As well as being one of the best and most successful baseball catchers in history, Berra had a penchant for short snappy witticisms, at once nonsensical and somehow strangely wise, often following a similar format involving paradoxes or deliberate Spoonerisms. His epigrams appear to be designed to give an initial impression of stupidity or lack of education, while nevertheless containing a nugget of truth and a hidden subtlety. But Berra was far from stupid, and it is worth noting that he took great offence at Hanna-Barbera's naming of the genuinely stupid Yogi Bear cartoon character, and even took them to court over it.
Many of these bon mots are now so much a part of common parlance, and so identified with the man, that it is no longer even certain whether he said them first, whether he used those exact words, or even whether he said them at all. His 1998 book was called "The Yogi Book: I Really Didn't Say Everything I Said!" for good reason.
Anyway, for what it's worth, here are a few pearls he probably never said.
- “It’s déjà vu all over again.”
- “If the people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, nobody’s going to stop them.”
- “Baseball is 90 per cent mental. The other half is physical.”
- “Pair up in threes.”
- “He hits from both sides of the plate. He’s amphibious.”
- “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
- “We were overwhelming underdogs.”
- “It’s tough to make predictions, especially about the future.”
- “It gets late early out here.”
- “You can observe a lot by watching.”
- “The future ain’t what it used to be.”
- “You should always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise, they won’t come to yours.”
- “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
- “We made too many wrong mistakes.”
- “A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”
- “Why buy good luggage, you only use it when you travel.”
- “I usually take a two-hour nap from one to four.”
- “Never answer an anonymous letter.”
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