I Think It's Over

The man who had Deep Thoughts long before Jack Handy, former New York Yankees catcher Yogi Berra, passed away Tuesday at 90.

Berra was in 21 different World Series as a player, coach or manager, and won 13 of them. He's the only person to bring an American and a National League team to the World Series, went into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972 and has the reputation of being one of the top catchers in baseball history. His was the glove into which Don Larsen pitched the only perfect World Series game ever, back in 1956.

He's best known as the fellow who never said all the things he said, producing such long-lasting head-scratcher quotes as "When you come to a fork in the road, take it," "It's deja vu all over again," "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded" and the one from which the post title is taken, "It ain't over till it's over."

Berra is one of the last of the mid-century Yankees Empire of Dominance and is an excellent representation of how, while any good and right-thinking baseball fan of course hates the Yankees, there were a lot of Yankees it was easy to like back then. Here's hoping his strategy worked and there will be a lot of people ready to pay their respects to Lawrence Peter Berra in the next few days.