It Ain’t Over: Yogi Berra, The Underestimated All-Star
By Liam Lacey
Rating: A-
A warm-hearted look back at one of professional sport’s most colourful folk heroes, the late Yogi Berra, the documentary, It Ain’ Over, is also a film with a score to settle.
Written and directed by Sean Mullin and executive produced and narrated by Berra’s granddaughter, Lindsay Berra, the film makes a surprising case.
It posits that Berra, a beloved player who was picked three-times as the league’s most valuable player, was 18 times voted as an All Star, and helped win 10 World Series, was also, somehow, underrated.
The trouble is, apart from the inside baseball stuff, Berra’s legacy is entwined with that of a doltish cartoon bear named after him, and his legacy of his quasi-insightful malapropisms, known as “Yogisms.”
What is a Yogiism? As Yogi might say, you know them even if you don’t know them: “It’s deja-vu all over again,” “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded,” “If you come to a fork in the road, take it,” and “You can observe a lot just by watching.”
Berra also coined a version of the quote which gives the film its title, and was, later used by the Lenny Kravitz 1991 hit that plays during the closing credits.
Some of these quotes are misattributions (or as Berra explained: “I really didn’t say everything I said.”). But Berra’s phrases, which went viral before social media, soon became a routine way of prominent people, from George Bush Jr. to Norman Schwarzkopf, to Robert Maxwell, to evoke supposed common man wisdom.
This campaign to rescue Yogi’s reputation from the limbo of BrainyQuote.com and YouTube cartoon reruns began, as his granddaughter recalls, eight years ago when she and Yogi were watching the 2015 All Star game.
As part of a promotional campaign, the game honoured the four “greatest living players,” as voted by fans, a list that included Hank Aaron, Johnny Bench, Sandy Koufax and Willie Mays. Lindsay felt it was an injustice to Yogi, and she presents her case, with the support of reams of statistics and an imposing line-up of baseball cognoscenti (Vin Scully, Bob Costas, Derek Jeter, Don Mattingly, Roger Angell, all three of Yogi’s sons and comedian Billy Crystal).
They argue that Berra was one of the greatest catchers, consistent hitters, and strategists in baseball history, and the heart of the 1950s Yankees. As Joe Torre, former manager and player, says: “He wasn’t overlooked by those who knew what they were looking at in baseball.”
Lawrence Peter Berra, born in 1925 to working-class Italian immigrants in St. Louis. He was nicknamed Yogi as a teen-ager, because of the way he sat cross-legged on the grass while waiting his turn at the plate.
After serving in the navy during the D-Day invasion, he entered Major League Baseball at 20. Short and stocky, with a round head and a wide, guileless grin, he didn’t look like a pro athlete and journalists were routinely insulting about his appearance and lack of education. In the late 1950s, he tried, unsuccessfully, to sue the Hanna-Barbera animation studio for stealing his name for their cartoon bear. But the judge ruled Yogi wasn’t his legal name. The AP Wire made a serious boo boo in September, 2015 when they announced that “New York Yankee Hall of Fame catcher, Yogi Bear has died.”
Berra also exploited his language-mangling clown image as a pitchman for beer, cigarettes, cat food, chocolate milk and insurance. The film includes an interview with copywriter, Carol Holland Lifshitz, who says she can’t always remember which Yogisms were hers and which were originals.
The film is at its most delightful in the contextualized archival footage, when it demonstrates how Berra’s work ethic, talent and emotional authenticity made him a player with whom regular folk could identify. These include enduring sports’ images, like his hopping outrage as the umpire ruled that Jackie Robinson stole home against him in the 1955 World Series.
Then there was his huge joy when he caught pitcher Don Larsen’s perfect game in the 1956 World Series and leapt into the pitcher’s arms.
Although It Ain’t Over isn’t outright hagiographic, it does get fairly syrupy with segments on Berra’s war record, and his 65-year marriage to his wife, Carmen (with Lindsay reading aloud love letters he wrote while on the road).
Not just a war hero and devoted family man, he was socially progressive, welcoming Jackie Robinson, the first African-American player to break the colour barrier, into Major League Baseball. After his retirement, he was an ambassador for an LGBTQ rights group.
Even at a fast-paced 98 minutes, It Ain’t Over feels padded. There’s an indulgent account of how Lindsay used Twitter to get celebrities to promote a petition to help get her grandfather a posthumous Presidential Freedom of Honor medal, and needless observation about his language from an English professor.
There are cutesy inter-titles, which match Yogi-isms with quotations from historical figures such as Churchill, Confucius, Einstein and Plato. The latter is falsely credited with saying “You can learn more about a person in an hour of play than talking to a person for a year,” which doesn’t sound remotely Platonic.
As Yogi once said in a different context, “If you can’t imitate him, don’t copy him.”
It Ain’t Over. Directed by Sean Mullin. At the Hot Docs Cinema from May 26-June 6. Opening across Canada in the coming weeks.