006 Baseball’s Loveable Mainstay Transcript (Yogi Berra)

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Michael: This person died September, 2015 at age 90.

Charles: Oh my goodness. Uh, item Milton berle.

Michael: That's a good guess. No, not Melton Berlin. He was once described as being a very strange fellow of very remarkable abilities,

Charles: evil knievel.

Michael: Oh man. No, but it's a great contested for the show. He has a museum named after him.

Charles: Uh, not Nixon.

Michael: All right. He appeared in a number of advertisements, selling myriad products among them pushing boots, cat food, and Miller Lite beer

Charles: or Reynolds. Is he alive?

Michael: He's dead. Alright, so probably. He's got probably the second, most recognizable nickname in sports.

Charles: Ah, okay. So if first is magic Johnson, um, then it would still, I mean, it's not bookie cousins, I'm struggling here. I was going to say Vince Lombardi, but he doesn't have a nickname. I'm just trying to think of people significant enough to have a museum.

Michael: He's one of baseball's greatest catchers and characters. The last clue is inspired a cartoon

character. Today's dead. Celebrity is Yogi Berra,

Archival: Yogi Berra, who entered the Yankee farm system. And 43 had become one of the game's best hitters and a top notch catcher. Thanks to the patient tutoring of Yankee coach bill. In all Berra appeared in 14 world series and was a part of 10 championship clubs during his tenure with the Yankees a three time MVP, Yogi was known for more than just as big bang. Well, I want to take

Yogi: you all making me feel right at home. God bless you.

Michael: welcome to famous and gravy. I'm Michael Osborne.

Amit: My name is Amit Kapoor.

Michael: And on this show, we go through a series of categories about a famous person's life. We want to figure

out the things in life that we

would actually desire and ultimately answer a big question. Would I want that life today? Yogi Berra.

Died 2015 age, 90 category, one grading the first line of their obituary, Yogi Berra. One of baseball's greatest catchers and characters who as a player was a mainstay of 10 Yankees championship teams. And as a manager led both the Yankees and the Mets to the world series. But who may be more widely known as an ungainly, but lovable, cultural figure, inspiring a cartoon character and issuing a seemingly limitless supply of unwittingly witty.

Epigrams known as Yogi isms died on Tuesday. My God, that is one

Amit: sentence. What does ungainly mean in that context? Awkward, clumsy. A person. Who's got an ungainly. Did he,

Michael: yeah, it's actually, I mean, not to skip ahead too much, but something I have on the five things I love

Amit: about you kind of got it. Yeah. I mean, catchers.

Well, but

Michael: ungainly as a bizarre word to use for any athlete.

Amit: Yeah. If you're one of those athletes that you're in a position that like deteriorate your body, like a boxer or a catcher. Yeah. You know, you kind of have a funny

walk.

Amit: Yeah.

Michael: It doesn't really specify. Was he on gainly when he was a catcher or after

Amit: his athletic career?

If they're just being rude. Yeah. I like, I like mainstay. That was a good word. Mainstays.

Michael: A good word. There's a lot of biography in this. Like they say, he's a player and he's a manager. They mentioned two teams, the Yankees and the Mets. They

Amit: mentioned the cartoon character, I, which we have to go back to later on, of

Michael: course, and a seemingly limitless supply of unwittingly witty epigrams I think they're being cute because

Amit: he's so witty unwittingly witty.

I don't understand that means unintentionally. I guess, I guess, but he's also have to kind of assume know, like if you have a, you can have an unwittingly witty remark, but it doesn't seem like that could be a characteristic of a person. Like you can't do that repeatedly over and over again. Be unintentionally witty.

Yeah. I don't even

Michael: know if this is accurate.

Amit: You know what I'm saying? It's not that, that choice of word. Well,

Michael: there's a lot of problems with us.

Amit: There is, but the lengths, I mean, it wins the length competition. It's like a Dickens. Yeah. But

Michael: that's not necessarily a good thing. I mean, I think one of the things that makes a great obituary great is when they capture a lot efficiently, like, I really like a nice economical obituary.

I'm okay with the comma splices and you hyphen some things out and even parentheticals, if you have to do it, I kind of felt like they took. Unnecessarily liberties here with some of the flexibility

Amit: we're supposed to have. Well, okay, well, given that you go first, then score it, score the verbiage scale of one to 10.

Michael: So the verbiage I don't take as much issue with, but the sentence structure bothers me a little bit. So this gets a pretty low score for me. I'm going to go, it's going to say three and it's not just a verbiage score for me. It's a how impressed I am. Yeah. Can I say something else before I get

Amit: your ranking on here?

Or are you going to say that you've deviated from what we agreed on of grading being the verbiage as the category? Am I bending the rules? Yes. You may say something else.

Michael: There is a headline that's worth mentioning here. Okay. Yogi Berra, Yankee who builds his stardom 90% on skill and half on wit dies at

Amit: 90 kind of good.

That is kind of good, but that's, I think that's a direct extraction from something that he said it is, it is, yeah. Baseball is 90% mental and 50% physics, something

Michael: like that. Right. So

Amit: I was that changed your score, given the, if, if you're putting the headline? No, I think that the score is the score. Yeah.

Well, apparently the rules are out the window for the score, so you can give it. So we just grading on the verbiage. That's what we agreed on. That was the category.

Michael: All right. For the verbiage then for the verbiage

Amit: score, whatever you want. No, no, I'm stuck. Our small government come on.

Michael: Things got way more political than I ended it too.

On the verbiage. I'll still give it a four. And for the same reason, I feel like I'm looking for verbiage that is economical and efficient. So even though if I take some issues with the sentence structured and sentence length, I think they could do

Amit: better. Uh, I'm going to go one more. I'll give it a five.

Yeah. I agree with you on the structure and length, but there's a lot to the man and there is a long story that history and I, I don't know how you do it concisely. I liked me and say, I'm torn on ungainly and unwittingly. I gotta give it even. The next

Michael: category category two, five things I love about you.

We work together to get five reasons we're talking about this person.

Amit: Well, actually this is gonna be tough cause I got, I put down like seven of my own. So we have to eventually reach five together. I'm going to go as an easy one. He's from St. Louis. I just, I liked St. Louis. I liked the central time zone.

It's just, I like people from St. Louis generally, but to meet

Michael: your feistiness with my own feistiness, because I feel like if five things I love about you is the reason we were talking about this person. I don't feel

Amit: like that's a good phrase. That it is a thing I love about him. Okay. Fine. Scratch it. But I still got to say it.

Yeah. Okay. So five things. He was five foot seven, so I don't characteristically short for an athlete yet. He was a power. I had the

Michael: physique as mine, not just his short height, but he also had really long arms and he mean, he's got a kind of goofy body. So that was actually on my list further down. And I had this memory of when I was a kid watching a baseball game with a friend and his dad, and there's some battery.

And I remember saying he's a goofy looking dude. And my friend's dad. I don't even remember who this was, but my friend's dad. It's a goofy ones. You've got to watch out

Amit: for which

Michael: sticks in my mind to this day, that's a kind of truism of baseball that the really handsome baseball players. I mean, some of them are good, but in that sport more than almost any other sport, you got to watch out for the goofy looking ones.

Yeah. And I don't know if I would necessarily describe them as goofy, but five, seven for a professional athlete who like had tremendous success.

Amit: It's pretty incredible. Yeah. I think we're agreed on that. Yeah. Okay.

Michael: I'm going to give you my top one if I may. Yeah. I initially said the width. But it's actually not just the wet.

I love that he dropped out of school after the eighth grade and he's known for his wit that one of my favorite kinds of people in the world is undereducated or not as educated, but very, very bright. I love it. When intelligence sort of shines through despite educating. Because you can meet. Plenty of people have been in school and gotten, you know, advanced degrees and all that stuff.

And, you know, they know big words, but I really love it when somebody who hasn't had a tremendous amount of education is known for their smarts and wit to me as a. Version of smart.

Amit: Yeah. I had diet a version of that somewhere on my list as well, the eighth grade bit. I don't encourage that. I don't advocate for that at all, of course.

But what I like about it is that it just shows that there is not always a full prescription for having a robust life and especially in a life that is characterized in this case by a lot of wit and a lot of subtle entails.

Michael: Of course, it's the thing he sort of secondarily came known for. We wouldn't be talking about yoga Barris wit if it wasn't for Yogi Berra, his success as an athlete.

So it's not exactly like his intelligence specifically is what led to his success. It's what led to his. Transcendent fame, but you know, it's not necessarily the reason we're here.

Amit: Yeah. Transcendent fame is a good way to wrap that up. Yeah. Okay. So I'll go one, actually. Can I pause one

Michael: more sec? Yeah.

Before we go on, should we offer some favorite Yogi isms? I wrote some of these down at the ready because you know, what, what are the witticisms that made him famous Yogi isms as it were, so it ain't over till it's over. Yeah. When you come to the fork in a road ticket, you can observe a lot just by watching.

I think that's great. Yeah, here it is. Baseball is 90% mental and the other half is physical. I love this one. No one goes there nowadays. It's too crowded.

Amit: Yeah, that's a good one.

Michael: Let's see the future. Ain't what it used to be always go to other people's funerals. Otherwise they won't come to you. That's pretty good.

If you don't know where you are going, you'll

Amit: end up someplace else. It's like deja VU all over again. So I kind of liked

Michael: that one, a nickel ain't worth a dime anymore. You're going to go on and on. Like, these are clever, you know, they make you think. I like that turn of phrase. Yeah. Okay. What are

Amit: you guys?

I put that he was a player coach. I don't think that's a very common thing anymore, but he actually went from player to coach to back to player for a brief amount of time. And nowadays I think mostly what we see is you're either a player or a coach yet. A lot of times the skill set is the same. The only difference is just a few years.

So he was on the team, played for the team and was also a coach. Correct. I

Michael: also success in both jobs. I mean here's a two or three time NVP and 10 championships.

Amit: And I think we're going to get the numbers wrong, but all high.

Michael: Oh, well I got to say, and let me pause and ask this. What's your relationship to baseball?

Is this one of your

Amit: favorites? They would definitely was when I was a kid. And yeah, I can, I can just sort of watch it kind of in the background. I care about the Texas teams when they go somewhere. Yeah. I used to love playing it too. Was all right. Yeah, but I wasn't good. Is that right? Yeah. What'd you play third base.

What's your relationship with baseball? Both as an observer and a player almost

Michael: non-existent I was kind of into baseball cards when I was really little, I was into the Oakland A's in the late eighties, around the time of McGuire and Conseco, but my parents never signed me up for literally or anything like that.

I'd never played baseball. So it was not one of my favorite

Amit: sports baseball movies were always the best. Like field of dreams is a major league major. They've got someone

Michael: that sticks out for me. I mean, I had a real infatuation with the major league. I, in fact Charlie Sheen's hair and that movie wild thing, I did that unsuccessfully.

I asked my barber or whatever to do it, and it looked like an upside down Christmas tree. Totally ruined it. Like I went back. It was like, we didn't get this right after it grew out. Like two months later I went back. I'm like, let's try that again. She still screwed it up. And then she finally went out and rented.

Amit: The movie was like, okay, I got it now. And that it was a success. Yeah. It was finally a success ultimately. And how old were you at this time? Well, okay. So now when the movie came out about when the movie came

Michael: out yeah. And like baseball does lend itself to good movies, all the Kevin Costner work and you know, both arms good one.

Yeah, it goes on and on. Yeah. Natural. Yeah. All right.

Amit: Where do you go from number? Okay. I think we're only on three now. Yeah, we got three. We got, we have Zeke

Michael: wit coupled with truncated

Amit: education. Okay. Player, coach,

Michael: player, coach. I mean, I would have gone cartoon character, I guess this is debatable. If you've got so many, let's talk about, should we include cartoon characters, five things I love

Amit: now you've introduced it.

We can't not. Okay. Um, is it true?

Michael: That Yogi bear was named after Yogi Berra. Yeah. So what I found on that was that the good folks at Hanna-Barbera claimed no, but there was a lawsuit that then got dismissed and dropped. And as another bit of trivia, when the associated press first reported Yogi Barrow's death, they accidentally called him Yogi

Amit: bear.

But you're saying it was true, but the courts never like acknowledged that. The

Michael: circumstances of the dismissed lawsuit. I don't know. It seems like you gotta be pretty dense to believe that there's no relationship between a cartoon character named Yogi bear. When there's this extraordinarily famous baseball player called Yogi Berra, who's even kind

Amit: of known for his.

Yeah. Hi. I mean, I can accept that unload. So then we have to talk about the name Yogi itself, right? So,

Michael: uh, we're working on number four on our five things I love about you. So are we talking about the names and,

Amit: or the cartoon character, all that, and I will give it, I will take number four as, as inspired the cartoon character.

I'd like to be named after a cartoon character. No, all the opposite. He was like a cartoon character named after you. That's what I meant. Yeah. Yeah. That's a proud thing. I have a feeling. It would also be a bear. You think so? Yeah. It makes you say, I don't know. I think the beard. Thanks man. Yeah. So the name Yogi.

Yes. So it was given to him by a teammate, right? Because of the way that he, I guess what his posture was in his pre batting routine and so forth the way he crossed his legs and crossed his arms. I

Michael: thought it was actually a childhood friend. That's what. That was a childhood friend who saw them, but it was a

Amit: teammate teammate of some sort, I don't know, professional teasers

Michael: before he was in the pros.

This was a name given to him as a child, but as a child, obsessed with baseball. Yeah. Who saw a film that featured

Amit: Indians? I guess that specifically. Specifically yogis.

Michael: And that was how he sat. So he got the name Yogi? Correct. Can I point out something else? There is no other name mentioned in his obituary.

There is no like sort of birth name or whatever,

Amit: and it was on Larry. Correct. It

Michael: was Lawrence, Peter Yogi Berra, but they didn't use that in his obituary.

Amit: That's weird.

Michael: And then weird. Usually if there's a nickname at death, they go with the name you had and unless he got it officially changed, which I never saw

Amit: any evidence of that now.

Yeah, that's all. I have to comment on it because if you know, some guys sees a film in India and gives his friend or teammate a nickname, the question you should be asking me, Michael, is do I take offense? It crossed my mind and I don't, it does not bother me one bit. I get a little bit bothered. Like if I go to a yoga class and all the white people say the Mustang.

I do. I do get a little bit bothered about that. Why? Well, one is pronounced in a Mustang. No, stay not. They like to test. Is that right? It's a thing. Yeah, no Mustang. I don't know why that just slightly bothers me. That we can go way into that as another time. Yeah. His name being Yogi. It doesn't move me in any negative way today.

Michael: I mean, it's a nickname he acquired in the forties or fifties. Something like that actually may even be earlier, may have been the thirties because he's born in

Amit: 1925. Again, irrelevant. It doesn't matter

Michael: really. Because the west knowledge and knowledge of Indian culture in the 1930s is different obviously than what knowledge of Indian culture should be today,

Amit: 2020s, but being a Yogi is also not something it's not like attaining knighthood.

Yeah. It's the same thing as like somebody being named priest, priest, Holmes who played football. Sure. It just doesn't, it doesn't do anything for me, uh, in a negative way, the way some other, other appropriations do it. Doesn't make your ears crinkle now. Now, and there's, I know people that go by yoga because yoga is a very, not an uncommon Indian name.

And a lot of those people truncate it to Yogi sometimes even when, if they still live in India. But specifically if they live abroad.

Michael: Yeah. Are we at five?

Amit: We're at number five now. So,

Michael: what do you got for number five? I think, I feel like you're coming armed with a lot

Amit: here and I want to hear that I put that he opened a bowling alley with Phil Rizutto in his post baseball here.

So I just, I liked that as opposed to retirement gig running the bowling alley. Yeah. I mean, I don't know that he was like handing out the shoes. Right. But I just, I just liked that. I liked that going from that level of fame and stardom. Something that he liked and just a smallish, non mega business. My

Michael: next project is a bowling alley.

It could be. Yeah. Yeah.

Amit: That is great. Okay. We'll take that.

Michael: Okay. So the next category

Amit: category three Malcovich Malcovich Malcovich

Michael: Malcovich Malcovich Malcovich.

Amit: This category

Michael: is named after the movie being John Malcovich in which people take a portal into John Malcovich his mind, and they can have a front row seat

Amit: to his experiences.

At

Michael: the point of this category is to imagine what memories or experiences might've been interesting what'd you have

Amit: here? So after his return to the Yankee is so to speak in 1989 after. TIFF with Steinbrenner. They declared a Yogi Berra day, which was eyesight July 18th, 1999. So on that day, the pitcher for the Yankees, David Cohn threw a perfect game so that, oh my God.

That's that's incredibly auspicious. Yeah. I, I wanna, I want to be inside of the. For him to put it

Michael: together that like on this day that they're finally honoring me after my cause he had this very public falling out with George Steinbrenner where George Steinbrenner fired him. But also didn't tell him he had some other guy tell him you've been, let go.

That hurt. Yogi bear is

Amit: feeling. He distanced himself from the Yankees for 14 years, right

Michael: after being a mainstay. And so finally, when they have this reconciliation named Yogi Berra day, David come throws a perfect

Amit: game. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome. I mean, you gotta, you've got to believe in something. Yeah, it's true.

It happens.

Michael: There's some magic. That's so much more interesting than mine. I had George Steinbrenner, the reunion at his museum that led to the

Amit: day this doesn't catch that story.

Michael: There wasn't a whole lot to it. This was a Malcovich Malcovich moment, but George Steinbrenner in an effort to bring Yogi back into the Yankee family goes and visits Yogi Berra at the Yogi Berra museum.

And. The footage I saw was just a little news clip, but it looked awkward. I'm curious about the moment is he feeling triumphant? You know, I got Steinbrenner to come down to his territory after all these years. Is he feeling like there's lost time? Because obviously this is a man. The Yankee organization and franchise, one of the most story to sports franchises in the world.

Absolutely. And baseball, these like embracing him and it is a family. I mean, it seems sort of corny, but like he had such a deep relationship with this institution. Yeah. That to have the head of it, George Steinberg coming and grovelling yes. What does that feel like? Does it, is it I one or is it like, wow.

This is awkward. It looked awkward and looked awkward. So

Amit: I just want to know what's going on there. Yeah. Either way. It's a combination of either feelings could be nice. Yeah. One thing we haven't quite

Michael: hit on everybody does describe him as very lovable too. I saw the word cuddly in some reports after he died.

And that's an interesting word for a former athlete. Cuddly. He is a real lovable. Yeah, and that's, that's worth noting. Okay. Next category, category four. How many marriages also, how many kids and is there anything public about these relationships? You don't take

Amit: this. Yeah, this is great. One marriage, 65 years.

She died the year before he did it. Beautiful. That is very. He was

Michael: 24 when they got married and they stayed together the whole time, 65

Amit: years. I mean, again, we know nothing about the narrative inside of it, but just don't and it's a different time. It just sticks alone. Yeah. That's I mean, it sounds, it sounds lovely.

And

Michael: also I liked that they died roughly within a year of each other. Yeah.

Amit: The

Michael: sort of Swan thing of one dies of. Yeah. So, you know, that feels like that's what I want for my long-term, you know, I want to basically have a be more or less simultaneous, which a year is

Amit: not simultaneous,

Michael: but it's kind of simultaneous if

Amit: you're talking about 65.

Yeah. That's also very sweet of you to say Michael. Well, I

Michael: was looking at you and thinking

Amit: about my wife, but that's not sweet. It came out

Michael: wrong.

Uh,

Amit: alright. Three sons. Yeah. And two were, were professional or semi-professional baseball players and one professional football player and FL

Michael: yeah, Larry named after dad.

And I saw that Larry actually got Yogi, his father.

Amit: How he was the one responsible for that that's right. Okay. Well, it's

Michael: just pretty cool. One thing about the sign. I don't know how much this is, what we're talking about, but this is sort of in the little bit of evidence and good bad category or evidence for good father parenting Dale Berra, who was managing.

By his dad and the 84 85 season. I think that's what the mats was charged in April of 89 with cocaine possession, uh, as part of an investigation into a drug ring that was distributing as much as 20,000 and cocaine weekly and Northern New Jersey. I dug deeper. And there's a blurb in Dale's autobiography, where he talks about his struggles with addiction.

And he says that his father Yogi supported his son all along. This is I'm quoting here, eventually staged the intervention that would save Dale's life and draw the entire family. Even closer. All the kids seem to have nice things to say about dad. Maybe that's just public posturing, but. In as much as you can have a healthy family life and limelight, that seems to have been what they have here at

Amit: least looks that way.

Totally agree. It looks great. Sounds great. As far as we know, as far as we know, okay.

Michael: Next category

Amit: net worth. What did you find five? That's what I saw, man, that felt a little loud. No, it's I mean, think about the areas that he played in that he thrived in 5 million

Charles: for one of the greatest Yankees of

Amit: all

Michael: time.

He had his own museum. He was named after a cartoon character. Five

Amit: seems, but these gargantuan salaries for athletes and all did not start until the last 20 something years. But what he did have, what Yogi did have is he had a ton of endorsed.

Michael: Who says you, who was just for kids? It was for anyone who likes a delicious chocolate drink made with nourishing low fat milk.

Get you from

Amit: Iroquois. And so that's why five might seem a little low, maybe that's

Michael: it, because it does seem like there were opportunities to cash in, on an unbelievably recognizable name. I mean, even in the quiz and the obituary came up, one of the most recognizable nicknames and all of sports, I don't feel so agreed.

5 million is a lot and who knows that's net worth at death. Right. So we don't know.

Amit: What kind of, it doesn't really mean anything, but it's a number we

Michael: talk about. It's a number we talk about and I expected it to be a little

Amit: bit higher. Yeah. So if there's, Hanna-Barbera like, if he did win that suit, would there have been like Roy lifetime royalties coming in one would have to presume yeah.

Or some sort of, yeah. I mean a, a fraction of a penny each time or something, right?

Michael: Yeah. The sports landscape and how much we make in it has, has changed over the last 20 years. I'd say more like 30. I think it was like in the sort of eighties, I want to say beginning, really with Michael Jordan and because of endorsements, you know, that things start

Amit: as , but the gargantuan salaries didn't start, I think until like Alex Rodriguez

and

Amit: Allen Iverson and people like that.

Michael: Next category category six Simpsons, Saturday night live or Hollywood walk of fame. This category is a measure of how famous a person is. We include both guest appearances on SNL and the Simpsons as well as impersonations or references to those

Amit: characters. Yeah, I'll take the fame part. I didn't see Hollywood walk of fame and there would be no reason to, right.

But there was all sorts of other. Of fames that he was a part of baseball hall of fame. St. Louis Hall of fame. There was no question. There was an hour of fame. Yes, I a

Michael: gree, although I do wonder how many non-baseball fans realize Yogi Berra was a baseball player. BEcause I think as time goes on, the cartoon character may actually be more famous

than the man.

Amit: I think that time has already happened. We might've been the last generation that even knows who he is.

Michael: Right I I'll

say this. I knew the bear. Well, before I knew that the man existed, I absolutely was watching Yogi bear cartoons. Well, before I knew that there was a

baseball player named Yogi Berra

and I kind of didn't even believe it.

Amit: Yeah.

Michael: When I

learned it

It's funny. You wouldn't talk about Yogi bear. I mean, I don't want to go off on too much of a rabbit hole. We live in a culture that is always like resurrecting and recycling, sort of nostalgic pop culture. There has not been a Yogi bear. There has not been, I don't think a reboot of the Yogi bear cartoon.

I mean, I think even like the Jetsons, which is still in the Hanna Barbera family, I think that they've done some rebooting and sort of keeping up with them in

Amit: places. But now they're going to hear this and Kevin, James is going to be Kibera, Yogi bear. All

Michael: right. I got to ask now what's your relationship to the

Amit: cartoons?

I remember watching them. That's all I remember enjoying them. I also remember enjoying them.

Michael: I have

Charles: had a Google. I'm going to bus started here every day as the same old thing. Look at the bears. Look at the bears. Look at the bears shoes.

See what I mean,

Michael: booboo? Yeah. Well, I guess this is why I pointed it out. That there hasn't been a reboot of the cartoon. You know, do 20 somethings today know about Yogi bear, forget Yogi Berra. Do they know about Yogi bear? The cartoon? I'm gonna have to ask around. That'd be curious if he's still part of the sort of like pop

Amit: culture cannon.

Yeah. So that reminds me of do you know the band of minus. the Bear

Michael: I don't,

Amit: There's a fairly well-known band called minus the bear.

Michael: Okay.

Amit: And actually my friend Todd works with the band. He's a road manager type of guy, but it's just funny the name of that band. And what you say is like, well, people remember him without the bear,

Michael: minus the bear.

Amit: Yeah. There's already a title out there.

Yeah. Well, I

Michael: guess this is why I asked the question about that. There hasn't been a reboot of the cartoon.

Amit: Yeah, I dunno. I know very few people between the ages of like 18 and 33 right now, that's probably a healthy thing. Why would you say that? Why are you like, well, I dunno, it seems like if you did

Michael: know them, it'd be because

Amit: you're dating.

No, that's preposterous. What a filthy comment. No, I want to, I want you to strike that from the record. I think it is important to know somebody of every decade.

Michael: I agree with that. And I didn't mean to imply that you were prowling the bars where you shouldn't have been or anything like that. But I also think that you are of an age that if you're hanging out with a bunch of 20 somethings, is that not

Amit: a little, a bit inappropriate, nothing about hanging out.

I just said. I'm 43 years old. And I say, I know very few people between the ages of 18 and 33 editing out all of that immediately, too. It's a good thing. You don't know

anyone?

Amit: I didn't mean like that.

Michael: It just, I believe in age appropriate it's but I also believe in multi-generational friendships. I

Amit: didn't mean to dismiss that.

I just think it's funny that you went there without and worked where all I said is, I don't know that. Yes. Yes, you did that. I'm sorry, but I want to thank you. When I made that

Michael: very fast joke saying that's probably a good thing for me. What I was saying is, oh, we now know Amit is

Amit: definitely not a post.

And that was in question before, like, does anything about my personality even say, I want to date a 25 year old. No, I

Michael: stand corrected. I stand humbly

Amit: before stand down, sir.

Michael: Stand up. I'm not even trying to make a stand. I'm trying. I said I was sorry.

Amit: I meant it. Yeah. Even if I were dating right now, I like, I like peer group, you know, I know this,

Michael: I know I was clarifying for the audience.

Okay. All right. Um, it's not a

Amit: predator next vocab that didn't even have to be introduced the word like this is, this is unwittingly hoodie, dating age appropriate women. No, I'm not dating anybody. Um, it's, I'm thinking myself a real. Um, it is great

Michael: character. I wouldn't do the show with you if I didn't admire your character.

Thank you. And as much as you and I are talking about dead celebrities, trying to figure out what we want out of life it's because I think you have something to bring to the table very important. So I admire you. I respect you, and I apologize for any suggestion that that

Amit: suggested otherwise. Great. And now my next girlfriend's going to be 29 years old and she's going to hear this and I'm going to be in just, it's going to all fall apart.

That's terrible next category,

Michael: fairway.

Amit: We never even. So Simpson's SNL the hall of fame and the walk of fame. So Simpsons in S SNL, you take it. So Saturday night live, I found

Michael: a reference to a cameo that was from a skid in 1984. This is, I think of the years when Lauren Michaels was away from the show because the skit was written by Billy crystal and Christopher guest and starred Bob.

Or Bob Uker was hosting in 1984, which I think that alone is great, but it's one of those skits that exists behind a paywall, or you're not able to find easily on YouTube. So he was on SNL at some point or the Simpsons. I found nothing. Uh, I did find one. Treehouse of horror episode that Yogi bear was in season 21, but that's

Amit: kind of a stretch.

Yeah. That is a stretch that does still doesn't count as Yogi Berra being on the Simpsons. But I agree

that

Michael: the baseball hall of fame St. Louis Hall of fame, he is famous. I still think that as the years go by the cartoon character, Yogi bear might be more famous

Amit: than the man Yogi Berra. Should we go on to the next.

Yeah, one of my favorite categories, let's go

Michael: category seven over, under the life expectancy, the life expectancy of a man born in 1925 was 57.6 years. Yogi Berra lived to 90,

Amit: blew it out of water by 33 years. Nicely done. Yeah. Way over and not all athletes do that too. Like it's easy as it's faint, but yeah, I do.

I'm in nineties. Impressive. Now. Absolutely. I do seem to remember

Michael: learning that of all the professional sports baseball players tend to live longer than basketball players than football players and hockey players. Part of it probably has to do with the level of contact, like how brutal those sports are, but they also the like shape you have to stay in to be athletic and baseball lends itself to longevity.

Anyway. Good job. You'll get. All right, let's get to the inner life questions. So this is where we try and make a best guess at what we think it would have been like to have been this person. The first category here is man in the mirror. What do you think you'll get better thought of his reflection in the mirror?

Amit: I think. Even though some of the words that were used,

these

Amit: kind of awkward looking ungainly, according to the newer times, but you know, you said cuddly, lovable. He just looks likable. The smile looks really genuine. It's an ear to ear type of smile. I think he liked himself. I think he liked the whole package.

Michael: I tend to agree. I mean, I had to think about this a little bit. Bulbous features the rounded nose, the heavy jaw, the protruding ears, decidedly, a goofy looking dude. Even in his prime, even when he was, you know, a start athlete, I guess, I wonder, are there any athletes who look in the mirror

Amit: and don't like, what they do.

Yes, I think so. I have an example, but yes. Yeah.

Michael: Do you think some athletes are driven by that

Amit: experience by the experience of not liking their reflection?

Michael: I mean, you could even call it body dysmorphia to some extent that they work out even harder, they train even harder because they're just not satisfied with literally what they see in the

Amit: mirror.

Sure. Yeah. But we're also talking about a totality of life here. So I'm also talking about 85 year old Yogi, you know,

Michael: I mean it's anything you can do anything about, obviously this is part of what makes us sort of an interesting question. I sense, peace inner peace, I guess.

Amit: Um, you can do something about it though, the way you care.

I mean, in addition to the very obvious things about exercise and grooming and so forth, there is a way you carry yourself that can absolutely change the way that you perceive yourself. And then there's the other thing about. Changing the perception, right? You can always look the same, but how you look at yourself can very easily shift depending on a wide range of things.

You know, in my real answer to

Michael: this question is I don't think he thought much about it. Yeah, I don't, I don't get the impression that this is a guy who

Amit: actually really studied himself. And then he would probably say something like what's a mirror. Yeah. I,

Michael: uh, all right. Next category, outgoing message. Like man, in the mirror, we want to know how they felt about the sound of their own voice.

When they heard it on an answering

Amit: machine or outgoing voicemail, you have reached the voicemail box. I think he had to

Michael: love it. Deep voice, great accent. Very

Amit: confident speaker. Yeah, totally. No question. Totally. And said these things, you know, all the yoga isms, you don't have that type of personality. If you don't like the way you speak.

Yeah, totally.

Michael: A hundred percent. All right. Next category, regrets, public or private. What we really want to know is what, if anything kept this person awake at night on the public? I think getting fired by the yang. That had to have hurt that had to look like a regret.

Amit: How has that his regret though? It's not

Michael: exactly, but the way he handles it, as it becomes his regret that he distances himself from the franchise.

Okay. And as much as this was a family to him, he draws a separation between him and his family. That to me, speaks to a regret. I mean, I bet there's, first of all, a regret with the performance of his team that got him fired. If you are a coach, you want to win, he didn't win. That's going to be a regret. But I think the more important regret potentially is the kind of like, I felt so embraced by this franchise for all my life.

And now they're just throwing me out like this. I'm done with you. I would think that that would cascade into a series of regrets about the relationship you've developed with this institution over the course

Amit: of your career. Yeah. I'm in, which is why he didn't speak to sign runner for 14 years or like one, anything to do with the organization.

Yeah. But

Michael: that's that second part, you can have a beef with the head dude, Steinbrenner and say, screw you Steinbrenner. I don't want to be around you, but there's also, I think still a way to have a relationship with the organization, with the fans and so forth. We don't know, but it looked to me like he distanced himself.

From the whole institution and made it about the anchors, not just our Steinberger. I dunno. I guess that's a regret. I'll give another public regret, but he does have a book called I didn't say everything. I said. Yeah, that's a great title for a book by Yogi Berra. I wonder how he felt about being attributed so many witticisms, so many Yogi isms, because there is some question about how many of

Amit: them he really said.

So what are you implying? Like what could be the, what could be

Michael: regretful about that, that he's taking credit for something that he did? That he has a personality where people said, you know what Yogi said, if you're that kind of athlete and you're that successful? That you're a competitive personality.

Yeah. My assumption would be that you want to earn all of the accolades that you get, but he's getting praise for things he may not have even said. This book is called. I didn't say everything. I said, so,

Amit: yeah. I wonder if it's. Yeah, it could be. It's funny. I, this didn't occur to me now, but the nickname Yogi, the origins were obviously very different, but a Yogi is generally their, why is they're known for wisdom.

Right. And so I wonder how much of that, of like just the more they appropriated quotes because of the name and it just fit. Like it was just this virtuous cycle. Yeah. But yeah, I can understand getting, getting credit where it's not due. What

Michael: did you have here? What'd you have for regrets,

Amit: public or I couldn't.

I wondered about like the devoting his entire life to baseball with the exception of the bowling alley. Uh, granted he was a father and he was many things, but his professional biography with the exception of the witticisms and the endorsements, it's all baseball. That would bother me, I think. But I don't think that bothers necessarily a lot of people, I don't think it necessarily bothered.

All right, let's

Michael: go into the next category. Good tunes or bad dreams. Unlike man in the mirror and voicemail, this is not about personal perception, but rather, does this person have a certain look in the eye? Anything that would suggest a kind of inner turmoil or inner demons, unresolved trauma. What do you see in

Amit: the.

He didn't have the look, but I can't believe we haven't covered it to this point, but he was at Normandy when he was in the military. Yeah. I mean, he is, he has seen some stuff. I mean, anybody that goes through world war II, but specifically being there. And I believe he was crazed with a bullet, but either way was saw a war.

So auction saw Warren and saw some of the very worst parts of it. So. I just, I wonder, but I don't see it in the eye.

Michael: This is an interesting thing about PTSD though, that we're learning. My understanding of PTSD today is like two people can go through the exact same series of events and one comes out of it with PTSD and one doesn't that's.

Some of it has to do with, for one of a better term, how sensitive we are, who knows when it comes to Yogi Berra. I'm with you. I didn't see the haunted look in the eye. I do wonder if you don't have to have a little of that somewhere to have that ultra competitive part of your personality. I it's just hard for me to imagine any a plus LR athletes.

Yeah, that doesn't have something inside them that they got approved and something that's like fueling hyper competitiveness. It's not on display with him as it might be with somebody like Michael Jordan or Muhammad Ali. But I don't, it's not evident to me.

Amit: I would say good. Yeah. All

Michael: right. Second to last category here, cocktail coffee or cannabis.

This is where we ask, which would we most want to protect with our dead celebrity? This may be a question of what kind of drugs sounds like the most fun to partake with this person or another philosophy here is that it may be that a particular kind of drug would allow access to a part of them that you are most curious about.

Would you like to go for.

Amit: Let me just add to your description. It could also have nothing to do with the drug itself and just be, what is the environment that you want to spend time with this person around for? So my answer was cocktail. I mean, he was a pitch man for Miller light and something else. It was a pitch man for you, who I could have had a, you who with him, but just seems like a kind of guy that I just want to sit down and have a drink with.

And maybe he does nothing, but entertain me with all the things that he's seeing and all the stories he's seen. I'm not craving inner access to anything. I

Michael: agree with that. I'm not trying to unlock anything here. Part of me wanted to go coffee because usually when I sent an intelligence, which I do since with somebody who's got that kind of wit I'm always interested to see an intellect on display.

You know, and coffee, I think, is a nice vehicle for that. I actually want cannabis though, because I think he's just fucking funny. And I think like the humor alone,

Amit: I just want to love to get high and get, go with Yogi Berra. Is he funny now, though, these are largely like dad jokes, these things that made him, but there's, I think the physique

Michael: is goofy and that, that would have put me in that kind of like I'm ready to laugh state.

And I do think that. Even dad jokes can make me giggle if I'm at the right level of high. So it kind of feel like just to hang out and laugh. It's similar to your answer in a way. I mostly just want to hang out with them, but I think I just want to hang out and be high with them rather than be a

Amit: little bit tipsy with them.

Yeah. I guess I kind of gave a mix of cocktail coffee. I said to you who or beer?

Michael: Right? You who's got caffeine. Gosh, I guess we're here already. Wherever our final category. The VanDerBeek named after James VanDerBeek, who famously said and varsity blues. I don't walk your life. Based on everything we've been talking about.

The big question is, do you want this life Amit? Do you want to start with this? Do you want Yogi bear?

Amit: I'll take the first answer. So, so what I said about regrets, I think I don't want that. I don't want the single sport, single dedication. I admire it a lot, but I don't want it playing baseball. Coaching baseball is essentially being the definition of your career.

Fathering professional athletes. I'm just somebody who. That inside soul of me, once more variety. Right? I like the 65 year length marriage, I think is beautiful. But the word you used a few times was transcendence, right? That he was the player. He was the coach. He. Had the witticisms, he was a part of so much history, but also lovable.

It seemed really well liked successful family. There wasn't a lot of, of rupturing

that

Amit: we know of the evidence

Michael: for family life turmoil is not there even with a son who's struggling

Amit: with addiction. Yeah. So I, I see all of that and I'll say. I'll say yes to the VanDerBeek I'll take it. Yeah. I don't know

Michael: that.

I even have to think about this one all that much. I think I would say yes for exactly the same reasons. I guess. I just want to elaborate a little on what you said. I am not that particularly attracted to sports success as the sole. Achievement of your life, even if it is as a player and as a coach that you give me any athlete who is on the top 10 or top 50 most important athletes, and which I guess to be really transparent about that, I think that this is something that men struggle with, right?

That there is a machismo that comes with sports in America, and that to be a great athlete. You said you didn't make the high school baseball team. There came a point in my youth when. Sports kind of left me. And I tried to reclaim them a little bit in college, but, you know, I was, I was always a good enough athlete to like play some backyard ball or that kind of thing, but I was never, I was never a stud on a team and there's some insecurity that comes with not being a stud.

So there is a way in which the American athlete in any sport and an athlete I don't know, is limited to America is somebody who we put on a pedestal that I have conflicted feelings about. I like seeing athleticism on display. I enjoy sports, but in terms of, I want to be those people who are succeeding, I feel like that train left me a long time ago.

So to the extent that I want this life, it is absolutely because of the trends. Pieces of it. It's the witticisms. It's the fact that he had a cartoon character named after him, regardless of what Hanna-Barbera has to say, that the personality is so goddamn big that I learned about the bear before I learned about the baseball player.

Right. And, and that there just does seem to be this like locker room kind of thing, where like everybody loved this guy and he made his own contribution in his own way. So it is the two of these things together. That plus all the other life stats are great way over on the, over, under long marriage. I'm going to assume it's a good one.

5 million feels a little low, but 5 million is pretty damn good. And you know, you don't have to show up on the substance or Saturday night live and, you know, he's, he's a good level of

Amit: famous. Yeah. And he was also at slightly different era. Particular category of question. That's right. So we're both yes.

On this. Yeah. I like what you said about you not wanting that sort of athletes fame. And I, I don't know that I necessarily like that I hold that same position. However, I think when that level of athletic ability and performance is combined with humility, it is such a graceful, beautiful thing. And I think maybe he had that.

Michael: And in fact, if you remove the baseball piece of this and stick him in, I don't know, some corporate environment,

Amit: I think there's still a lot like about this life, you know,

Michael: but this is this one's good.

Amit: This one's really good. I guess I've reached that moment. I feel like he need to decide this one. Are you ready to be Yogi Berra?

Yeah. All right. So you've died

Michael: and age 90 you're after your wife's death and you've gone to the pearly gates and you're ready to meet

Amit: safety. And as we say, the pearly gates and St. Peter, they're a stand in for however you want to define salvation and the afterlife. So St. Peter. Pretty Yogi. So look at me, age 90, married a 24 started playing baseball before that was in world war II set millions of records.

As far as appearances, batting titles, you name it, player. Coach did it all. That's not the reason to let me in. The reason I let me in is because I'm a model of human. I brought lightheartedness to the sport. I brought humor to the public. I was loyal to my family. I was largely loyal to a few teams within my entire storied career.

And people loved me. My children loved me. My wife loved me. I think loved me. I think I was a model of human being. Let me in,

thank you for listening to this episode of famous and grainy.

Michael: If you're enjoying our show, please go to apple podcasts to rate. You can sign up for our mailing list@famousandgravy.com and you can follow us on Twitter at famous and gravy. Our show was co-created by Amik Kapore and may Michael Osborne mixing mastering and sound design by Morgan Honaker graphic design by Brandon Burke and original music

Amit: by Kevin Strang.

Thank you again for listening and hope to see you next time.