Driving Mr. Yogi Page 17

  Steinbrenner, however, was smiling and apparently hungry. After being introduced to Guidry’s parents, he said, “Whatever you’re cooking smells good.”

  “I’m cooking rabbits, Ronnie’s favorite,” Rags said. “Why don’t you sit down and try some?” Steinbrenner found himself a spot and spent half an hour chowing down on the stew and chatting up the Guidry family.

  “And that’s how it all started with him,” Ron said. “At the end of every season, he’d tell me, ‘Don’t plan on coming to spring training unless you come with some rabbit.’ Every year I’d cook and freeze ’em and bring ’em with me.”

  Year after year, long beyond his playing days, when Guidry would run into Steinbrenner for the first time in spring training, the Boss would shake his hand, ask how Bonnie and the kids were doing, and then inquire about the rabbit stew. “I got it,” Guidry would say, promising to prepare it for the first night game, provided the Boss would be in attendance.

  “Oh, I’ll be here,” Steinbrenner would assure him. On the appointed night, he would wait in his box for Guidry to bring him an extra-large portion of stew.

  Before long, the routine had become another Yankees rite of spring.

  If Steinbrenner got the benefit of the rabbit stew, Ron Guidry arrived in New York for the 2011 Old-Timers’ Day with the ultimate gift for his frog-legs-loving pal. But it was a gift from Rags, not Ron, a copy of the family cookbook with a special insert on page two. Rags Guidry wrote:

  This is a personal copy of my Cajun recipes and the first off the press. Some (of the recipes) have been copied with the permission of the persons supplying the recipes; some are of my own creation; some have been hand-me-downs. I know that you may not try all of the recipes but I would like you to accept it as a gift, and an honor from a great fan of yours, and for you to add to your collections and display.

  Even though I have never met you personally, I greatly admire you for being a friend and caretaker to Ron Guidry and for an incident that happened to Ron’s brother, Travis, that you were a part of at a Texas Rangers’ ballgame during the time of your managing the Yanks when Ron was still playing ball.

  We had gone up to watch the games and while Ron’s mother would always sit behind home plate, I would always purchase tickets in the first row along the third-base line, where Travis would get to see the Yankees coming onto the field from the locker room. (Travis is handicapped and does not understand the aspects of the game but does know some or most of the Yankees.)

  There were many kids hanging around the area that day with the hope of getting an autograph. Some of the kids were yelling, “Yogi, Yogi.” Travis would hear the kids and would ask me, “Hey Rags (that’s my nickname and what Travis calls me), where’s Yogi?” He was doing this both days so therefore on the last day, when Ron came over to the hotel to see us, I asked if he would ask you to come to the fence to shake hands with Travis. Ron replied that he did not know if you would do it but he would ask.

  Now on that last day, all the players were on the field prior to the start of the game and I noticed Ron run up to you around second base and then both of you turned around to come toward us. Well, while you were approaching there was a crowd of fans standing in front of us, plus a big man standing in front of Travis, and there was no way for us to get to the fence. I asked him to allow Travis to go to the front because Ron and Yogi were coming to meet him. He looked at me with a sneer and frown and said, “As if.”

  On your and Ron’s arrival, Ron could see me but not Travis and he asked, “Where is Travis?” I replied, here in front of me but this man would not allow Travis to go forward.

  At that time you put out your long arms and said, “Let that boy through,” and they did. Travis went forward and you spoke to him and shook his hand. Ron gave his little brother a hug and said, “I’ll see you at home soon.” Travis was very excited and told the kids, “Yogi just shook my hand.” He was envied by all the kids present. Some even shook his hand.

  In a sense, Rags Guidry’s booklet was written like a memoir, a window into the life of a proud—and well-fed—Louisiana Cajun. Berra obviously did not have to go to Louisiana to please the Guidry family. He had done more than enough when he’d taken that walk from second base to shake Travis’s hand, and that—along with his appreciation of fried frog legs and the man who prepared them for him—was apparently quite enough for Rags to title his page-two essay “A Tribute to Yogi Berra.”

  The Guidry men—Roland and Ron—were blessed with long memories. The seventies were ancient history, but they hadn’t forgotten what Berra had done for them. Repayment would apparently entail a lifetime of kindness, along with an all-Berra-could-eat buffet.

  11. Swish Hitting

  Yogi Berra sat alongside Ron Guidry at the far end of the bench by the water cooler, minding his own business. In the years after Joe Torre’s departure, Guidry was no longer part of the central brain trust and had moved down to the far end of the dugout. Berra followed, switching positions, just as he went from catcher to left field late in his playing career.

  Joe Girardi relied much more on data than the old-school Torre, which was why general manager Brian Cashman had been an agent for change of managers and pitching coaches after the 2007 season. Berra liked Girardi very much but didn’t relate to the new-age approach, and he didn’t have the same history and generational comfort as with Torre.

  But Berra’s move away from the manager and closer to his friend Guidry also reflected the natural disengagement that inevitably comes with advanced age.

  Berra, almost eighty-five, moved more slowly now. His voice was softer, harder to project. It was spring training 2010, and he understandably had become more reticent about volunteering hitting or fielding tips, not wanting to impose himself on the players when he had something to say. Instead, he told Guidry.

  On this pleasant night at George M. Steinbrenner Field, they were watching Nick Swisher bat against a right-handed pitcher whose name was not especially memorable in the blur of meaningless exhibitions.

  The man they called “Swish” was a cross between your friendly neighborhood bartender and the prototypical “clown prince,” the life of a generally staid clubhouse in serious need of levity since the team had moved across the street into its spacious and luxurious new digs in 2009. But now Swisher was in a spring training slump that had him kicking dirt and flinging his helmet after the pitcher threw a sinkerball that he swung over for a harmless roller to second base.

  As it happened, Berra recalled the previous night’s game, when Swisher had produced the same result against another breaking-ball pitcher. “You know,” Berra said, leaning in to Guidry, “he just needs to move up in the box. This guy’s not throwing hard enough to bust it by him.”

  Guidry nodded. That made sense. If Swisher was standing too far back, the ball would dip under his swing, and the best he could do was hit it weakly on the ground.

  “Shit,” Guidry said, “why don’t you tell that to him?”

  Berra shook his head. “Nah,” he said. “I don’t like doing that. He’s already got a hitting coach.”

  Guidry knew darn well that no Yankee in his right mind—much less one worth his pinstripes—would have the nerve not to welcome the advice of Yogi Berra. But he also knew what Berra was thinking and probably getting at: he was too old now for players to take seriously.

  Guidry hated the sound of surrender from this man whose opinion and expertise had meant so much. For sure, Berra still loved bantering with the players, showing up first thing every morning, waiting for them to arrive so he could make the rounds. The career, or core, Yankees—Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Andy Pettitte, and Derek Jeter—found Berra to be a particularly welcoming sight.

  “I think that’s what makes our organization special, and it’s not taking anything away from anyone else, any other organization, but we have an opportunity to mingle with someone like Yogi,” Jeter said. Yes, he realized, the Red Sox had their own organizational Yogi in Johnny Pesky—fo
r whom the right-field foul pole at Fenway Park was named—and the Cardinals had Red Schoendienst in their camp over the years. But in Jeter’s mind, Berra was the brand name of inspirational elders—not that there was much Berra could have taught Jeter at this point in his career.

  Like Berra, Jeter was a master at not overthinking the game, keeping it simple, doing what came naturally, without letting anyone—most of all the media—distract him. Few, in fact, were allowed past the invisible moat Jeter constructed around himself, Berra being one of the exceptions. “He’s special, someone who keeps the tradition and the mystique alive,” Jeter said. “Me and Yogi have always had a good relationship. We tease each other.”

  By spring training 2010, Berra’s newest dig at Jeter was that his fifth championship ring, secured in the 2009 World Series, placed him exactly halfway to Berra’s total of ten.

  “Yeah,” Jeter would say, “but there were no playoffs when you played, so in reality we’re tied.”

  Berra would wave a hand and say, “If you don’t win the series, it don’t count.”

  These were the baseball moments Berra lived for, his face lighting up when one of the players took the time to kibitz with him. He was grateful for the attention, but sometimes it grated on Guidry. He was convinced that Berra still had more important things to offer. He especially didn’t appreciate the idea of Berra being reduced to the level of mascot—however beloved—and took it upon himself to watch out for anyone having too much fun at Berra’s expense.

  When the young pitcher Joba Chamberlain was pulled over and cited for drunk driving by Nebraska police in 2008, he tried to schmooze the officer with inside baseball talk. When he mentioned knowing the great Yogi Berra, he cracked, “He might not be as tall as the front of your car.” Chamberlain was embarrassed when his remark went viral on the Internet after surfacing in a police video. Knowing it sounded disrespectful, he called Berra to apologize.

  Ray Negron—the longtime Steinbrenner protégé who had been around since the seventies—once in a while stretched the limits of teasing with Berra, whom he had long ago taken to calling Larry. Guidry didn’t like the tone of the dialogue one day and threatened to deposit the middle-aged but still playful Negron in the wastebasket—as Sparky Lyle had done three decades ago when Negron had gotten on his nerves.

  It ate at Guidry that anyone, and most of all the younger Yankees, might not show Berra the proper respect. They needed to know everything the man represented, all that he still had stored in that steel trap of a baseball mind. As he sat on the bench after Swisher’s groundout, Guidry asked himself, “Why shouldn’t Berra share his opinion? What the hell did age have to do with it?”

  “Yogi was a guy who had already been through the same damn thing, and a lot longer than any of the coaches,” he said.

  When Swisher returned to the dugout, ambled down the steps and past the bat rack, and, almost on cue, proceeded to march down the row in the direction of the water cooler, Guidry stood up suddenly and blocked his path. He pointed an index finger at Berra.

  “He wants to talk to you,” he said.

  Swisher was momentarily startled but obediently sat down in the space Guidry had vacated. No stranger to Berra, or anyone else around the clubhouse, Swisher, for one, didn’t think Berra needed much defending, though he understood and marveled at how Guidry looked out for him.

  “There’s that difference of making sure that man’s respected and not put in a spot where he gets embarrassed,” said Swisher, who nonetheless refused to sell Berra short in a friendly war of wits. “I’m telling you, it’s crazy, but Yogi’s a good counterpuncher. You can come with a quick jab, but he’ll come right back over the top with something.”

  Swisher believed this was the blessing of ongoing engagement, the fierce determination of Berra to remain connected to his favorite pastimes—baseball and the Yankees—long after people his age or even younger tend to stop fine-tuning their bodies and minds.

  “I think some of that comes from just being in this locker room, man, because when you come in here, you had better be quick-witted with all the trash-talking going on,” Swisher said. “Yogi’s not scared to bust people now and then. It shocks me sometimes how sharp his mind is.”

  The clubhouse in the new Yankee Stadium—in which every player’s personal space came fully computer loaded—was more full-service hotel than fraternal jock hostel. Berra, for one, missed the intimacy of the old no-frills clubhouse in the way aging newspapermen romanticized the cluttered, frenzied newsrooms that had inexorably given way to cleaner, brighter spaces devoid of atmosphere.

  That may have been why Berra liked Swisher so much. If there was one area where he could count on some kind of ruckus, it was Swisher’s. The switch-hitting outfielder was often entertaining someone with his high-octane personality, making everyone feel at home, even though 2009 had been Swisher’s first season with the Yankees after being acquired from the White Sox.

  Berra was also mindful that Swisher had catcher’s roots and old-school baseball values. His father, Steve, had played the position for nine years in the midseventies to early eighties, mostly with the Cubs and Cardinals. Steve Swisher never made silly baseball money. When his playing career ended and he found work coaching in the minors, he still had to work during the off-season. His son grew up in a household in which the game was much more closely aligned with the real world.

  In the Swisher home, Berra was baseball royalty, because a major-league catcher could best appreciate Berra’s extraordinary body of work. Steve Swisher passed that appreciation along to his son, who had watched grainy old films of Berra and was amazed that a man his size could launch home runs in the old Yankee Stadium, where the fences were significantly deeper in the gaps and to dead center than those in the new stadium.

  “Yogi, man, your bat was always moving,” Swisher told him. Berra explained that his bat was so heavy, he needed to stay flexible to generate a quick swing.

  When Swisher checked Berra’s career batting statistics—.285 average, 358 home runs (eleven seasons with 20 or more), and 1,430 runs batted in (with a single-season high of 125)—he was even more impressed.

  “From having grown up with my dad, I always knew that being an everyday catcher is a grimy job—one hundred fifty/one hundred fifty-five games a season,” Swisher said. “Just to be able to do that, be solid defensively, a standup guy, a leader, and a respected teammate, that’s a major thing for me, man. Yogi did all that, and then he won three MVPs, which I’m not sure many people even know or remember. And on top of that, you got the ten rings, which he always lets you know about.”

  Attempting his own Yogi imitation, Swisher said, “He comes up to me after we won the series in ’09 and says, ‘Congratulations, you’re only nine behind me.’ I cracked up, man. I told him, ‘Yogi, you remind me so much of my grandfather.’” Swisher lived with his paternal grandparents after his parents divorced when he was eleven. Don Swisher was a career-long security guard for DuPont back home in Parkersburg, West Virginia, known around town as “Hot Donny.” He died in 2008, three years after his wife, Betty. After getting to know Berra in New York, Swisher told him that he was adopting Berra as his surrogate grandfather.

  “The thing is that baseball is a lot different nowadays,” Swisher said. “These days, twenty minutes after the game, everybody’s out of the clubhouse. I remember my dad telling me stories, man, guys sitting around for two hours afterward, talking about the game, this and that, and that’s what I like about guys like Yogi and Gator. They want to be around, talking about the game, all the little things. So when Gator told me that Yogi wanted to talk to me, it was, like, hell, yes. I automatically figured he had something he must have seen.”

  Swisher sat down and put his arm on Berra’s shoulder. “Yogi, these guys are wearing me out, man,” he said.

  The grand elder who had heard it all before, Berra leaned forward and into Swisher so that their shoulders were touching. He was aware that his voice no longer projected, and
in the clatter of the dugout, he wanted to make sure that Swisher could hear him. Swisher moved his face close to Berra’s and put his arm around Yogi’s shoulders.

  “Listen,” Berra said, “all you need to do is take a step toward the plate and a step toward the pitcher. You’re letting the pitch break down on you too much. That’s why these guys are getting you out. Don’t worry about the fastball. He can’t get it by you. His best pitch is going down and away.”

  Swisher listened carefully, nodding again and again.

  “That’s it?” he said.

  “That’s it,” Berra said.

  “Yogi, man, I appreciate that,” Swisher said. “I really do.”

  He promised to take the advice and to move up in the box in his next at bat. When his turn in the order came around again, with the same pitcher still on the mound, Swisher got into his swing early and powered the ball into the opposite-field gap, up against the wall for a standup double. Standing on second base with a shit-eating grin, he looked into the dugout, trying to make eye contact with Berra, who was already watching the next hitter dig in, oblivious to Swisher. Guidry had to grab his arm and say, “Hey, he’s trying to tell you something.”

  When Berra turned his attention back to second, Swisher was pointing both fingers at him. Scoring a couple of minutes later, Swisher rolled back into the dugout and squeezed onto the bench alongside Berra, who was beaming, feeling like a coach all over again.

  “You see?” he said. “All you have to do is make contact with the baseball, move up against a breaking-ball pitcher, step into it from your back side.”

  “You mean that’s all you tried to do, two little keys?” Swisher said.