Remembering the great American life of Yankees legend Yogi BerraYogi Berra, the 10-time World Series champion and former New York Yankees catcher full of iconic phrases, passed away on Tuesday at age 90.
Sports Illustrated | By Tom Verducci | September 23, 2015
At 4:33 in the morning on June 6, 1944, under overcast skies just before dawn broke over Omaha Beach, a 36-foot steel boat was lowered from an American battleship into the dark waters of the Atlantic. Inside this boat--in Naval terms, a Landing Craft, Support (Small) boat; in relative terms, a bathtub--hunkered a commanding officer and six sailors. One of those sailors was a first-generation American teenager from St. Louis named Lorenzo Pietro Berra, or Lawrence Peter Berra, or, better still, to you, me and posterity, Yogi Berra.
The essential job of the LCS was to run interference for the waves of troops that would, across all of Normandy’s shores, account for the largest amphibious invasion in the history of the world. When the battle commenced at 6:30 a.m., the LCS sprayed bullets and rockets across the heavily fortified beachfronts before the troops landed. Berra, then 19, manned a machine gun mounted on a ball turret in his LCS and stood tall with a boy’s wonder--too busy marveling at the tremendous explosions of lights and sound to consider the danger that would end the lives of 2,500 of his fellow Americans. In an LCS, only the steel walls of the boat and the grace of God stood between a sailor and death.
"You better get your head down in here," his officer barked at Berra, "if you want it on."
Seaman Second Class Yogi Berra fought at D-Day from one of the smallest crafts in the world’s biggest assault. He was hit by a bullet from a German machine gun (he earned a Purple Heart, though as not to cause concern to his mother, never applied for it), and came through the war with a Distinguished Unit Citation, two battle stars, a European Theatre of Operations ribbon and the beginnings of what was nothing less than the quintessential, if not the outlandishly charmed, Great American Life.
Carmen, the Latin word for incantation, gave us charme, the Middle English word for magic spell, which gave us charmed, which gave us Yogi, who was married from 1949 to her death in 2014 to the third girl he ever dated--a woman named...Carmen.
Berra would go on to become, in most arguments, the greatest catcher in baseball history and, without argument, the greatest winner the game ever has known. Berra saw baseball and America grow up. He entered the sport when it was an all-white game and left it when indoor baseball arrived. In that spot between integration (1947) and expansion (1961), when baseball was the unchallenged great American pastime, nobody but Stan Musial drove in more runs than Berra and no one was more beloved. Berra played in 14 World Series, winning a record 10 of them, and participated in seven more as a coach or manager--putting him in 21 of the 34 World Series played between 1947 and 1981.
More at link: http://www.si.com/mlb/2015/09/23/yogi-berra-new-york-yankees-catcher-dies-90-obituary
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