Dr. Yogi Offers Shrewd Advice Berra Takes New Fork In Road With An Honorary Doctorate

Yogi Berra looked good on Thursday in the black cap and gown, better than you would expect. He didn’t trip on the robe, or any words. The malapropisms in his speech, the Yogi-isms, were deliberate.

The notion of Yogi getting an honorary doctorate from Montclair State sounded funnier than the reality, because there was enough dignity in the man to carry off the garb, and the title.

“I don’t know yet whether people should call me ‘Dr. Yogi’ or ‘Dr. Lawrence,”’ Berra said after graduation ceremonies at Meadowlands (N.J.) Arena. “I’m going to phone (former American League president) Bobby Brown and tell him I’m a doctor, too.”

Dr. Yogi.

Let George Steinbrenner chew on that for a while.

“All the money Steinbrenner’s donated, he’s probably a doctor, too,” Berra moaned.

Berra, 71, never came closer than about 11 years of homework and final exams to this sort of scholastic honor in his former life. He is an unschooled, decent man defined by the toughest of beginnings.

He grew up on Elizabeth Street in St. Louis, in the neighborhood known as the Hill. He made it through grade school, and no more. There wasn’t time.

“My parents were from the old country,” Berra said. “They didn’t know about baseball or college. I had to go to work. I got a permit when I was 15 to work in a shoe factory.”

He fought in World War II. Then came baseball and the Yankees, for 19 years, 14 World Series, 10 titles and three MVP seasons. Berra never went back to classes. He didn’t need a high school degree to play catcher.

“I liked arithmetic best,” he said. “Figuring things out. I tried to use it managing.”

On Thursday, Berra was on the lectern, reading homemade text to the graduating class from his adopted hometown in North Jersey. He was a big hit, along with another honorary doctoral candidate, Bruce Willis, a Montclair State dropout.

The MSU president, Irvin Reid, gave him the degree of doctor of humane letters, commending Berra for his “ability to combine words with a common-sense philosophy that is easily understood despite its creative expressions.”

Berra insisted again he never knew he was being funny when he was being funny. “I really didn’t say anything I said,” he said.

During his speech, he offered five tips to graduating seniors:

“First, never give up, ‘cause it ain’t over till it’s over.

“Second, when you come to that fork in the road, take it.”

“Third, don’t always follow the crowd. Nobody goes there because it’s too crowded.

“Fourth, stay alert. You observe a lot just by watching.

“Fifth, remember that whatever you do in life, 90 percent of it is half mental.”

The words were culled from a lifetime of unintentional and sometimes painful language dismemberment. Berra has learned to allow outsiders to take their liberties with him. It is harmless fun if he can join in. He has a face that makes people smile, and an image that makes them laugh.

After years of self-doubt, he has become a tremendous sport about all of it.

Berra was never the natural cut-up that some people seemed to expect when they met him, pestering him for a one-liner. He is always polite and obliging. But Berra doesn’t enjoy speaking to strangers, and he was actually one of the tougher quotes as a manager.

Many of the quips attributed to him weren’t really his. But there were genuine, inspirational moments, if you happened to be there.

There was the time he greeted the holiest of holy men with a simple, “Hello, Pope.”

There was the time Mary Lindsay, wife of the former New York mayor, wondered aloud at Berra’s ability to stay cool and crisp on a steaming city day.

“You don’t look so hot yourself,” Berra told her.

Back in spring training in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., in 1983, I was lucky enough to hear a Yogi-ism firsthand. Billy Martin was the manager. Berra was a coach, Mickey Mantle an instructor.

After practice one day, the three were talking about what they were going to do that night. They didn’t have many ideas, so Mantle finally said, “There’s a good Steve McQueen movie on television tonight - ‘Bullitt.”’

Berra looked a bit confused at this. “I never heard of it,” he said. “McQueen must have made that one before he died.”

Like the best Berra-isms, this one made sense and nonsense at the same time.

He was at it again Thursday, when he and Willis reminisced about how they once lived next to each other on Highland Avenue in Montclair.

“He was the perfect neighbor,” Berra said. “Never said a word.”

Good line, but not quite a Yogi-ism. Too practiced.

“I wish I could say them when I wanted to, because I’d have made a fortune by now,” he said.

Berra is a mainstay in Montclair, where he reads stories to children at library functions and helps at fund-raisers.

His wife, Carmen, was there on Thursday at the arena. So were Berra’s three sons and several of his seven grandchildren, all of whom will receive better educations than the family patriarch. Lawrence (Larry) Berra Jr. graduated from Montclair State in 1974.

His father, the doctor, is no dummy, either.