quotable Yogi Berra

Yogi Berra, the great New York Yankees catcher, has died at the age of 90. What will live on, will be many clever sayings attributed to him over the years.  As the New York Times obit reports:

“You can observe a lot just by watching,” he is reputed to have declared once, describing his strategy as a manager.

“If you can’t imitate him,” he advised a young player who was mimicking the batting stance of the great slugger Frank Robinson, “don’t copy him.”

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it,” he said, giving directions to his house. Either path, it turned out, got you there.

“Nobody goes there anymore,” he said of a popular restaurant. “It’s too crowded.”

Whether Berra actually uttered the many things attributed to him, or was the first to say them, or phrased them precisely the way they were reported, has long been a matter of speculation. Berra himself published a book in 1998 called “The Yogi Book: I Really Didn’t Say Everything I Said!” But the Yogi-isms testified to a character — goofy and philosophical, flighty and down to earth — that came to define the man.

I would rank Berra along with Mark Twain and Winston Churchill as the authors of the most quoted aphorisms, whether or not they actually said them. Not a bad legacy.