Following Yogi Berra’s death, here is a short look at his estrangement from the Yankees, due to how Steinbrenner fired Yogi as Yankees manager early in the 1985 season, and his reconciliation with Steinbrenner in 1999. Yogi may have been lovable and a great quote, but his general image belied a fierceness that both led him to win many World Series and got him ejected from 27 games. That fierceness also led to him standing up to Steinbrenner for 14 years. Here is an excerpt from Mike Lupica’s column in the New York Daily News of October 17, 1996, anticipating the start of the World Series at Yankee Stadium on the 20th:<\/p>\n
The only thing that could make the night perfect is if Yogi Berra could walk out to the middle of the diamond with DiMaggio. They are the two greatest living Yankees. Only one still comes around, though. And the one who does not come around Yogi knows more about nights like Saturday, about the World Series, than anyone alive. Reggie Jackson is called Mr. October. Yogi Berra was October in baseball.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be like any Yankee watching the game,\u201d Yogi said yesterday. \u201cYou see the Yankees in the Series and you feel like you\u2019re watching your whole life.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t want to come?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cNope.\u201d<\/p>\n
George Steinbrenner fired him after just 16 games of the 1985 season after saying that Yogi would have his job as manager all season. Yogi Berra, No. 8, said he would not come back to the Stadium as long as Steinbrenner ran the team. He has not come back. He said yesterday he would not be at the first game of this Series, any of the games. The Series thus misses an honored guest.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019re not going to change your mind about this?\u201d he was asked.<\/p>\n
\u201cNope.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you\u2019ll be pulling for the Yankees.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ll be rooting like hell,\u201d Yogi Berra said. \u201cI\u2019ll never stop being a Yankee.\u201d<\/p>\n
He was asked if anybody had called this week to ask him to throw out a first ball at the Stadium.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ve called asking me to come back,\u201d Yogi said. \u201cThey haven\u2019t called about the Series.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steinbrenner has tried to get Yogi Berra to come back, for Old Timer\u2019s Day, for anything. He tells people all the time that he feels terrible about Berra\u2019s self-imposed exile. But No. 8 has been the same in retirement as he was behind the plate in all his Octobers: You don\u2019t move him. In this case, you don\u2019t move him out of New Jersey on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s easier on television,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no crowds to fight in my living room, believe me.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThere was one call I made sure to make yesterday,\u201d Yogi said. \u201cI called Joe in his office and told him how happy I was that he finally made it. I\u2019m happy for him, I\u2019m happy for Zim (Don Zimmer), I gotta be happy for Mel (Stottlemyre), he won me a game in \u201964 when he was just a kid.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019m getting old,\u201d Yogi said. \u201cAll these games we\u2019re talking about, they seem like they happened yesterday.\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Eventually, in early 1999, Berra came back to the Yankees, with Joe DiMaggio serving as the catalyst. Here’s the story (again from the Daily News):<\/p>\n
The emotional reunion that ended the 14-year cold war between George Steinbrenner and Yogi Berra was triggered by none other than the Yankee Clipper Joe DiMaggio.<\/p>\n
During a 45-minute meeting in his Florida hospital room, the ailing baseball legend implored the Boss to bury the hatchet and end the feud, said Dr. Rock Positano, a long-time DiMaggio friend.<\/p>\n
Sources told the Daily News that Steinbrenner had already been leaning toward making a gesture toward Berra but DiMaggio pushed him to go all the way.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt shouldn\u2019t be a personal thing,\u201d DiMaggio told Steinbrenner, according to Positano.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt should be first for the fans, then for the game, then for the Yankees. That should be more important than two men having a feud.\u201d<\/p>\n
Steinbrenner, 68, took DiMaggio\u2019s words to heart and got the ball rolling to Tuesday\u2019s mea culpa meeting with Berra, 73.<\/p>\n
Yesterday, DiMaggio who was in a coma and near death on Dec. 11 was happy to hear the pair were talking, Positano said.<\/p>\n
\u201cJoe definitely had a hand in it,\u201d said Positano. He added that DiMaggio\u2019s brush with death \u201cshook up a lot of people.\u201d<\/p>\n
DiMaggio, 84, has been in Memorial Regional Hospital in Hollywood, Fla., waging a battle against post-operative complications that arose after a tumor was removed from his right lung Oct. 14.<\/p>\n
Joltin\u2019 Joe\u2019s near-death experience upset Steinbrenner. During his Tuesday meeting with Berra at the Yogi Berra Museum in Montclair, N.J., the principal owner of the Bronx Bombers referred poignantly to DiMaggio\u2019s illness.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe lost Mickey [Mantle], we almost lost Joe [DiMaggio], we didn\u2019t want to lose you,\u201d Steinbrenner told Berra.<\/p>\n
The cold war melted Tuesday when Steinbrenner told Berra, \u201cI know I made a mistake by not letting you go in person. It was the worst mistake I ever made in baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI made a lot of mistakes, too,\u201d Berra responded. They hugged, shook hands and even talked about Berra\u2019s coming back to Yankee Stadium, perhaps for a Yogi Berra Day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Following Yogi Berra’s death, here is a short look at his estrangement from the Yankees, due to how Steinbrenner fired Yogi as Yankees manager early in the 1985 season, and his reconciliation with Steinbrenner in 1999. Yogi may have been lovable and a great quote, but his general image belied a fierceness that both led […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":601,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[4200,612,414],"class_list":["post-29961","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","tag-george-steinbrenner","tag-joe-dimaggio","tag-yogi-berra"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/601"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29961\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/seamheads.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}