The mood this morning is obviously much more somber than you'd expect coming on the heels of the biggest Yankee win of the season. Yogi Berra passed away overnight at the age of 90. I don't sit here with a heavy heart writing about his passing. I never watched him play. But he had been around the Yankees for as long as I can remember and there's every indication that he was just about as good of a guy as there was in the world. They'd roll him out on every Old Timers day and every number retirement ceremony and he'd just stand there in the boiling hot sun not knowing where he was and the fans and the active players would flip. That's when you know you're the man. You also know you're the man when you're leaving George Costanza stuck in the mud with witticisms.
He really led just about as charmed and as full a life as you can possibly live, epitomizing everything that was great about his generation. While ballplayers today are taking themselves out of games to help ensure they can get every last million on their next payday, Yogi spent his off-days as a gunner's mate on the USS Bayfield during the D-Day invasion of Normandy. Not only one of the great baseball players of all time but one of the great Americans of all time. One of the other reasons Yogi always appealed to me was all of the parallels there were between him and Jeter. Both not quite on that Ruth/Gehrig/Dimaggio/Mantle level but just a cut below. Both staples of their respective Yankee dynasties. Both universally revered throughout the baseball community. And it seemed like they always got a kick out of one another whenever Yogi came around the clubhouse.
I know it's probably pretty cavalier to say that Yogi's passing is going to somehow tie into this current Yankee run but I think we can all agree that the ghosts of Yankee Stadium just made a huge September call-up.
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