Yogi get's my vote as the best who ever played the game and by a WIDE margin!
@Bigun In Yogi Berra's first season in the minors, at Norwalk, Virginia, he played a doubleheader
and drove in 23 runs. His late wife, Carmen, often deadpanned about that: "When I heard
about the 23-RBI day, I figured he probably had a future."
In later years, she liked to tease him whenever reporters visited them by urging him to
tell them about "the anniversary card." Apparently, on one wedding anniversary (they were
married 65 years when Carmen died in 2014), he gave her a card signed "Love, Yogi
Berra." Bill Madden of the
New York Daily News, visiting the Berras for his chapter
on Yogi in
Pride of October: What it Was to Be Young and a Yankee, was aghast.
He asked Yogi why he did that.
"I dunno," Berra replied. "I guess out of habit."
"I was actually kind of glad he thought to sign his last name," Carmen cracked. "I wouldn't
have wanted to confuse him with all the other Yogis I know."
Carmen Berra was a looker to the tenth power when the Berras married, and it inspired no
few wisecracks from those in baseball who made a sideline of wisecracking about Yogi's
not-so-handsome looks. The smartest crack may have come from Tiger pitcher Dizzy Trout:
Hey, Yogi, I hear ya got married. How does your wife like living in a tree?Mrs. Berra kept her looks for a very, very long time. In 1964, when Yogi first got to
manage the Yankees, he was invited to be the mystery guest on the CBS panel quiz
What's My Line? The panel figured him out in about three seconds, so host John
Daly decided to help fill in the time by bringing Carmen Berra out and introducing her
as "Yogi's lovely bride." The CBS switchboards went nuclear with outraged callers demanding
to know just when Yogi threw his wife and three kids over for
this little homewrecker!
The Berras did rather splendidly for a couple who first met when she worked as a waitress
in the St. Louis steakhouse into which Stan Musial eventually bought, helping make him
a junior-grade millionaire. But Carmen Berra was no pushover: when George Steinbrenner
moved to heal the rift between Yogi and the Yankees that happened when Steinbrenner
fired him as manager in 1982, after The Boss promised Yogi a full season but dumped
him after sixteen games (saying infamously, "I didn't fire Yogi, the players did"), Mrs.
Berra insisted it wouldn't happen unless she was present. And Steinbrenner relented. Why
was she so adamant? She wouldn't forget that when Steinbrenner canned her husband,
he sent Clyde King to deliver the execution papers.