Earlier today, the world of baseball lost one of its iconic figures with the news of the passing of Yogi Berra at the age of 90.
The New York Yankees legend was an 18-time All-Star, 10-time World Series winner and Hall of Fame catcher during a playing career that stretched from 1946 to 1965, before becoming a coach and manager.
"He is the American dream. He really is," legendary sportswriter Jerry Izenberg told Off The Ball tonight of a man he knew for 60 years and who was known for turns of phrase which became known as "Yogiisms" and is also said to be the figure who inspired the creation of cartoon bear Yogi Bear.
"First of all, he was much smarter than people thought he was. A couple of things he never said, but a couple of them he did. I know for a fact that he said for example 'Well, we won't go there for dinner tonight. It's so crowded that nobody goes there anymore' and another one he was talking about how the sun would get in the left field of his eye all the time and he'd say to me 'it gets late early out there'. But if you thought about it, it made sense. But he was a guy who really came from such humble beginnings."
Izenberg also talked about those humble beginnings at the height of the Depression, as well as aspects of his home life, before touching on the his playing career and the way he first made it into baseball and the New York Yankees.
"He never forgot who he was. I had a group called Project Pride. About 15-20,000 kids went to it and we had a sports programme and we had a Man of the Year thing to raise money and we made Yogi the Man of the Year one year and I had five of our baseball kids there with this huge statue that we were giving Yogi," Izenberg recalled.
"It was made by the same guy [who made the] Rocky statue in Philadelphia. He made it a third that size and a kid said 'Mr Berra, this is for you from the children of Project Pride' and our kids in Project Pride were black, white, Latino and Asian. They had one thing in common: they were all poor and Yogi looked at these kids and in one hand he had the statue and the other hand he was ruffling this kid's hair. He looked at them and the audience - there was about 1,000 people there - and he said 'these kids ...' and then he broke down and cried. He cried for about 30-40 seconds - I never saw him cry - and then he got control of himself and said 'these kids, I know these kids, these kids are me. I was them when I was their age!'"
Izenberg also emphasised another point about his character: "He's the most beloved Yankee of them all and legitimately because Mantle and DiMaggio were great athletes - they were not nice people. Yogi was unbelievable. He made time for everybody."
Izenberg also touched on the links with the Yogi Bear character as well as how he got his nickname.
Listen to the full interview via our podcast player.
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