–Yogi Berra
“Half the game is 90% mental.”
“If I didn’t wake up, I’d still be sleeping.”
“Slump? I ain’t in no slump. I just ain’t hittin.”
“Baseball is 90% mental, the other half is physical.”
“You can observe a lot just by watching.”
“He must have made that before he died.” — Referring to a Steve McQueen movie.
“I’d find the fellow who lost it, and, if he was poor, I’d return it.” — When asked what he would do if he found a million dollars.
“Think! How the hell are you gonna think and hit at the same time?”
“You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you’re going, because you might not get there.”
“I knew I was going to take the wrong train, so I left early.”
“If you don’t know where you are going, you will wind up somewhere else.”
“If you can’t imitate him, don’t copy him.”
“You better cut the pizza in four pieces because I’m not hungry enough to eat six.”
“It was impossible to get a conversation going; everybody was talking too much.”
“A nickel isn’t worth a dime today.”
“Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too crowded.”
“It gets late early out there.” — Referring to the bad sun conditions in left field at the stadium.
“Glen Cove.” — Referring to Glenn Close on a movie review television show.
Once, Yogi’s wife Carmen asked, “Yogi, you are from St. Louis, we live in New Jersey, and you played ball in New York. If you go before I do, where would you like me to have you buried?” Yogi replied, “Surprise me.”
“Do you mean now?” — When asked for the time.
“I take a two hour nap, from one o’clock to four.”
“If you come to a fork in the road, take it.” -giving directions to his house to Phil Rizzuto.
“You give 100 percent in the first half of the game, and if that isn’t enough in the second half you give what’s left.”
“90% of the putts that are short don’t go in.”
“I made a wrong mistake.”
“Texas has a lot of electrical votes.” — During an election campaign, after George Bush stated that Texas was important to the election.
“Thanks, you don’t look so hot yourself.” — After being told he looked cool.
“I always thought that record would stand until it was broken.”
“Yeah, but we’re making great time!” — In reply to “Hey Yogi, I think we’re lost.”
“If the fans don’t come out to the ball park, you can’t stop them.”
“Why buy good luggage? You only use it when you travel.”
“It’s never happened in the World Series competition, and it still hasn’t.”
“How long have you known me, Jack? And you still don’t know how to spell my name.” — Upon receiving a check from Jack Buck made out to “bearer.”
“I’d say he’s done more than that.” — When asked if first baseman Don Mattingly had exceeded expectations for the current season.
“The other teams could make trouble for us if they win.”
“He can run anytime he wants. I’m giving him the red light.” — On the acquisition of fleet-footed Ricky Henderson.
“I never blame myself when I’m not hitting. I just blame the bat, and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn’t my fault that I’m not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?”
“It ain’t the heat; it’s the humility.”
“The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase.”
“You should always go to other people’s funerals; otherwise, they won’t come to yours.”
“I didn’t really say everything I said.”
Dueling calendars-bush’s or yogi’s..so I guess he should run for president.
but Yogi makes a strange sort of sense. Bush is just an idiot.
I know, that’s the rather odd thing about Yogi isn’t it…my ‘whose on first’ by the way wasn’t meant to say look at me-I’m first poster it was a not to the old abbott/costello baseball classic routine.
keeps drilling Giambi. Now if Bernie can just hit wells curve ball…
Indeed. Go Sox!
He would be forced to become a politician 😛
And if I’m remembering right what I know of him he’s a dyed in the wool(whatever that means)bush supporter, and a bit of a religious nut himself.
ADJECTIVE: 1. Thoroughgoing; out-and-out: a dyed-in-the-wool populist. 2. Dyed before being woven into cloth.
I guess that’s kin to breaking the mold before they made Yogi.
I miss Yogi. And Roger. And Micky. And Whitey.
No sterioid. Just great ball.
Looks like he holds a post doctorate in moral philosophy compared to the dumb utterings of our intellectually challenged soccer stars.
Wow… interesting to see all these quotes in one place. Isn’t there even a Yogi Berra museum somewhere?
On a side note, I happen to know a young Romanian here who worked for Yogi Berra’s upscale country club in New Jersey. He said Berra was always very friendly and outgoing to him, despite his (also I guess?) lack of good English, and was a good tipper as well.
He’s also a bit of a heavy drinker. Berra I mean, not my Romanian friend 🙂
Pax
you know that picture on your site that leads to a Theatre? Is the the National Theatre of Romainaj? Great looking building, how old is it? is that guy an actor in a show? also…how do you get accent marks above your letters? Your site is great. (sorry this is off topic).
Wow…
Ok, first you’ve got to understand that one thing Communist governments were good at was inculcating the classical arts. This means that a town like mine (with 300k residents) has TWO opera houses for example.
The “national theater” is the name of that building in Cluj (where I live). It hosts some operas but also a lot of plays like I think this week is the Flying Dutchman. They’ve also done Madame Butterfly recently, and some more which slip my mind at the moment. It also hosts some philharmonic type (classical) music as well.
The “guy” that you’re referring to is just one of my candid street shots I took of random people. I have no idea who he is.
As for the special characters, my computer is set for different keyboards which make entering those characters a lot easier. If you’re American and using Windows, you probably don’t have your computer set up for this (although you could do it).
The easiest way for you to enter special characters, assuming you’re running some kind of Windows, is to use the “Character Map” which is under Start-Accessories-System Tools-Character Map.
Romanian has four letters that don’t exist in English – they are â, ă, ş and ţ. Depending on how a website is set up, sometimes only the first letter can be properly displayed on your screen.
Oh, and because of a long complicated reason relating to Russian influence, sometimes the letter â is written î, although it’s the exact same sound. So if the word comes from a Latin root, it takes the â and if it comes from a Slavic root it takes the î although some words esp place names use the old spelling regardless of root.
Romanian is a bit more complex to pronounce than say Spanish or Italian, but this isn’t the place to go into all that 🙂 Suffice it to say that three different Romanian newspapers will spell the same word three different ways, all of them more or less correct, which makes learning the dingdong language quite frustrating.
Pax
You are the best…and a teacher too…Thanks for the insight into the computer stuff..and also the theatre stuff…I am a theatre nut…all of it. Drama, Comedy, Musical(Although I normally don’t like big, stupid American Musicals, I like more of the artsy Music Theatre stuff..) This is great..I feel like I have a pen pal in Romania. My dentist is from Romania…Olga is her name..I am sure it is like Mary over here in the States. Peace to you my friend.
Olga?
Olga is usually a Russian or Slavic name. You sure it’s Romania and not Russia you’re thinking of? 🙂
Do you like opera? There’s so much good opera here and I’ve never had a chance to see any of it, simply because I don’t know anyone here who would want to go see it with me.
Pax
yeah….Olga…is that weird….she is a great dentist is Manhattan. She has a really thick accent. Way cool lady..I remember I asked her if Transylvania was in Romania..Perhaps her my was from Russia or something. I am now going to go check out your picture of the day…
feels good to stick it to the Sox.
Now another 18 games against them this year to win…
And then the playoffs…
Sorry BooMan. Love your site, love baseball. Hate the Yanks. I’m a Mariners fan. I know they choked last season–I watched them struggle for a long, long time before 1995, so I’m not a fair-weather fan. Something tells me it’s going to be a good year for the M’s.
“I never blame myself when I’m not hitting. I just blame the bat, and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn’t my fault that I’m not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?”
Yogi’s telling the truth on this one. When he played he really did change bats often, and always said he did it because each bat has only so many hits in it.