From The Archives: A Conversation With Yogi Berra

To listen to Bill (aka Jim) Littlefield's 1998 conversation with Yogi Berra, click the play button above. 

Yogi Berra sometimes said that he hadn’t said half the things he’d said.

Or something like that.

The delight was that he bore with such grace and good humor the mantle of master of the malapropism. When his son collected the alleged Yogisms into a book, Yogi went along with the plan, which is why I had the opportunity to interview him for Only A Game in 1998.

One day when Yogi was still managing, I sat on the dugout steps and heard him mumble his way through a group interview with a dozen men hoping for a Yogism, when all Yogi wanted to do was post the lineup and try to win that evening’s game with a team that probably wouldn’t. That can’t have been easy. He didn’t complain.

Oh, yeah, and Yogi was a player…for 19 years. All he did in that capacity was get named MVP three times and play on 10 World Series winners. He was voted into the Hall of Fame in 1972.

Yogi is supposed to have said “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over,” and maybe he did, now it is, except it ain’t, ‘cause it maybe never is if you get remembered a lot, which is what he will be.