Driving Mr. Yogi

by Harvey Araton

  “He’s good-looking, dresses nice,” Berra had said. “The girls go for him, too.”

  When this assessment was repeated to Longoria, he chuckled and said, “That’s funny. He told me I reminded him of Mickey Mantle.”

  On the day Berra was getting an earful of Zeppelin, Longoria ambled into the office when he heard that Berra was there and bent over to give Yogi a hug. Noticing that Longoria’s arms were heavily taped, Berra said, “You look like a mummy up there.”

  “Yogi, I’m hurting,” Longoria said.

  “Yeah, right,” Berra said, who soon after presented Longoria with a ball to sign for his golf tournament. The request made Longoria blush.

  When Berra accompanied the Yankees to Port Charlotte in March 2011, he went out to the field to see Maddon and Zimmer while the Rays were taking batting practice. Watching his guys hit, Maddon happened to turn his head as Berra approached and saw him catch his foot in an area of the grass covered by a small tarp. Berra stumbled forward, right into Maddon’s embrace.

  “Oh, my Lord, I see Yogi going down, falling, and I knew I had to do everything I could to catch him,” Maddon said later, calling the catch his “best as a professional.” No harm. No foul. No fuss.

  The next night, Berra went out to dinner with Dave Kaplan, who was visiting from New Jersey with his college-age daughter and Stump Merrill. It was meatloaf night at Lee Roy Selmon’s, where the waitresses greeted Berra with their usual fawning attention. He sat down and ordered a drink—exactly three ounces of Ketel One . . . in a glass with a specific number of ice cubes that shouldn’t be too big . . . served between the salad and the main course.

  But the waiter couldn’t hear or understand what Berra was saying. While he was much too young to know the specifics, he realized from the fuss that was made over Berra when he entered the restaurant that he was a celebrity, and the young man quickly became embarrassed. “I’m . . . sorry,” he stammered. “I didn’t . . .”

  Although on one level, the scene was comical, a Seinfeld skit, it was also uncomfortable, because Berra, for the moment, was unable to make himself clear. Finally, Merrill intervened, knowing exactly what Berra wanted. Happy to have the situation resolved, Berra spent the rest of the meal talking about the trips he was intending to make, especially the game coming up soon against the Phillies in Clearwater.

  But Guidry wondered if going to Clearwater was a good idea. “I’m not making that trip, Yog,” he said. “Got to stay behind and work with the young pitchers. Maybe you shouldn’t go.”

  Whenever Berra traveled with the team, Guidry preferred to be around, especially now, after his promise to Carmen that he would look after Yogi. The drive was only twenty-five minutes, and Guidry knew the others would keep an eye on him. Still, Guidry felt personally responsible.

  “Nah, it’s no big deal,” Berra said. “I have to go.”

  He insisted that there were several people in the Phillies organization he wanted to see, and he also was hoping to get a ball signed by Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt. Once Berra made up his mind, there was no talking him out of it. Guidry’s father had the same quality. As much as he worried about Berra’s safety, Guidry had to admire the man’s resolve. He would not give in or give up.

  On Thursday, March 10, Berra drove with Joe Girardi to the Phillies’ ultramodern complex in Clearwater and relaxed inside the air-conditioned clubhouse while the Yankees waited around before going out to stretch and take batting practice. Noticing the buffet table in the middle of the room, Berra shuffled over to help himself to a cup of soup. Cup in hand, he took a sip and a step away from the table. In an instant, he was down.

  From all around the room, there were shrieks and yelps. Gene Monahan was nearby, but with his back to Berra. He turned to see his old friend on the floor, on his behind. “Someone get the paramedics,” the trainer yelled.

  Nobody was immediately sure what had happened, why Berra had fallen, beyond the fact that he seemed to have landed, quite fortunately, on his butt. Standing nearby, Jorge Posada had watched the scene unfold, the cup of soup dropping along with Berra. “When he fell down, it sounded at first like he was joking,” Posada said. “He said, ‘The damn soup’s too hot.’”

  But Monahan, not having seen the fall, had no idea what had caused it. Had it been the soup? Had he caught his foot on the carpet? Had he, God forbid, had a seizure or stroke?

  The one thing Monahan was certain of was that he was not taking any chances with Guidry’s valued package—and certainly not the man he considered to be “the kindest and most human individual I’ve ever met in the game.”

  In his forty-ninth year with the organization, and its head trainer since 1973, Monahan, who had survived throat cancer in 2009, was beginning what would be a celebrated last season on the job. He had been around long enough to judge how to react. “I’ve known Yogi for a very long time, and if I could have predicted one thing that would happen in that situation, it would have been that he didn’t want to make a fuss,” Monahan said.

  Monahan saw right away when he knelt down over Berra that there was no blood, he was fully conscious, and he didn’t appear to be having any kind of episode. He was dazed and of course embarrassed. Some of the soup had spilled onto his khaki pants.

  The paramedics’ office was adjacent to the clubhouse, and they arrived quickly to take Berra’s pulse and blood pressure. Both were elevated, which might have been caused solely by the fright of the fall. Just the same, Monahan agreed with the paramedics that it was best to be cautious.

  They decided to transport Berra to Morton Plant Hospital, a couple of miles away. But he became agitated when Monahan informed him of the plan. “I ain’t doing that,” he said. “I ain’t going to no hospital. I’m OK. It was the soup.”

  But Monahan persisted, addressing Berra calmly and repeating that they just wanted to make sure he was all right. Still Berra resisted. Monahan repeated himself, calmly but firmly. Berra kept saying, “Carmen will worry.” Watching close by, Joe Girardi felt goose bumps hearing Berra fret about his wife while he sat on the carpet. Monahan assured Berra that he wouldn’t be at the hospital very long, just for a few tests, and that someone would call Carmen soon to let her know that it was all precautionary.

  While an ambulance was summoned, one of the paramedics fetched a wheelchair. The Yankees immediately put the clubhouse in lockdown, making sure it was clear of media.

  Sweeny Murti, on the beat for WFAN radio since 2001, or one year after Berra returned to spring training, was outside on the field when he heard there was some kind of commotion in the clubhouse. Murti tried to walk through the dugout to the clubhouse but was told the area was off-limits. By the time he reached the main clubhouse entrance, the ambulance was pulling away—and word was spreading that Berra was inside.

  “There apparently was an Associated Press reporter hanging around in the dugout, who heard that something had happened to Yogi,” Murti said. “But nobody seemed to know exactly what.”

  It was Murti who had broken the news on WFAN that Berra had fallen outside his home the previous summer and would have to miss Old-Timers’ Day. Now a chill swept over him when he found out it was Yogi who had been taken off so abruptly. Over the years, Murti and Berra had developed an easy rapport, chatting for a few minutes every day in Tampa—“my favorite part of spring training,” Murti said—and whenever Berra appeared at the stadium during the season.

  “You talk to players all year long, and a fair amount of the time you know they’re not that interested,” he said. “Here’s one of the great legends of the game, and all he wants to do is spend a few minutes saying hello, talking about the game.”

  Murti would never forget Berra’s sweet response in June 2009 when he bumped into him at the stadium the day after Mets second baseman Luis Castillo had dropped a routine pop-up with two outs in the ninth, gift-wrapping a victory for the Yankees over the Mets.

  “What’d you think of the end last night, Yogi?” Murti asked.

  Ber
ra grabbed him by the arm and with a devilish twinkle in his eye said, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over.”

  Murti had that very thought when he heard they had rushed Berra to the hospital. He prayed it wasn’t over. Then he went on the air to report the news—which was spreading fast and without some badly needed context.

  Lindsay Berra was on the train from Montclair to Manhattan when the texts and e-mails began flooding her phone.

  “Is your grandfather OK?”

  “What happened to Yogi?”

  “Oh, my God, I hope everything’s all right.”

  She had no idea what any of her friends were talking about, but she guessed that something was up and it couldn’t be good. She called her father, trying not to sound alarmed.

  “Is Grandpa OK?”

  “What do you mean?” Larry Berra said. “I just got off the phone with him a half-hour ago. He was fine.”

  But the word was out, crawling ominously across the CNN ticker: “Yankees great Yogi Berra taken to hospital after fall.”

  That set off a new round of calls. Larry phoned his mother, who happened to be en route to Tampa from West Palm Beach, where she had been visiting Jacqueline McMullen, the widow of John McMullen. Carmen told her son that she had already been contacted by the Yankees and that Yogi had slipped, was all right, and had been taken to the hospital just to be safe.

  She soon reached Yogi—who at the time did not have a cell phone—on a hospital line. She knew he was fine because all he did was complain about having missed out on his chance to get his baseball signed by Mike Schmidt.

  “It was just a little slip,” Carmen Berra said. “But there was such a big commotion, all the news bulletins.”

  Back in Tampa, the news reached the Yankees’ complex, stopping Guidry in his tracks. “Oh, shit,” he said, already imagining what the hell he would tell Carmen. But first he needed more information. He didn’t have Gene Monahan’s cell phone number, so he called Steve Donohue, who assured him that Berra was not injured or ill and had probably lost his breath and balance when he tasted the hot soup.

  Still, Guidry was worried. “Even that, you don’t know,” he said. “Donohue said that he fell on his behind—and we know he doesn’t have a long way to go—but the man is [almost] eighty-six years old. Something could have been jarred by him just falling like that. You know how it is at that age—it’s easy to break a bone, break your hip.”

  Until Berra was examined and released, Guidry was not going to rest easy, though he took a moment to call Bonnie at home. He figured she would hear the news on television, and there was no point in her becoming alarmed.

  Berra reached the hospital shortly before noon. Donohue called Guidry about ninety minutes later to say that the doctors had run tests and that Berra had checked out fine. He would be released sometime during the afternoon. Lou Cucuzza would pick him up and drive him back to Tampa.

  Having finished his work with the pitchers early, Guidry had left the ballpark and was waiting at his apartment. Donohue told him that Berra was already asking that Guidry meet him back at the park. Only Guidry.

  Not long after, his cell phone rang again. It was Cucuzza. “Someone wants to talk to you,” he said. It was Berra, next to him in the car.

  “Yogi, how’re you feeling?” Guidry said.

  “I’m OK,” he said. “You at the park?”

  “Yeah, I’m waiting for you right here.”

  “OK, don’t leave.”

  Berra handed Cucuzza the phone, still agitated about having lost the day, embarrassed by the fuss that had been made, and not at all happy about having been administered medication by the doctor at the hospital.

  “He kept saying, ‘The soup was too hot, that’s all,’” Cucuzza said. “And you know what? He was right. The soup in that clubhouse was ridiculously hot. He was upset, but I think I was more upset just because he was. The guy’s like your grandfather. He’s everybody’s grandfather.”

  Now Berra complained that Guidry had had his afternoon interrupted. Cucuzza told him, “You know Gator doesn’t mind.” Berra nodded. By this point, how could he not know that? Cucuzza thought.

  “Everyone helps out with Yogi,” he said. “But what Gator does, year in and year out, that’s on another level.”

  Twenty minutes later, Cucuzza pulled into the parking lot at the Yankees’ complex. Guidry was right where he said he’d be, leaning against his white Ford pickup. Berra got out of the car, muttering under his breath and moving with greater conviction, in Guidry’s opinion, than he had all spring. He threw his bag into the back of the truck and continued to curse and complain all the way to the hotel.

  “Yogi, they were just doing their jobs,” Guidry said.

  “Aw, I told them I was fine, didn’t have any pain,” he said. “It was the damn soup.”

  Guidry continued to harp on the need for caution, but Berra didn’t want to hear it. As far as he was concerned, he had needlessly missed one of his favorite trips, another day of spring training. He hated wasting even a day.

  But all was fine now. He was back in Tampa. He was with Guidry.

  When they reached the hotel, Guidry made sure to walk Berra inside and up to his room. Carmen was there, waiting.

  “You OK?” she said, giving him a hug.

  “I’m fine, yeah,” he said.

  On some level, he at least knew the Yankees cared. In a couple of weeks, back in New York, they would take another opportunity to show him how much.

  On the night of March 30, 2011, more than eleven hundred people jammed into a posh ballroom in a Sheraton hotel on the West Side of Manhattan for the Yankees’ 32nd Welcome Home Dinner. It was a tradition begun under Steinbrenner and the only off-field event that every player was obligated to attend.

  Fans and sponsors also were welcome, some plunking down about $15,000 for a table, with the proceeds going to the Yankees’ charitable foundation.

  The dinner had become a staple on Berra’s calendar in 1999, when the Yankees celebrated his return by giving him the Pride of the Yankees award—which in 2011 was going to the retired pitcher Mike Mussina. In Yankee land, there is never any shortage of awards or recipients. In Berra’s case, the organization had honored him every which way over a dozen redemptive years. This time it was the Yankees’ Lifetime Achievement Award, which—truth be told—he had earned decades ago.

  Five years earlier, Berra would have been appropriately proud but would probably have taken the night in stride. Now Steinbrenner was gone, and Berra was just a month and a half away from his eighty-sixth birthday. Emotions flowed more freely than ever.

  The Berra family had a table. Larry, Dale, and Tim were there, along with granddaughter Lindsay and a few other family members. The table just happened to be near where JoAnna Garcia, Nick Swisher’s wife, was sitting and taking every opportunity to tell any Berra whose attention she got that “Nick just loves Yogi.” It would have been a challenge that night to find a single Yankee who didn’t.

  Berra knew he would have to make a speech, much as he hated doing so, and he’d asked Dave Kaplan to write a few words for him. Although he was dressed down—wearing a blue blazer, olive slacks, and his trusty Nicole Miller–designed baseball tie—he was nervous about having to stand up in front of the entire organization. Carmen, too, worried that he would be overcome by the occasion.

  Suzyn Waldman, who was emceeing the dinner, was scheduled to introduce Berra. This was only fitting, as Waldman had, more than anyone with the possible exception of Steinbrenner, helped launch Berra’s second life with the Yankees. She had been responsible for making this day “necessary”—to quote Berra’s Hall of Fame induction speech. Before the dinner began, Carmen took a moment to whisper in Waldman’s ear, “Make sure he doesn’t lose it up there.”

  Waldman had grown close to the family—her Facebook profile photo for much of the 2011 season was one of her and Yogi, together in Tampa. “Don’t worry,” she told Carmen. “He’ll be fine.”

  The Yank
ees had put together a short video tribute that included testimonials from Joe Girardi, Gene Monahan, and some of the players—Derek Jeter, Nick Swisher, Mariano Rivera. Berra watched from his seat at the family table as the old black-and-white clips of him more than half a century ago were interspersed with the testimonials in crystal-clear color.

  How many technological changes had there been in the world since he had first put on the so-called tools of ignorance for the Yankees? How many wars had been fought since he had survived D-day? How many championship banners had the Yankees flown?

  He was still here, ready for another Opening Day. But first Waldman had to call him to the dais. There was one more standing ovation as the players, seated at the surrounding tables, practically formed a protective wall around “the Greatest Living Yankee” as he moved slowly but steadily forward.

  Reaching a glass podium emblazoned with the team’s logo, Berra was presented the crystal award by Hal Steinbrenner, the Boss’s younger son and now Yankees managing general partner. He stepped to the microphone and began by giving the audience what they wanted.

  “Thank you for making this night necessary,” he said to laughter and applause.

  Then he turned serious, and the room grew silent, people straining to hear. “The Yankees,” he said, “have always meant everything to me. They still do . . .”

  He paused to dab his eyes. He tried to continue, but his voice began to crack.

  Waldman, standing deliberately behind him, delivered on her promise to Carmen. She stepped forward and whispered in his ear, “If you cry, Yogi, there’s no vodka tonight.”

  Berra smiled, regained his voice.

  “Yankee fans are the best in the world,” he said. “Here’s to a great year. God bless.”