‘It Ain’t Over’ Documents Yogi Berra’s Amazing American Life

Opening in theaters Friday — the date of Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra’s birth in 1925 — “It Ain’t Over” shares the life of a baseball legend and D-Day veteran, separating the man from the caricatures to inspire audiences today.“It Ain’t Over,” by Sony Pictures Classics, begins with cheers, but they’re not for Berra. They’re for the men that fans voted the greatest living players at Major League Baseball’s 2015 All-Star Game: Hank Aaron, Johnny Bench, Sandy Koufax, and Willie Mays.The quartet combined for eight World Series rings, but Berra, who passed away two months later, had ten as a player and another three as a coach. “It Ain’t Over” features dozens of witnesses testifying to his talent and character from Billy Crystal to Vin Scully to Derek Jeter. All make the case — showcased at the Yogi Berra Museum and Learning Center at Little Falls, New Jersey — for remembering Berra for his performance on the field, not for his commercials or quotable quips that were often dismissed as gibberish by those unable to divine their wisdom. “His unbelievable personality and the Yogi-isms,” Berra’s granddaughter, Lindsay Berra, told me in our History Author Show interview, “kind of overshadowed what he did on the field.” The film offers the stats to back her up, but also footage of Berra’s athleticism that will be new to many.“So many people don’t even put grandpa on the Yankees’ Mount Rushmore,” Ms. Berra said, “but there’s only two people in the history of all of Major League Baseball with more than 350 home runs and fewer than 500 strikeouts: Grandpa and Joe DiMaggio.” Berra’s legacy suffers not just from his humble demeanor but from his appearance. “It Ain’t Over” cites examples of casual cruelty, where sportswriters felt free to call No. 8 everything from gargoyle to Neanderthal.Life magazine, Ms. Berra said, reading from the New York Times, “referred to him as ‘knock-kneed’ and ‘barrel-shaped,’ and likened his running style to that of ‘a fat girl in a tight skirt,’” all in a single sentence.Well, as Yogi supposedly once said, “If the world was perfect, it wouldn’t be.”“It Ain’t Over” benefits from a subject that always had a witty, insightful retort ready. “All you have to do is hit the ball,” he said of comments about his looks, “and I never saw anybody hit one with his face.”If there’s anything like a villain of the piece, it’s Yogi Bear. Jackie Gleason could ignore obvious similarities between Hanna-Barbera’s “The Flintstones” and his TV show, “The Honeymooners,” but Berra felt the animators turned his good name — or nickname — into a farce.Berra’s lawsuit for defamation went nowhere, leaving the line between the real man and bumbling bear to blur until, upon his passing, the Associated Press reported “Yogi Bear Has Died,” erasing the child of Italian immigrants in St. Louis who made good and did his bit against fascism.“It Ain’t Over” helps restore Berra to his status as a three-dimensional hero, one awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom after his death. “He was a giant,” Mr. Crystal said of Berra, “the most overlooked superstar in the history of baseball.”“People keep saying,” Ms. Berra told me, “‘Oh, do you really think he was overlooked?’ Well, Yadier Molina got his thousandth RBI in the middle of May — and grandpa loved Yadi, so this is no knock on Yadi.”However, when she clicked the headline, “Molina Joins Elite Company,” it featured a composite photo of Mr. Molina, Ivan “Pudge” Rodriguez, and Johnny Bench. They “all have a thousand RBIs,” Ms. Berra said, “but grandpa has 1,430.”In addition to being a baseball story, “It Ain’t Over” is a love story, the one between Berra and his wife, Carmen. At the premiere in Tribeca, Ms. Berra recounts that a man approached their director, Sean Mullen, “and told him that the movie had inspired him to be nicer to his wife.”The film opens across the New York tri-state area on May 12 before going on the road to bring Berra’s smile nationwide. “Honestly,” Ms. Berra said, “if ‘It Ain’t Over’ just inspires you to look at your life and do one thing a little bit better, that’s grandpa’s legacy — and that’s tremendous.”

‘It Ain’t Over’ Documents Yogi Berra’s Amazing American Life

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