He grew up on the same street as Joe Garagiola in St. Louis. He became the greatest catcher in the history of baseball. Lawrence Peter Berra was born in St. Louis, Missouri, the son of Pietro and Paolina Berra — Italian immigrants from Malvaglio, in the province of Milan. He grew up in the Italian American enclave of the Hill neighborhood, on Elizabeth Avenue, in the same house of three blocks that produced his childhood friend and future broadcast partner Joe Garagiola. He left school at fifteen to help support his family. He was rejected by the Cardinals and the Browns before the Yankees signed him. Then he won ten World Series championships. Ten. Yogi Berra played eighteen seasons, was a fifteen-time All-Star, won three MVP awards, and managed two different teams to the World Series. He is considered by many baseball historians the greatest catcher in the history of the sport.
He is also, entirely separately, one of the most quotable human beings in the history of the English language — "It ain't over till it's over," "It's déjà vu all over again," "When you come to a fork in the road, take it" — observations of such compressed philosophical wisdom delivered in such guileless simplicity that philosophers have spent decades trying to explain why they're actually profound. He was the son of Italian immigrants from a neighborhood in St. Louis. He was, in every sense, one of a kind. 🇮🇹
