Yogi Berra - Playing Career

Playing Career

In 1942, the St. Louis Cardinals spurned Berra in favor of his boyhood best friend, Joe Garagiola. On the surface, the Cardinals seemed to think Garagiola the superior prospect—but team president Branch Rickey actually had an ulterior motive: knowing he was soon to leave St. Louis to take over the operation of the Brooklyn Dodgers and more impressed with Berra than he let on, Rickey apparently planned to hold Berra off until he could sign him for the Dodgers. The plan was ruined when the Yankees got to him first, signing him for the same $500 bonus the Cardinals offered Garagiola. Berra was assigned to the Norfolk Tars of the Class B Piedmont League, where his most memorable feat was driving in 23 runs in a doubleheader.

Following his service in the U.S. Navy during World War II where he served as a gunner's mate in the D-Day invasion, Berra played minor league baseball with the Newark Bears before being called up for seven games in the major leagues in 1946 and was taught under the mentorship of Hall of Famer Bill Dickey, whose number Berra took. The following season he played 83 games for the Yankees, and he would play more than a hundred in each of the following fourteen years.

Berra appeared in fourteen World Series, winning ten championships, both of which are records. Partly because Berra's playing career coincided with the Yankees' most consistent period of World Series participation, he established World Series records for the most games (75), at-bats (259), hits (71), doubles (10), singles (49), games caught (63), and catcher putouts (457). In Game 3 of the 1947 World Series, Berra hit the first pinch-hit home run in World Series history, off Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca (who later served up Bobby Thomson's famous home run in 1951).

Berra was a fifteen-time All-Star, and won the league's MVP award three times, in 1951, 1954 and 1955. From 1950 to 1957, Berra never finished lower than 4th in the voting. He received MVP votes in fifteen consecutive seasons, tied with Barry Bonds and second only to Hank Aaron's nineteen straight seasons with MVP support. (Ted Williams also received MVP votes in every year of his career, but it was twice interrupted by military service.) Between 1949 and 1955, on a team filled with stars such as Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio, it was Berra who led the Yankees in RBI for seven consecutive seasons.

One of the most notable days of Berra's playing career came when he caught Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series, the first of only two no-hitters ever thrown in postseason play. The pictures of Berra leaping into Larsen's arms following the 27th out are among the sport's most memorable images.