MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 28TH, 2015

YOGI — THE BIG LITTLE FELLOW!

There are occasions that compel one to fall in line with everyone else. Hence, this week I’m doing exactly that.  Like countless writers all over America, I’m paying a fond tribute to a remarkable human being. I’m doing so with gladness and sadness, with a smile and a tear, with longing for yesteryear, but as one who is at peace with the completion of the “Yogi Berra story.”

The story began on Tuesday, May 12th, 1925 in the Italian working class section of St. Louis, Missouri.  The third of four children born to bricklayer Pietro and Paulina Berra, his full name was Lawrence Peter Berra.  His original nickname given by Mama Berra was “Lawdie.”  The nickname we all know and love, Yogi, was given to him as a teenager by Bobby Hoffman, a neighbor boy.  After seeing a movie featuring an Indian snake charmer, young Hoffman (who also later played major league baseball in New York for the Giants) remarked that the Indian Yogi snake charmer “walks and looks just like Lawdie Berra.”  The name stuck.

Yogi’s best friend growing up in St. Louis was Joe Garagiola who was born on Friday, February 12th, 1926, a little less than seven months after Yogi.  At age 16, Joe was offered a $500 contract to sign with the hometown St. Louis Cardinals.  The Cards offered Yogi $250 to sign also, but Yogi turned them down.  Following the Yankee’s loss to the Cardinals in the 1942 World Series, the Yankees offered 17-year-old Yogi Berra $500 to sign with them and Berra snapped it up.  Ironically, it was Joe Garagiola who was the first to play in a World Series. The next year, Yogi played in the 1947 series against the Brooklyn Dodgers and made a name for himself in World Series history.  In the third game held at Ebbets Field on Thursday, October 2nd, 1947, Yogi became the first player in World Series history to hit a pinch-hit home run.  It was a solo shot in the seventh inning off Ralph Branca.  Yogi played in fourteen World Series of which the Yankees won ten.  During a banquet speech in 1954, Joe Garagiola quipped, “You know, Yogi has never really experienced the finer things in life. For instance, Yogi has never watched a World Series game on television!”

Just before spring training in 1949, Yogi married Carmen Short, a pretty young St. Louis waitress.  They went on to have three sons, Tim, Larry and Dale.  Dale would one day briefly play shortstop for the New York Yankees while his father was the Yankee’s manager.

Yogi’s easygoing way often masked his competitive intensity, an essential aspect of anyone’s personality who competed as successfully as Yogi did throughout his eighteen seasons as a Yankee catcher and occasional outfielder.  As entertaining and thought-provoking as Yogi’s observations and malapropisms came to be, they made an impression because of his success as a top flight professional on a continuously successful championship team.

Perhaps in recent years former opponents such as Carl Erskine, Hank Aaron, Bill Mazeroski, Willie Mays and even Sandy Koufax have chuckled at Yogi Berra stories and Yogi-isms along with the rest of us, but you can bet your Topps Yogi Berra baseball card that there was nothing funny when the 5 foot 7 inch, 195 pound Yogi Berra stepped to the plate -- especially when the bases were occupied by his Yankee teammates.  Although Yogi wasn’t built like your prototype athlete, he was as quick as a cat behind home plate. In fact, he was sufficiently fast enough on the bases to score from first base on a double. Although he stole only 30 bases during his nineteen major league seasons, his speed was adequate enough to cover enough real estate in the outfield to justify keeping his late 30’s bat in the early 1960s Yankee’s lineup with Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Bill Skowron and Elston Howard.

Yogi was dead serious on the diamond, but off the field he demonstrated almost daily what his great Brooklyn Dodger catching opponent Roy Campanella observed about baseball players: “You’ve got to have a lot of little boy in you to play this game!”

Thus, Yogi was a natural to advertise the chocolate drink Yoohoo and he was enough of a celebrity to do commercials for Camel cigarettes and The Money Store along with his friend and fellow Yankee Phil Rizzuto.

Since everyone is sharing Yogi stories in part to ease their sadness, here are a few of my favorites.

It was especially hot during spring training in 1957.  After a game one day, Yogi emerged from the Yankee clubhouse in a seersucker suit.  Spying Yogi, the wife of Yankee’s owner Dan Topping, a gorgeous beauty, asserted,   “You look nice and cool, Yogi!”  Yogi’s response was: “You don’t look so hot yourself, Mrs. Topping!”

One day when Carmen Berra was out of the house and Yogi was home with his three boys, there was a knock at the door.  One of the boys called to his father who was upstairs to tell him that two men were at the door about the “venetian blind.”  Yogi, apparently thinking that the two gentlemen were soliciting for the blind people of Venice, Italy replied, “Ah, give ’em a couple of bucks and send ’em on their way!”

During the off-season between 1984 and 1985, Yogi’s lifelong pal Joe Garagiola dropped by the house for an evening of food, perhaps a few libations, and some baseball talk.  Yogi proceeded to tell Joe about what it was like to manage under the notorious George M. Steinbrenner.  There were stories about their differing evaluations of players.  There were stories about late night and early morning calls from the boss over changes in the lineup.  Finally, there were Steinbrenner’s complaints about Yogi’s strategies during games.  The more Yogi talked, the hotter Joe got in defense of his old friend.  Finally, Joe told Yogi that he ought to remind the owner about which one of them actually played major league baseball.  Joe further advised Yogi to remind “the boss” who it was who had managed World Series games and was in the Baseball Hall of Fame.  “You’ve gotta tell him off,” Joe finally insisted with considerable heat.  Yogi took another sip of his drink and replied:  “Aw, no, Joey, I can’t do that. George and I just agree different!”

Yogi and Carmen were very close.  She was always looking out for Yogi’s best interests.  Although she rejected the idea of naming their firstborn Yogi, Jr, she herself always called her husband “Yogi.”  However, according to Joe Garagiola, after 30 years of marriage, Carmen received an anniversary card signed “Yogi Berra.”  “Why,” she demanded of her husband, “do you sign your last name to my anniversary card?  Do you think I might get an anniversary card from another Yogi?”

Yogi’s life, as magical as it seems to have been at times, had its low points.  There was his childhood poverty, the gibes he took as a young player from teammates and other players for his looks and undoubtedly for his ethnicity.  There was the shabby treatment he received after the 1964 World Series when he was suddenly and dramatically fired by Yankee General Manager Ralph Houk.  There was the cold way George Steinbrenner fired him in 1985 which caused Yogi to stay away from Yankee Stadium for fourteen years. Finally, there was the disappointment Yogi must have experienced as a parent and a professional when his son Dale was charged with using drugs during the 1980s.

Mostly, however, there has been that special magic.  That magic consists of an abiding trust, respect, and love from his fellow professionals, as well as from plain people everywhere who appreciate that combination of talent, hard work, and wisdom which that big little fellow from that working class hill in St. Louis demonstrated throughout 69 years.

Yogi Berra first appeared in a major league game on Sunday, September 22nd, 1946.  On Tuesday, September 22nd, 2015 at age 90 years plus 143 days, Yogi passed into another dimension beyond our ken.

His plaque is in The National Baseball Hall of Fame.  However, his deeds will remain in all of our hearts as long as we live!

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

KIM DAVIS — HEROINE OR HOLLERER?

By Edwin Cooney

Try to set aside whether you concur or reject her cause.  Is Kim Davis a genuine heroine or is she merely a “hollerer”?  It isn’t simply a question of agreement with Mrs. Davis’s moral outrage.  It is rather a question of the substance of her behavior.  Kim Davis did after all risk the comfort of anonymity and her personal freedom from incarceration by challenging the writ of the highest court in the land.  She took a risk most of us wouldn’t take.  By so doing she has, without a doubt, subjected herself and others close to her to the discomfort of personal ridicule, and even threats to her well-being.  One should readily grant that to put one’s self into such a position takes courage.  Courage is, of course, an essential element of heroism. The question, therefore, is twofold: Is the price she’s willing to pay equal to the damage caused by the consequences of her defiance?  (In other words, is she willingly paying an adequate price for defying the law of the land?) Second, is her defiance a question of principle or politics?

Had Kim Davis defied the ruling and then resigned her position, she would have demonstrated as much principle as defiance.  However, by not resigning her position and thus retaining its pecuniary compensation, she benefited from the privileges she has as an officer of the very legal system she regards as guilty of an immoral act.

There are two other factors that haven’t been adequately covered in the reports I’ve seen on the controversy created by Mrs. Davis.

Let’s assume for a moment that gay and lesbian marriage is an abomination of Christian doctrine.  Is Mrs. Davis responsible or accountable for the souls of others?  Additionally, where in scripture is it stated that nations as entities have any moral accountability?  Even though the “almighty” destroyed ancient Israel for its sins, modern Israel not only exists, it possesses atomic bombs sufficient to give any modern day Babylonia one hell-of-a jolt.  Perhaps our leaders as individuals are subject to spiritual rewards and punishments, but insofar as I’m aware, America as an entity is beyond payment of the wages of sin.  If not, America is in real trouble because many of the most devoutly righteous among us still insist that we need be neither humble nor apologetic about the employment of slavery against blacks or the genocide against native Americans which we utilized to assist us in becoming so prosperous.

Another aspect of Kim Davis’s defiance that doesn’t get enough play is how her defiance of the law is noble yet the defiance of our immigration laws by the refugees from other nations is punishable by deportation.

Compliance of the law is a vital factor in our unity, our prosperity and even our safety.  Defiance of the law is only noble when the person who defies the law asserts three factors:

(1.) That the law or ruling in question has passed the test of legal legitimacy and is primarily a matter of recognizable and reasonable morality.

(2.) That the legitimate rights of no person will be damaged by your advocacy of the current law’s elimination.

(3.) That the advocacy of a change or changes in the present law doesn’t nearly represent self-righteous contempt for the opinions and values of others.

Mrs. Davis’s contention passes the first of the above assertions.  There’s no doubt of her sincerity on moral grounds!  As for numbers two and three, Kim Davis’s actions fail to meet their test.  The legitimate rights of gays and lesbians would be damaged if her defiance should be upheld.  As for the third test of arrogant self-righteousness, the politicization of Mrs. Davis’s contentiousness on the part of a number of the current GOP candidates makes their perception as to the superiority of Mrs. Davis’s stand obvious. Therein lies a blatant inconsistency on the part of most of the GOP presidential candidates: immigrants fleeing political terror in their homeland who violate our laws should be subject to deportation. Mrs. Davis’s defiance of the Supreme Court’s ruling which constitutes the law of the land should be applauded as good old-fashioned patriotism. I say that’s nuts!

History may well compare Mrs. Davis’s act to that of John Scopes who agreed in 1924 to participate in a test case brought by the American Civil Liberties Union challenging Tennessee’s Butler Act which made it a misdemeanor to teach evolution in the state’s public schools.  Unlike Kim Davis, Scopes appears to have had no deep convictions on the morality or immorality of the teaching of evolution.  Thus Scopes (unlike Mrs. Davis) fails the first of the three above assertions.  However, his act was neither a threat nor was it contemptuous of the rights of others.  History records an irony here.  The only politician prominent in the case against Scopes was a lawyer for the prosecution, the three-time Democratic presidential nominee William Jennings Bryan.

I’ve never met anyone who regarded John Scopes as a hero. As for Mrs. Davis, whether a heroine or a hollerer, you can be sure of one thing:

To paraphrase the late great Lloyd Bentsen in his 1988 Vice Presidential debate with his Senate colleague Dan Quayle — “Kim Davis never knew John Scopes.  Kim Davis was never a friend of John Scopes.  And Kim Davis is no John Scopes!”

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY

THE PRESIDENTS WE ELECT

By Edwin Cooney

A couple of weeks ago, I wrote a commentary on why we have elected some of our most effective presidents.  This week, I propose to focus on the brands of presidents we’ve elected.  The question is: does Donald J. Trump fit in?

Under the United States Constitution, the President is the head of the Executive Branch of the government as well as Commander-In-Chief of our armed forces.  The establishment of the presidency, its offices and its prerogatives, was the primary business of every president between George Washington and Theodore Roosevelt from 1789 through 1901.  To that end, we elected two types -- or brands -- of presidents. The general or war hero presidents I call Brand One. The lawyer or legislator presidents were Brand Two.  Washington, Jackson, William Henry Harrison, Taylor, Grant, Hayes, Garfield, Benjamin Harrison and even William McKinley were regarded as war heroes.  The two Adams, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Van Buren, Pierce, Buchanan and Lincoln were lawyer/legislator presidents.  These two traditional “presidential types” were generally administrative with the general mission to expand our national domain and maintain our national safety, stability, and prosperity.

Suddenly, there came a bolt out of the blue: Theodore Roosevelt.  Like four previous vice presidents, John Tyler of Virginia, Millard Fillmore of New York, Andrew Johnson of Tennessee, and Chester A. Arthur of New York, Roosevelt merely succeeded to the presidency.  In the nomenclature of the day, he was our fifth accidental president or “…another version of his accidency!”

It was September 1902 when the Anthracite coal miners union went out on strike.  They threatened that if their demands consisting of a wage increase and national recognition of their union weren’t met, millions of people, especially in the northeast, would feel the chill of Jack Frost right around Election Day of 1902.  Republicans who were adamantly anti-union needed to be re-elected. Teddy Roosevelt needed them to be re-elected in order to be electable in his own right as president in 1904.  His four previous “accidental” predecessors had failed to be elected in their own right.  TR would change all that by involving the traditional prestige of his presidential office in an issue that had social, economic, and political repercussions.  Having suffered a severe leg injury in a recent carriage accident that had resulted in one death, TR dramatically appeared in a wheelchair to publicly recognize the legitimacy of the strike.  The office of the president would no longer be a mere administrative office from that time on.  Thereafter, in one way or another, the President of the United States of America had to be a problem solver.  The immediate strike emergency would go to arbitration during which the anthracite coal miners would return to work.  Even if the legitimacy of the union movement was three decades away, the nation had a new phenomenon — expected presidential activism.

In the wake of the unpredictable Teddy Roosevelt, we elected an attorney without legislative experience named William Howard Taft, and a college professor (Woodrow Wilson). We also elected Warren Harding (a newspaper man), Calvin Coolidge (a lawyer and a governor), Herbert Hoover (a mining engineer and philanthropic businessman), Franklin Roosevelt (an aristocratic political experimentalist), and Harry Truman, the first president since Andrew Johnson to lack a college education. Then we elected still another war hero and general we simply called Ike.  Ike’s successors, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, Reagan, G. H. W. Bush, Clinton, G. W. Bush, and Obama attained the presidency by the inspirational light of one or more predecessors.

As I see it, what makes the Trump candidacy unique and ensures its potential demise is its apparent total lack of connection with or even respect for the experiences and forces that compelled the sum and substance of both our past and present.  So far, Mr. Trump appears to believe that he can solve all problems by merely ordering them to be solved.  His candidacy, so far at least, glorifies fear, nurtures frustration, and feeds political activism with little more than suspicion.  The energy of his candidacy is indignation.  Still, that may indeed be enough to secure the nomination of the 21st Century Republican Party which has been venting its spleen since the night Barack Obama became president-elect and addressed that jubilant celebration in Chicago’s Lincoln Park. I’m convinced that Mr. Trump will have to rise above his own sense of self and his own reckless willfulness in order to actually achieve the presidency.

As of this writing, most people agree that Hillary Rodham Clinton has had a terrible summer.  If Mr. Trump doesn’t change course in some spectacular way, come Tuesday, November 8th, 2016, he’s going to make Hillary’s day.

RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,

EDWIN COONEY