My Dad, Yogi: A Memoir of Family and Baseball by Dale Berra with Mark Ribowsky (review)

Dale Berra's book accomplishes its stated goal quite well. He wanted to tell the story of his dad, and himself, as a "catharsis" (ix). Dale feels that this came with the realization that although he could have been Yogi's legatee in baseball, he found his real success "in being his legatee in life" (xiv). He wanted to write a book about life, not just a book about himself and his dad. The author describes his father as a family man, from an insider's point of view. He writes a "letter to him from my heart" (x). This book definitely rounds out the story of Yogi Berra as a human being and a ballplayer.

The author's story telling is enhanced throughout the book by quoted statements from his two brothers and his eldest daughter. These additional remarks directly address the author's points in his story and give an increased depth to the view of the dynamics between Dale Berra, his family, and his ball playing career.

The stories of Dale's youth, growing up with the family, and growing up as a player's kid are cleanly written and move along at a good pace. The chronicles about Dale's playing career occasionally bog down into what happened next. However, Yogi's career is also told as a parallel in time. The chronology moves along with Dale's baseball career and his father's baseball career. After reading a number of Yogi books over the years, I was interested in learning new information about an admirable and exceptional ballplayer.

This book offers the best explanation ever about Yogi's spoken Yogi-isms. Dale spends two to three pages describing the way his father said thing: "He (Yogi) just knew that whatever he said, he was a basic guy telling a basic truth from his, shall we say, unique perspective" (18). This wasn't a device or a planned effort, but it was just the way he saw the world.

A significant part of the story about Yogi's career is the telling of his reconciliation with George Steinbrenner and Yogi's return to Yankee Stadium. The point of the story is that Yogi made clear he had been disrespected and George understood that this disrespect was much more than a poorly handled decision.

The stories of Dale's descent into cocaine use and his self-delusions of doing cocaine "the right way" are not the center of this memoir. The memoir aspect of the book is most emphatic about the importance of family, family trust, and family acceptance. This is the key issue for Dale to be able to become his father's legatee. The family intervention to address Dale's substance was summarized by Yogi as "I want to be your dad, but if you keep on doing this, you're not a Berra anymore. That's it" (187). Yogi continued, "There's a lot of benefit to being a Berra … but you won't have any of it if you do drugs again. You'll no longer be a Berra. You'll have no brothers and no mom and dad. We won't be in your life" (187–88). This was the blow that Dale needed to hear to change his behavior and his future. The importance of his family, and possibly being excluded from that family, was the life-changing event for Dale that finally exposed his delusion of managing his substance abuse.

The concluding part of the story is about the final years of Yogi's life. Dale tells of his and his brothers' formation of the LTD (Larry, Terri, and Dale) Foundation that managed Yogi's memorabilia and legacy. He writes very lovingly about his mother's and father's final years and the tributes for Yogi. This book is an important addition to the many books written about Yogi Berra. It does a...