Driving Mr. Yogi

by Harvey Araton

  Steinbrenner’s antics aside, there were plenty of laughs in the dugout that season. During one game, the Yankees were down a run in the middle innings with a man on first and nobody out. Would Berra bunt the runner into scoring position? The man who had spent his career with a team famous for clutch, power hitting had never been enamored of small ball. Berra flashed the hit sign.

  The next inning, same situation, and now the players were anticipating the sacrifice again. No dice. From his seat on the bench, Guidry glanced down the line and could see some of his teammates looking around in bewilderment.

  Suddenly a voice—Guidry couldn’t remember whose: “Skip, don’t you think you should make a move?”

  Without turning his head, Berra took one side step to the left. “How’s that?” he said, setting off a round of convulsive laughter.

  But it wasn’t funny when the end came for Berra, an absurd sixteen games into the 1985 season. Steinbrenner had promised at the outset of spring training to let Berra be, not make a change for the whole season. Instead, he fired him on April 28 after the White Sox finished off a three-game sweep in Chicago that left the Yankees with a 6–10 record.

  Steinbrenner cited “a lack of discipline,” while adding that he’d agonized over the firing and hadn’t slept the night before announcing it. The worst part was that Steinbrenner—who had, as always, made the decision unilaterally—didn’t even deliver the news himself, leaving it to his general manager, Clyde King, to tell Berra that Billy Martin would be returning for a fourth turn, as Steinbrenner’s eleventh manager in his twelve years as owner. Although Steinbrenner did call Berra the next day at home, it was a terrible demonstration by the Boss, one that Berra would not soon forgive or forget.

  When the news spread in the clubhouse, the emerging star, Don Mattingly, was particularly irate. Their anger simmering, the veterans Willie Randolph, Dave Winfield, and Don Baylor refused to comment, although Baylor’s attempt to kick a clubhouse trash can all the way to Indiana said it all.

  Berra remained in the manager’s office with the door closed for half an hour after the game. His son Dale, who had been acquired in a trade with Pittsburgh during the off-season, was with him. When they emerged, Dale’s face was tearstained. His father told him not to worry; he’d be on the golf course back home in New Jersey by Monday afternoon. “Play hard for Billy, and you’ll be fine,” he said.

  Then he told reporters, referring to Steinbrenner, “He’s the boss. He can do what he wants.”

  As the players left Comiskey Park and filed onto the bus for the ride from Chicago’s South Side to O’Hare International Airport, they were stunned to find Berra in his customary seat in the front. What the hell? he figured. He was going to the airport, too. Why take a cab when he already had a ride?

  “It was hard to believe that he was taking the bus with us,” Dale Berra said. “But that was Dad, showing his humanity, wanting everything to feel as normal as possible.”

  How many men, he wondered, could have instantly processed those warring emotions and compartmentalized their fury, saving it for the man upstairs? He remembered his older brother Tim once telling him how Howard Schnellenberger had responded when he was fired three games into Tim’s one-year fling with the Baltimore Colts. He stormed off swearing and raging, right past the players, without so much as a goodbye.

  During the quiet, somber ride, Berra stayed in his seat, saying nothing until the bus rolled to its first terminal stop, his place to get off. He stood up and turned around to the players. In a few words, he thanked them, wished them luck, and told them to keep working hard. An awkward moment of silence was followed by a heartfelt round of applause.

  With a wave, Berra stepped down to the curb and retrieved his bag from underneath the bus. The driver climbed back aboard, the door closed, and the bus pulled away. Dale was in tears as he glimpsed his father’s familiar hunched figure through the window.

  Guidry watched all of this unfold in his own emotional vortex, the veteran in him knowing this was the flip side of glory, the cold-hearted exit most people in the game—himself included—were likely to make. Still, it was Yogi Berra being discarded from the bus like excess baggage, an old piece of furniture left by the curb. For a moment, he wanted to cry, but he didn’t. The guys were all around. The bus rolled on. There was a plane to catch to the next town.

  The emotion passed. But Guidry would not forget it.

  3. The Late Show

  In the late afternoon shadows of winter, the day cold but precipitation-free, a black town car was about to whisk George Steinbrenner from Newark Airport and take him on what may have been the longest ride of his sixty-eight years—and certainly the longest in the fourteen years since he had fired Yogi Berra.

  At the curb, Steinbrenner handed a small garment bag to the driver and slipped into the back seat next to Rick Cerrone, the Yankees’ director of media operations, in his fourth year of serving Steinbrenner’s promotional and emotional whims 24-7. Something seemed different about the Boss today. He lacked his customary bombast, wearing a sad-sack frown on a face that normally radiated vitality. As the driver worked the maze of airport roadways, Steinbrenner barely said a word, which Cerrone knew didn’t happen often.

  Also odd was his choice of dress: Steinbrenner had eschewed what Cerrone liked to call his “power blue” for a decidedly neutral camel-colored sports coat and beige turtleneck. Cerrone recalled reading somewhere that the last thing a leveraged businessman should ever do is show up to an important meeting wearing off colors bordering on brown.

  Leverage was the underlying issue of this rare occasion. Steinbrenner, a man steeped in power and privilege, had no leverage. Could the bland look have been an unwitting admission of his predicament—heading for a meeting he had already ceded control of?

  Cerrone considered the call he had received in his Yankee Stadium office from the Tampa-based Boss only a few weeks earlier, when the possibility of the journey north for a years-overdue meeting with Yogi Berra, a Yankees immortal, was broached. “What do you think about me doing this?” Steinbrenner had said.

  “I think it’s terrific,” Cerrone had replied.

  Somehow, this advice had only agitated Steinbrenner, as if he’d hoped to be talked out of it. “Of course you’re going to say that,” he’d barked. “You’re his friend.”

  Well, that’s a stretch, Cerrone had thought, although admittedly he had been around Berra a fair number of times, was a great fan, and once, while working for the baseball commissioner’s office, had asked Berra to autograph the famous 1984 Sports Illustrated cover of old number 8 from behind, with the headline YOGI’S BACK (as in back to managing the Yankees).

  “What should I write?” Berra had asked.

  “How about ‘It ain’t over ’til it’s over’?” Cerrone had said.

  Berra had nodded and written, “Best Wishes.”

  Of course, he wasn’t back for long—one season plus sixteen games. Fourteen years later, the tables were turned, and Steinbrenner was, for perhaps the first time in his life, unsure about what he wanted to do, or what he should do.

  “George, I’m giving you my best counsel,” Cerrone had said on the phone. “I think it would be a great thing for you to do, and it would be great for the Yankees.”

  Finally, Steinbrenner had said, “OK, I’ll do it. But you’re going with me.”

  Unsure how he should feel about that, Cerrone eventually settled on the position that Steinbrenner had demonstrated great trust in his professional judgment. Cerrone was no ballplayer—like Rick Cerone, the former Yankees catcher with the same name minus one r—but he, too, was a team player.

  The appointment was set for 5:00 P.M., and Steinbrenner, in deference to the famously punctual man waiting on him, did not want to be late. As he sometimes did in advance of important events, he had ordered his driver to make trial runs to their destination from the airport to determine the fastest route. Naturally, it was impossible to simulate early-rush-hour congestion, especi
ally in densely populated north Jersey. They soon found themselves in slowing traffic on the Garden State Parkway.

  Steinbrenner repeatedly checked his watch, while looking out the window and tapping his foot. Cerrone had never seen him so nervous. “The word that comes to mind is ‘trepidation,’” he said.

  Traffic eased, and the town car made its way off the parkway and into a back-area parking lot on the hilly campus of Montclair State University. It rolled to a stop in front of a new minor-league ballpark next to a small, gleaming building. Steinbrenner pushed open the car door, got out and stood up straight, and was led to the building’s rear entrance.

  There he stood face-to-face with the smaller, bespectacled man who had assiduously avoided him for almost fourteen years. It was about ten minutes after five when Steinbrenner arrived at Berra’s doorstep, in effect to thank the self-exiled Yankees great for having made this day necessary.

  Berra looked at his humbled ex-boss and tapped his watch. “You’re late,” he grumped.

  The mood momentarily lightened, or so Steinbrenner thought, so he feigned exasperation. “Yogi, gimme a break. I came all the way from Florida!”

  Other than a passing nod at the funerals of Billy Martin in 1989 and Mickey Mantle in 1995, this was the first direct communication between the two men since 1985.

  ***

  How George Steinbrenner came face-to-face with Yogi Berra in a back-campus corner on January 5, 1999, is a tale of journalistic and entertainment enterprise buttressed by a fair amount of determined arm-twisting.

  The campus sports complex was the public-private brainstorm of a handful of Montclair-area power brokers who had united under the organizational heading Friends of Yogi Inc. With $10 million in funding provided by the private company of Floyd Hall, a Montclair resident and Kmart’s chief executive, and the New Jersey Educational Facilities Authority, a 3,900-seat ballpark called Yogi Berra Stadium was built to house an independent minor-league franchise along with the university’s team.

  Someone in the group had another idea that was fine by Berra, who had come to a time in his life when a legacy beyond long-yellowed press clippings had begun to matter. To the quaint little ballpark, his incorporated friends added a modest museum to display his trove of memorabilia and serve as a north Jersey baseball hub and developmental center for youth-oriented educational programs.

  The groundbreaking for the complex occurred in April 1997, and the opening of the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center was set for December 1998. Hoping for a timely promotional blast, Dave Kaplan, the museum’s newly hired director and former New York Daily News Sunday sports editor, contacted WFAN, the city’s all-sports talk powerhouse, and offered the museum (and Berra by extension) for a live broadcast.

  Suzyn Waldman was the station’s Yankees reporter, who during the off-season hosted an evening show on weeknights following the popular afternoon drive-time tandem of Mike (Francesa) and the Mad Dog (Chris Russo). Waldman was thrilled to take her show on the road and quickly came up with a timely theme. As 1998 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Mets winning the 1973 National League pennant, she would do a tribute show with the manager of that team, Yogi Berra.

  “I was going to do the show from six to nine, with Yogi and some of the ex-Mets in the studio or on the phone,” Waldman said.

  Mark Chernoff, the station’s executive producer, thought of a deliciously audacious alternative. He asked Waldman, “Wouldn’t it be cool if you could get Yogi and George to reunite on the show?”

  Yes, it would be amazing, she replied. But so would picking up the phone and asking Steinbrenner if she could pitch on Opening Day for the Yankees.

  To begin with, several people—Gene Michael, who had served Steinbrenner in several organizational roles, and Arthur Richman, an old PR hand, to name just two—had already implored Steinbrenner to do whatever he could to return Berra to Yankee Stadium. But even if Steinbrenner could be convinced to participate in an arranged and very public peacemaking, everyone knew that Berra was resolute about not having anything to do with the Yankees for as long as Steinbrenner owned them.

  After the 1985 firing, he had, as promised, filled his days by playing golf, working out, and spending time with his grandchildren. But at age sixty, while he wasn’t much interested in the eventual sad state the Yankees fell into, he was far from finished with baseball. The game was his life; it was in his blood. By 1986, he was back coaching, this time with the Houston Astros, at the behest of his Montclair neighbor and team owner John McMullen. It was McMullen who had famously said of his minority ownership role with Steinbrenner’s Yankees, “There’s nothing more limited than being a limited partner of George Steinbrenner.”

  Over time, there were numerous opportunities for Berra to return to Yankee Stadium, including a 1988 ceremony in which he and his mentor, Bill Dickey, were officially given plaques in Monument Park. No, thank you, Yogi had said. He also had declined an invitation to his best friend Phil Rizzuto’s fiftieth wedding anniversary celebration at the stadium in 1993.

  Many members of the media and fans on the street applauded his stand. Daily News columnist Mike Lupica called him the one man Steinbrenner could not buy. Don Mattingly, who had grown into superstardom under Berra, said, “All I can say is, it is a deep profound joy that Yogi won’t sell out. The man has character. He has pride.”

  But others would occasionally advise him in print and in passing to abandon his grudge, if only to send the message that the Yankees were ultimately about the men in uniform and not the man upstairs. Whitey Ford told him to forget about George, just come back, the people want to see you—heck, we want to see you.

  Even Carmen Berra would tell her husband from time to time that enough was enough. “No,” he would say, “I’m keeping my word. I don’t care what anyone says. I’m not going back as long as he’s there.”

  No one could persuade him otherwise. During the 1996 season, Joe Torre’s first in New York, he would call from time to time to solicit Berra’s thoughts on his coalescing band of Yankees. Berra told him that he loved the young Derek Jeter’s professionalism and the fiery Paul O’Neill’s perfectionism. He was already touting the hard-throwing Mariano Rivera, then setting up for John Wetteland, as a future star.

  “Then come in the clubhouse and meet the guys,” Torre said.

  “I’m rooting for you; I’m always a Yankee,” Berra said. “But I’ll watch from home.”

  Torre tried again after the Yankees won the 1996 World Series, appealing to Berra’s partiality for championship festivities, given his thirteen-ring collection (ten as a player and three as a coach). “Yog, I’d be honored if you would present me my ring,” he said.

  “Joe, I can’t,” Berra said, and left it at that.

  Steinbrenner had good reason to believe the rift was beyond repair, having invited Berra to attend many Old-Timers’ Days, among other stadium events, but always through intermediaries. That was the stumbling block that Steinbrenner could never avoid. He didn’t comprehend that Berra’s self-banishment had never been about being fired, only the Boss’s callous execution.

  As a dedicated lifer, Berra accepted baseball’s axiomatic realities, understanding that managers were hired to be fired. If he hadn’t, he never would have returned to the Yankees after being fired in 1964, long before anyone had heard of Steinbrenner. All Berra had done as a rookie manager that year (he’d retired as a player the previous season) was win ninety-nine games and take the team to the seventh game of the World Series.

  But Berra had a tough decision to make before that seventh game. Whitey Ford was suffering from a circulation problem in his left shoulder, so Berra had to choose someone of inferior ability or pitch the rookie Mel Stottlemyre on two days’ rest against Bob Gibson. Stottlemyre had come up from the minors in August to go 9–3 with a 2.06 earned run average. He had won game one of the series against Gibson. Berra believed in the rookie and his sinkerball, so he walked up to Stottlemyre the day before the game and said, �
�Kid, you got the ball.”

  It didn’t work out, as Stottlemyre left with shoulder stiffness in the fifth inning, trailing 3–0. The Cardinals took the series, and general manager Ralph Houk blamed Berra—forgetting that he had gone into the series without the services of his best reliever, Pedro Ramos—and fired him with the excuse that he hadn’t been able to control a ninety-nine-win team. In a bizarre turn of events, Houk hired Johnny Keane, the manager who had just beaten them, and the 1965 Yankees plunged to sixth place on the way to bottoming out completely. Even then, Berra demonstrated a knack for moving on, crossing over into Queens and becoming a Met. It wasn’t long before he was back in the World Series, coaching for Gil Hodges in 1969. That was the season the miracle Mets shocked the Baltimore Orioles and all of baseball. When Hodges died unexpectedly in 1972, Berra was again named manager. That summer, the Yankees retired his number 8 on Old-Timers’ Day. But Berra was busy. He sent his son Larry in his place.

  The Mets fired him, too, less than two years after his team lost the 1973 World Series to Reggie Jackson and the Oakland A’s. At the time, he had a winning record, but only marginally.

  When Carmen would remind Yogi over the years that Steinbrenner hadn’t been the only owner who “didn’t treat you properly,” he would shrug and say, “That was part of the game.”

  Berra was remarkably consistent about his feelings from 1985 to 2011. “Getting fired didn’t really bother me,” he said, looking back. “You work for George, you know the deal. He changes managers all the time. What bothered me was the lack of respect. To me that was unforgivable.”

  In his mind, the decision of who deserved to be in the dugout was always ownership’s prerogative, record notwithstanding. But there was an appropriate way to make such changes and an inappropriate way, and one was easily distinguishable from the other.

  For example, when the Mets fired him, owner M. Donald Grant called the house and got Carmen on the phone. “It looks like we’re going to have to let Yogi go,” he told her.