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BOB HOPE CLASSIC

January 19, 2010

Yogi Berra

LA QUINTA, CALIFORNIA

DAVE SENKO: We'd like to welcome Yogi Berra to the interview room and kick off our interviews today. Yogi Berra is the Classic Ambassador. Yogi, maybe just get us started. Talk about how long you've been involved with this tournament, you've been coming here now for, is it 15 years? Talk about how that came about.
YOGI BERRA: This is the 16th year. And I enjoyed every minute of it and I was happy to be invited the first time and it's a good rotation that they have here.
Well it's 16 years ago, I guess I started coming here and I enjoyed every minute of it. I played in Ford's golf tournament and then I came over here and I enjoy golf. I have a lot of fun. I'm a lousy golfer, but I have fun.

Q. Baseball question, you've obviously been asked many times with McGwire, who is -- you're a St. Louis guy originally, McGwire coming out a few days ago and talking about his steroids. What's your reaction and do you think other people are going to come out; and what about the steroids guys and the Hall of Fame, should they be in, should they not be in?
YOGI BERRA: I don't have anything to do with that. But I think he waited a little too long to announce it. If he done it at the beginning he might have a chance to get in. Say like Pettitte did, he admitted it. If you admit it, it would be all right. Like Giambi, the same way. He did the same thing. You admit it right away.
I think it's going to be pretty rough for him to get in the Hall of Fame, I really do. Just like Pete Rose, you know, he's got tough sledding.

Q. How do you look at the whole era? I mean this whole group of guys from the '90s, late '90s to early 2000s, some of them were involved, how are you going to separate them?
YOGI BERRA: That I don't know. That's going to be up to the President of the league, I guess. I don't even know what steroids look like to tell you the truth, I never took them, I know that.
But they claim to make you bigger and everything, but we had some very big guys when we played. A lot of guys. DiMaggio wasn't small, Mickey Mantle wasn't small. Hank Bauer. Johnny Lindell, Ollie Reynolds, them guys were big. And they went right through it. So I don't know what will happen, I don't know, to tell you the truth.

Q. Could you tell us, I know you were at the funds distribution on Monday, what else have you been doing this week as part of your ambassador duties?
YOGI BERRA: Well, I've been going to a lot of dinners, I know that.
I enjoy it. It's fun. I don't have to do much. I enjoy doing this. If I have to make a speech, I'm terrible. But I like to answer questions. We have had a lot of fun.

Q. I notice that the funds distribution on Monday, it seemed like a lot of people wanted to come up and just shake your hand or have a picture taken with you. Something like that. How does that make you feel all these years after your playing or your managing career?
YOGI BERRA: Well, it makes me feel pretty good. It does. I'm pretty good at that. I never seen so many pictures being taken, I know that. But I get a lot of kick out of sometimes the airport, a guy comes up to me, says, "Boy, you just look like Yogi Berra", and I say, "Yeah, a lot of people tell me that."
(Laughter.)
But I have fun. I really do. And I enjoy it. We got a lot of Yankee fans, boy, I tell you. We got them from all over.

Q. How do you think this current Yankee team stacks up against some of the teams like the 1960-61 teams that you played on?
YOGI BERRA: Well, we had some pretty good teams when we played. We won five in a row there and I played, I played 17 years, and I was in 14 of them. So we must have had pretty good teams.
We had good pitching staffs and we had -- I can't run them down now, I forget them all, but we had good ones. But you love when guys can play different positions. And we had three catchers. We all played the outfield and we all caught. He played three catchers in one game last year. He liked that. Gil McDougall, he made the all-star team in three positions, second, short, and third. And he could play all three of them. Kubek could play outfield and infield. And it's good.
If you get a guy that can play a couple positions, it helps you out a real lot. And I played right field and left field. And when I first came up I was an outfielder and catcher, but I was a lousy catcher. Until Bill Dickey came over in '49 and he taught me -- I owe a lot to him -- he worked my butt off. And I enjoyed it.

Q. I read in your autobiography, your original one, that something about the Normandy invasion and you were recollecting being in that. What was that like?
YOGI BERRA: It was like Fourth of July. No kidding. I was only 18 years old. And the invasion was going and there was only five men and an officer on the boat. And we went in first. We had twin 50s and three 30s and 24 rockets, 12 on each side. We went in ahead, we went the, we went in ahead and fired the rockets and then the army came in the invasion and they came in. And if they ran into anything, we fired a rocket. We could fire a rocket, I could fire one of them on each side, I could fire two, I could fire all 24 of them if I wanted to. And we had a twin 50 and three 30s.
And then -- so I don't know many of our guys are still alive. I know that Ensign Holmes, from Texas, he's still alive. He was our officer.
We were our own bosses. We worked off -- I was in the Navy, but we worked off the Coast Guard ship Bigfield. BR 33. And we worked off of that. And we were our own bosses. When the invasion was over they dropped us off in Africa and then we made the southern France invasion.
And it was good. Like when I went over, I know my officer told me, you better get your head down here. I was looking up and it looked like Fourth of July. I thought nothing could happen to me.

Q. DiMaggio said, for all his baseball, a lot of people after baseball recognize him because of those Mr. Coffee commercials. I just wonder, the Aflac stuff that you've done, the barber chair, do people know you because of that even more than baseball?
YOGI BERRA: Oh, maybe. They certainly like to -- I had fun doing that. That's a live duck that was in front of me too. They train them. I'm not kidding you now. He stops. They ring the bell and he stops. They train him for six months. And they had a couple of them, if you don't do it right, they would bring the other duck in.
(Laughter.)

Q. Could you talk about Mr. Hope. How well you knew him.
YOGI BERRA: Oh, a good man, boy. He's the one that gave me the plane, when Mickey Mantle passed away, he let us use his plane to go fly back to the funeral. He let me take my wife too. He was a good man. His wife is great. They're good people. Delores, the family, they're all good. And I had fun with them, with coming out here. I have a lot of fun. I've been at his home, I've been in his home and everything. It was great.
And what he does for charities, it's amazing how much money they gave out there yesterday, that's pretty darn good.

Q. How did you meet Mr. Hope? What's your connection and how did you guys first get together?
YOGI BERRA: He was part owner of Cleveland. That's where I first met him. I met him in elevator. And I said, gee, I'm in an elevator with Bob Hope. I remember that. And that's when I got to meet him a little bit. He owned part of the -- he had a piece of it, anyhow, of the Cleveland Indians.

Q. Do you think Mr. Hope might have been saying, geez, I'm in an elevator with Yogi Berra?
YOGI BERRA: I don't know about that.
(Laughter.)
DAVE SENKO: Well thank you, Yogi.
YOGI BERRA: Thank you very much.

End of FastScripts

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