Yogi wasn’t near as dumb as folks thought

Yogi Berra’s wife once asked him where he wanted to be buried. “I don’t know,” he reportedly said. “Why don’t you surprise me?” I guess he finally found out last week, but in the process the world became a much less jolly place.

As most everyone knows, Yogi was master of the malapropism. Such as, “If people don’t want to go to the ballpark, how you gonna stop them?” And, “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

I once had the delight of meeting Yogi. Back many centuries ago, Kerry Yencer was sports editor for the Rome News-Tribune. He and I became good friends after we discovered that we constituted 66 percent of the Chicago Cub fans in Rome — Jack Summerbell making up the other third. I was delighted when Kerry one day offered to take me with him as his “assistant” to report on an Atlanta Braves game. Following the game we were allowed into the Houston Astros locker room to interview Yogi, then an Astros coach.

“You recently made one of the wisest and most profound statements I’ve ever heard,” I couldn’t resist saying to Yogi when I met him.

“What was that?” he said quizzically, obviously not often accused of being wise. “When you said ‘I didn’t say all those things I said.’” He just grinned in response. My contention is that the statement shows that, rather than being a foolish bumpkin, he was really a genius. First, it explained that many of the malapropisms did not come from his lips. Second, he was smart enough to say it in the humorous fashion for which he had become known. And most of the malapropisms, in addition to being funny, also made a wise observation.

“Nobody goes to that restaurant anymore. It’s too crowded.” Don’t you also keep away from crowded restaurants?

“It isn’t over until it’s over.” A good way to emphasize you should never give up.

“It’s deja vu all over again.” What better way of emphasizing the point? (Which reminds me of a new word I heard that I shall generously share with you. Deja moo: The feeling you’ve heard this b.s. someplace before.)

Since the biggest salary Yogi ever got was $65,000, he may have wisely learned to exploit this ability from Dizzy Dean, a pitcher for the Cardinals back in the 1940s. Like Yogi, Dean had little formal education, great athletic skill and a big mouth that brought him fame.

So much fame that, after his career was over, Dean was hired to be the “color man” for the baseball TV network. His lack of grammatical skills did not inhibit him. His descriptions of the action included “He slud into second base,” and “The runners returned to their respectable bases.”

Plus a generous use of the word ain’t. So much so that many viewers wrote in to ask that he be fired because he set a bad example for youth watching the games. Diz replied to them during one of his broadcasts. “You know,” he said, “there’s whole lots of folks who ain’t never said ain’t who ain’t makin’ near as much money as I am.”

And if you still don’t believe that many of Yogi’s remarks made logical sense, I leave you with these words I once heard from Paul Harvey: “This is not a logical world we live in. If it were, it would be the men who ride sidesaddle rather than women.”