By Ted Escobar
Listening to the chatter in this Valley and in my own family before the last couple of Super Bowls, I was reminded of when I was a hater.
The New York Yankees were my demons. The Yankees were my first favorite major league team, in 1954, but I switched to the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1955.
Of all the indignities possible in baseball, it’s having a pitcher throw a perfect game at your team. That’s happened once in the World Series, in 1956, when Yankee Don Larsen crushed my Dodgers. The blow wasn’t softened even by the fact my Dodgers beat the Yanks in the previous World Series.
When Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Johnny Podres, my boys of summer, swept the Yanks, 4-0, in 1963, that helped, but I still hated the Yanks.
Something changed in the 1980s. I no longer hated the Yanks. I could speak about them and their players with my sports-loving friends. I started to appreciate how good the Yankees had been through all the years.
Recently my daughter Jenny, who gifts me precious moments when she talks baseball with me, asked me to name my all-time baseball team. I couldn't.
Here is the dilemma, in just one example: I choose Babe Ruth, Hank Aaron and Barry Bonds for my outfield. What do I do then with Willie Mays, Roberto Clemente and Ken Griffey Jr.? Or Jolting Joe DiMaggio?
Jenny wanted me to try anyway. “Who was the best catcher ever?” she asked. Why, Johnny Bench, of course.
After that, Jenny asked if Yogi Berra was as nutty as others portrayed. That was easy. He said all those things like: “It ain’t over until the fat lady sings.”
“Was he good?” Jenny wanted to know. I suppose he was. He played in something like eight World Series. But I really didn’t get to see him play much.
So we looked up his record online. I was shocked by what I had missed for being a Yankee hater.
Yogi had won 10 World Series and played in four more. He was the one who told Don Larsen what and where to throw on the day of that perfect game. He played 19 seasons.
Over his career, spent mostly on his haunches, he batted .285 with 358 home runs and 1,430 runs batted in. He won the AL MVP award three times, and he played in 18 all-star games.
Yogi owns the World Series record book: 75 games, 259 at-bats, 71 hits, 10 doubles, 63 games caught and 457 put-outs.
But the biggest victory of Yogi’s life was World War II. He was a U.S. Navy gunner’s mate aboard the troop transport USS Mayfield at Omaha Beach and Utah Beach on D-Day in 1944, two summers before he was to become a baseball star. He received commendations for bravery.
To top things off, cartoonists Hanna and Barbera named a cartoon bear in Yogi’s honor, and that bear had a life-long wining streak. I had to replace Johnny Bench at the top of my catchers list.
Anyway, to end this story that could go on forever, I missed all of this when I hated the Yankees. Don’t miss what could be the best football story of all time because you hate Brady and the Patriots.
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