Happy Birthday Lawrence Peter Berra

A few of you know that I am a Red Sox fan....the World Champion Boston Red Sox. As such, it is encoded in my DNA to despise the New York Yankees. This being the case, one may think it odd that I should tribute this journal entry to the Yankee Hall of Famer Yogi Berra on his 80^th birthday. However, he is not only a baseball player, but one of the greatest catchers of all time. And as we all know, it is beyond contestation that baseball is one of the greatest inventions of all mankind.

Yogi was a fifteen-time All Star and won the AL MVP three times; 1951, 54 and 55. He won ten of the fourteen World Series in which he played. In 2120 games, he had a career average of .285 with 1430 RBI's, 2,150 Hits and 358 HR's.

There maybe people who have never heard of Yogi, but even most of those people know a few Yogi-isms. Here are a few of the quotes I put here...

• "In baseball, you don't know nothing."
• "The game's not over until it's over."
• "You can observe a lot by watching."
• "A nickel ain't worth a dime anymore."
• "You should always go to other people's funerals, otherwise, they won't come to yours."
• "It ain't the heat, it's the humility."
• "80 percent of the balls that don't reach the hole, don't go in."
• "If people don't want to come out to the park, nobody's going to stop 'em"
• "Baseball is 90 percent mental. The other half is physical."
• "Nobody goes there anymore because it's too crowded."
• "The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase."
• "I really didn't say everything I said"
• "I'm not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did."
• "It's like deja vu all over again."
• "I always thought that record would stand until it was broken."
• "I think Little League is wonderful. It keeps the kids out of the house."
• "So I'm ugly. I never saw anyone hit with his face."
• "How can a guy hit and think at the same time?"
• "It gets late early out here."
• "When you come to a fork in the road, take it."
• "He hits from both sides of the plate. He's amphibious."
• "We made too many wrong mistakes."
• "I want to thank everyone for making this night necessary."
• "In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they are not."
• "You got to be careful if you don't know where you're going, because you might not get there."
• "The future ain't what it used to be "
• "Never answer an anonymous letter"
• "If you don't know where you are going, you could wind up somewhere else."