Repeat.

[Frayed Knot]

Of course many Yogi-isms were spawned after his retirement by his childhood friend Joe Garagiola meaning that Yogi never really did say half the things he supposedly said.
Joe was one of the first athletes to get into the then new and growing medium of TV -- and not just sports but the TODAY show and other variety type stuff -- and often times he'd come up with a line (or had one written for him) and he was smart enough to know it would be funnier if he said that he heard it from Yogi and Yogi was smart enough to know not to deny it. In his later years, especially when the museum attached to the college was going on, those quips became part of what was essentially Yogi Berra Inc. which a couple of his kids ran and I'm sure it set them all up very nicely going forward.


One story I heard -- have no idea if even partially true -- involves his his one-time teammate Bobby Brown who followed a eight year ML career with one as a heart surgeon and, later still, American League President.
So the story goes that they were sitting next to each other while on a bus (or maybe a plane) and both were reading. The Stanford educated Brown's book was a medical text while Yogi was reading being a comic book. Seeing that they both happened to finish and close their books simultaneously, Berra supposedly turned to Brown and said; "So how did your story turn out?"