The definitive biography of Yogi Berra, the New York Yankees icon, winner of 13 World Series championships, and the most-quoted player in baseball history



He is at once one of America's best-loved-and least known-heroes. The Yankees' Everyman to Joe DiMaggio's Royalty, Lawrence "Yogi" Berra is famous for winning titles, his leadership, and the superlative play that secured his spot in the Hall of Fame. And his paradoxical quotes are nothing less than national touchstones. He is the quintessential American success story: a first-generation immigrant from a poor but determined family who went on to become one of the greatest players in baseball history.



But Yogi was never supposed to be a major league player. That's what his immigrant father told him. That's what Branch Rickey told him, too-right to Berra's face, in fact. Even the lowly St. Louis Browns of his youth said he'd never make it in the big leagues.



Yet baseball was his lifeblood. It was the only thing he was ever good at. Heck, it was the only thing he ever thought about. Berra couldn't allow a constant stream of ridicule about his appearance, taunts about his speech, and scorn about his perceived lack of intelligence to prevent him from becoming one of the best to ever play the game-at a position requiring the very skills he was told he did not have.



These are but a few of the rich ironies of a life well lived, as author Jon Pessah reveals in this meticulously reported and superbly written biography. Drawing on more than one hundred interviews and four years of reporting, Pessah delivers a transformational portrait of how Berra handled his hard-earned success-on and off the playing field-as well as his failures; how the man who insisted he didn't say half the things he said nonetheless shaped decades of America's culture; and how Berra's humility and grace redefined what it truly means to be a star.



Overshadowed on the field by Joe DiMaggio early in his career and later by a youthful Mickey Mantle, Berra emerges as not only the best-loved Yankee but one of the most appealingly simple, innately complex, and universally admired men in all of America.