Yogi
One muggy summer day in 1956 when I was 11, my father, who was also the coach, arranged a three-car caravan lead by our Nash Rambler to transport our Little League team to Memorial stadium, home of the Baltimore Orioles—a rather woeful team that season. They were playing the mighty Yankees with All Stars, catcher Yogi Berra the great Mickey Mantle, Moose Skowran, Hank Bauer, Phil Rezzuto. If the Yankees were on the radio and it was time for me to go to bed, I’d turn out the light, lower the volume, and stay up an extra inning to hear what Mickey did.
This was only the third Major League season for the Orioles, their being elevated to the bigs when the St. Louis Browns franchise folded and Baltimore took their place. To fill their roster, each American League team picked three expendable players, and the O’s got the pick of them. They were really awful those first years and made plenty of mistakes, many of which were perpetrated by Willy Miranda, the short-statured switch hitter who, while personable and widely loved for his genial personality, couldn’t seem to reliably hit or field the ball. We traded away Don Larsen, who only one year later pitched a perfect game against the Dodgers in the World Series. He was a tortured three and twenty three in ‘55 so who knew or could tell he was actually pretty good.
Before ‘54 the Orioles were a Triple A minor league team playing in the East coast division. My Dad and I went to many Oriole games to see players like Roy Weatherly, who’d had more than a cup of coffee in the major leagues, hit thirty seven home runs that ‘53 season.
The Orioles were currently in last place, their perennial position since joining the Major Leagues two years before. In the upper deck we took positions along the rail and began to rain insults down on the only Yankee in sight, their famous bearlike catcher Yogi Berra. We yelled squeakily at him as only preadolescent boys can. Ya bum! we’d say. You aren’t any good!
So, after a couple minutes of this Yogi looked up straight at us and disappeared into the dugout. My father yelled, Here he comes, boys he’s coming up here, he’s comin’ up those stairs and he’s gonna get you.
We got scared. One part of me thought, he’d never do that, another, but suppose he does. We huddled around the rail hypervigilant for several minutes before he emerged from the dugout to the sound of his name as he was introduced. We felt silly but relieved, the Yogi isn’t going to beat us up. Still the whole game I’d look up at the top of the tunnel for any sign of him. So preoccupied were we with an imminent Yogi encounter that, to this day, I don’t even recall who won.