BEFORE: My unintentional exploration of American culture continues, and what's more American than baseball? It's great, this is going to lead me right into my July 4 film with an appropriate title.
Johnny Carson carries over from "I Am Burt Reynolds".
FOLLOW-UP TO: "Say Hey, Willie Mays!" (Movie #4,407)
THE PLOT: The illustrious life and career of the baseball great, Yogi Berra.
AFTER: I'm really down to just one baseball film per year, if even that. Last year I hit tennis and boxing with a bunch of films about Venus and Serena Williams, Arthur Ashe, McEnroe and Muhammad Ali, which cleared off MOST of the sports films from my list. Then this one came around, and there's also one out now about Reggie Jackson, but I just could not link to it and also away from it. It might kill me to review two films about famous Yankees, anyway, having been raised as a Red Sox fan. I can justify the film about Yogi, though, because he also managed the NY Mets for a couple years. OK, so I'll table the Reggie Jackson and really, if I don't get to it next year, it's probably not a big loss there, I mean, what did HE ever do in the playoffs?
But everybody loved Yogi Berra, right? He was just so dang lovable to all, because of what he said (or didn't say) and how he said it. He came off as a lovable loser, especially after being fired by the Mets twice and the Yankees once (or is that backwards?) but the truth is, the guy had TEN World Series rings as a player and at least one as a coach (for the 1969 Mets). He was like the Tom Brady of baseball, just not as good looking. And he caught the Don Larsen perfect World Series game, really, a lot of that credit should go to him, because who tells the pitcher what to pitch? The catcher, that's who.
Really, if you came here for the funny sayings (and they get their own chapter in the doc), stick around for the baseball, because I learned a lot, and I haven't watched a full game in a while, not since the last World Series the BoSox won. Yogi had so few strikeouts during his career because he swung at nearly everything AND usually managed to connect. As one teammate says, "He wasn't really a bad-pitch hitter, he just hit everything, good and bad." That's almost a Yogi-ism itself, but the definition is quite clear, the phrase needs to appear to not make any sense, and then upon further reflection, make some glorious sense that unearths a new truth.
"Nobody goes there any more, it's too crowded." See, it seems impossible at first, even self-contradictory, because if it's crowded, everybody's there, but nobody's GOING there, so then, like, who's there? Nobody or everybody? Maybe it's best not to think too much about it, just try to enjoy it and admit that Yogi was right most of the time, even when he wasn't trying. Especially when he wasn't trying. "When you get to a fork in the road, take it." 'You can observe a lot by watching." "The future ain't what it used to be." "Always go to other people's funerals. Otherwise, they won't come to yours." and just in case he ever got misquoted, "I really didn't say everything I said." There are more, but those are my favorites.
Once he was done with baseball (and then after baseball was done with him) he had a whole other career as a commercial spokesman, pimping everything from AFLAC to Yoo-Hoo. The AFLAC commercial where he described in his own style why you might need extra insurance was a hoot, maybe one of his best. He even confused the AFLAC duck, who was left speechless for perhaps the first time.
But it was the way he was fired by George Steinbrenner, only 16 games into the 1985 season, that really hurt, because he'd just been assured that his job was safe, and then Steinbrenner sent an assistant executive to drop the hammer. This led to a famous 14-year feud during which Yogi refused to attend Old-Timers Day or go to Yankee Stadium for any reason. It was up to sports writers and booth personnel to risk their job and keep asking Steinbrenner to apologize and reconcile.
Yogi also had friends and family who would stand up for him - the film kicks off with a story from his granddaughter who was watching the 2015 World Series with him, and they introduced the four greatest living baseball players, or words to that effect - Hank Aaron, Johnny Bench, Sandy Koufax and Willie Mays. She correctly points out that Yogi had better stats in his career than they did, certainly more World Series wins and more years played, but that's the funny thing about "Top XX" lists in any given field, it's largely subjective. And these four were determined by 25 million fan votes. Look, I can't say for certain, but maybe staying away from baseball for so long knocked Yogi off of everyone's radar. Maybe most people didn't realize he was still alive? Anyway, as the granddaughter correctly states, she can't possibly be subjective here, because she's related to the guy who got left out. Anyway, did she forget to vote herself?
I get it, though, Yogi played for 19 seasons and he was an All-Star 18 times. And MVP 3 times, the other statistics are nothing to sneeze at, either. For five years he had more home runs than strikeouts, that seems quite impossible. But everything seems impossible until somebody does it, I guess.
Also starring Yogi Berra (last seen in "Say Hey, Willie Mays!"), Bob Costas (ditto), Vin Scully (ditto), Andy Andres, Roger Angell, Marty Appel, Carmen Berra, Dale Berra, Lindsay Berra, Larry Berra, Tim Berra, Bobby Brown, Douglas Chadwick, Billy Crystal (last seen in "Narrowsburg"), Larry Doby Jr., Al Downing, Joe Garagiola (last seen in "Catch Me If You Can"), Joe Girardi, Ron Guidry, Whitey Herzog, Taylor Hudson, Vicki Janik, Derek Jeter (last seen in "Knuckleball!"), Joe Torre (ditto), Dave Kaplan, Tony Kubek, Don Larsen, Carol Holland Lifshitz, Hector Lopez, Joe Maddon, Don Mattingly, Willie Randolph, Bobby Richardson, Mariano Rivera, Russ Salzberg, Art Shamsky, Claire Smith, Hal Steinbrenner, Nick Swisher, Ralph Terry, John Thorn, Suzyn Waldman,
with archive footage of Hank Aaron, Jason Alexander (last seen in "Ira & Abby"), Mel Allen (last heard in "Murder in the First"), Johnny Bench, Len Berman, George W. Bush (last seen in "Butterfly in the Sky"), Connie Chung (ditto), Bill Clinton (last seen in "The Special Relationship"), Stephen Colbert (last seen in "Good Night Oppy"), David Cone, Walter Cronkite (last heard in "We Blew It"), Doris Day (also carrying over from "I Am Burt Reynolds"), Joe DiMaggio (also last seen in "Say Hey, Willie Mays!"), Willie Mays (ditto), Branch Rickey (ditto), Whitey Ford, Bob Gibson, Cary Grant (last seen in "I Don't Know How She Does It"), Bryant Gumbel (last seen in 'Norman Lear: Just Another Version of You"), Reggie Jackson (last seen in "Kevin Hart & Chris Rock: Headliners Only"), Alicia Keys (last seen in "Dionne Warwick: Don't Make Me Over"), Larry King (last seen in "Scandalous: The Untold Story of the National Enquirer"), Robert Klein (last seen in "Belushi"), Sandy Koufax, Spike Lee (last seen in "When We Were Kings"), Mickey Mantle (last seen in "Robert Klein Still Can't Stop His Leg"), Billy Martin, Yao Ming, Edward R. Murrow (last seen in "The Kid Stays in the Picture"), Barack Obama (last seen in "Respect"), Ronald Reagan (last seen in "Balls of Fury"), Frank Robinson, Jackie Robinson (last seen in "Citizen Ashe"), Tim Russert (last seen in "Shock and Awe"), Diane Sawyer (last seen in "Wolfgang"), Chuck Scarborough (last seen in "Book of Shadows: Blair Witch 2"), Chuck Schumer (last seen in "George Carlin's American Dream"), Sue Simmons (last seen in "Nothing Compares"), Bob Simon (last seen in "Rosewater"), George Steinbrenner (last seen in "Where's My Roy Cohn?"), Casey Stengel, Ed Sullivan (last seen in "Albert Brooks: Defending My Life"), Ron Swoboda, Robin Williams (also carrying over from "I Am Burt Reynolds"), Ted Williams and the voice of Gilbert Gottfried (last seen in "Can We Take a Joke?")
RATING: 6 out of 10 (what else?) World Series rings
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