Taking Yogi Berra to Moneyball

From the Wall Street Journal’s Jason Gay:

Yogi Berra is here to see “Moneyball.”

Berra didn’t earn a ton of money playing baseball. The game was different then. When Yogi was a 17-year-old prospect from St. Louis, he signed with the New York Yankees for $90 a month. When he returned from World War II, his first major league contract paid him $5,000 a year. Berra worked at Sears, Roebuck & Co. in the winter. He never made more than $65,000 in a season. He never had more than a one-year deal.

But no one squeezed more out of baseball—and gave more back —than Yogi. He played 18 seasons with the Yankees, appearing in 14 World Series, winning ten of them. A catcher, he was a 15-time All-Star, a three-time MVP.

“I was very lucky,” Berra says softly. He is 86 years old. On his right hand is a World Series ring from the 1953 Yankees. On his left, his ring from the Hall of Fame.

The theater in Montclair, N.J., grows dark. Yogi sits in the back.

“Moneyball,” starring Brad Pitt, tells the real-life story of Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane, who saw his low-payroll playoff team gutted by free agency and decided to rebuild using innovative statistics to find hidden value in less expensive players. That “Moneyball” philosophy —a descendant of the statistical studies published by author Bill James—kept the A’s contenders and helped revolutionize the sport.

But baseball is still a game that exalts its past. One of the key moments in the film involves a record-breaking 20-game win streak the A’s reel off late in their season. The movie shows grainy footage of the last American League team to have won 19 games:

The 1947 Yankees. Yogi’s first full year in the majors.

“I’d almost forgotten,” Berra says. “You get old, you know? But we did win 19 in a row.” Joe DiMaggio was on that team, which won the World Series over the Brooklyn Dodgers in seven games.

When Yogi started with the Yankees, he lived in the Edison Hotel, where a room cost $6 a night. Later he and Carmen moved to Gerard Avenue in the Bronx. “I used to walk to the Stadium, the barber, the delicatessen,” he says. “The fans, they didn’t ask for autographs. Nobody had cameras. They were just happy to see you.”

Berra laughs during a “Moneyball” scene in which millionaire player David Justice complains about having to buy soda in the Oakland locker room. When Yogi was on the Yankees, the player meal was a coffee and a donut. And between games of a double-header? “A hard-boiled egg.”

Berra says that the only thing about Moneyball that bothered him was Art Howe, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman.  He was a good guy, Berra said, and not that fat.  Read the rest of the piece at the WSJ.