Talking About Yogi Berra: NYC, July 1

5/30/2017

Yogi Berra, left. Lindsay Berra, right. (But you knew that) Thank you, NY Daily News

I’m proud to be on the program for the national convention of SABR, the invaluable baseball research group, on June 28-July 2, in New York City.

I’ll be on a panel about Yogi Berra – aptly titled “It Aint Over” -- with Dave Kaplan, Harvey Araton and Lindsay Berra, the oldest grand-daughter of Yogi and Carmen.

This means I can sit back and listen to Lindsay, a compelling presence who tells lovely stories about Yogi.

Kaplan, who founded the valuable Yogi Berra Museum in Montclair, N.J., and my pal Harvey, still writing great stuff in the Times in "retirement,” also knew Yogi well.

I'm sure I can talk a bit about being a young reporter and asking a question of Yogi. Every so often my friend Big Al sends me an email, out of nowhere:

"Tell me, was Yoggalah some kind of clutch hitter?"

Just to rub it in to an aging Brooklyn fan.

Our time is 9:15 AM Saturday, July 1, at the Grand Hyatt Hotel at Grand Central Station.

SABR is an international treasure of well-researched articles about famous and obscure baseball people and is now a go-to source for analytics.

The program includes needs-no-introduction stars like: Jean Afterman, Claire Smith, Jim Bouton, Marty Appel, William Rhoden and John Thorn.

For information on schedule and rates, please see:

http://sabr.org/convention

For full program, please see:

https://sabr.org/convention/sabr47-speakers

Carmen and Yogi. They met when she was a waitress at Stan Musial's restaurant in St. Louis. But what was Yogi wearing that one might not wear to a restaurant? It's in my Musial biography, and I will be glad to tell the story if somebody asks at the panel.

Altenir Silva

5/31/2017 10:07:38 pm

Dear George,
I think you will be great on this panel. Hope that somebody asks about the story from your book of Musial. Have a nice convention.
Best. Altenir (from Brazil)

George

5/31/2017 11:55:19 pm

Altenir: too bad you and family and Yankee cap were just in NYC visiting Foley's. I will give you a report. G

Altenir Silva

6/1/2017 06:58:07 am

Dear George,
Thank you very much. It'll be great. I just read the book "Driving Mr. Yogi" about Ron Guidry when he was driving Mr. Berra in Florida. I liked it very much. Mr. Berra seemed to me a nice guy.
Best - Altenir

George Vecsey

6/1/2017 09:15:02 am

Altenir: you are a true fan. That book was written by Harvey Araton, who will be on the panel. He lives in the same town (Montclair, NJ) of Berra and the museum and has a great insight into all things Yogi. I never knew about the Guidry-Berra friendship, and loved reading about them. I would hope people who attend the panel on July 1 will ask Harvey about it. GV

Mendel

6/1/2017 02:54:36 pm

Saturday? What would Sandy say?

George

6/1/2017 10:40:54 pm

Sandy? Sandy who?

Mendel

6/2/2017 01:55:09 am

Sandy Koufax: Sabbath observer

George Vecsey

6/2/2017 08:59:49 am

Mendel, exactly. I was covering WS in 1965 when he observed. From all I know, he is an exemplary person. My friend Bob Welch considered him an older brother. When Bob got out of off-season rehab early 1980, first person he told was Koufax while they were running laps in Dodger camp. Koufax told him he should address the team in clubhouse, so there were no secrets, and Bob did it., Great advice from a good friend. GV

Alan Rubin link

6/1/2017 04:50:03 pm

George, you have all the fun.

Yogi was my favorite all-time Yankee with Rizzuto next.

"Driving Yogi" is a great book that tells much about both Yogi and Ron.

Yogi was tough to pitch to since he was a notorious bad ball hitter. I used him as an example whenever my high school baseball coach gave me a hard time.

Enjoy the day.

George Vecsey

6/2/2017 09:04:37 am

Yogi and Clemente.
The opposite was Ted Williams, who wasn't going to let some wild pitcher throw off his feel for the strike zone.
All great.
GV

Comments are closed.

QUOTES

Measuring Covid Deaths, by David Leonhardt. July 17, 2023. NYT online.
The United States has reached a milestone in the long struggle against Covid: The total number of Americans dying each day — from any cause — is no longer historically abnormal….

After three horrific years, in which Covid has killed more than one million Americans and transformed parts of daily life, the virus has turned into an ordinary illness.

The progress stems mostly from three factors:
First, about three-quarters of U.S. adults have received at least one vaccine shot.
Second, more than three-quarters of Americans have been infected with Covid, providing natural immunity from future symptoms. (About 97 percent of adults fall into at least one of those first two categories.)
Third, post-infection treatments like Paxlovid, which can reduce the severity of symptoms, became widely available last year.
“Nearly every death is preventable,” Dr. Ashish Jha, who was until recently President Biden’s top Covid adviser, told me. “We are at a point where almost everybody who’s up to date on their vaccines and gets treated if they have Covid, they rarely end up in the hospital, they almost never die.”

That is also true for most high-risk people, Jha pointed out, including older adults — like his parents, who are in their 80s — and people whose immune systems are compromised. “Even for most — not all but most —immuno-compromised people, vaccines are actually still quite effective at preventing against serious illness,” he said. “There has been a lot of bad information out there that somehow if you’re immuno-compromised that vaccines don’t work.”

That excess deaths have fallen close to zero helps make this point: If Covid were still a dire threat to large numbers of people, that would show up in the data.

One point of confusion, I think, has been the way that many Americans — including we in the media — have talked about the immuno-compromised. They are a more diverse group than casual discussion often imagines.

Most immuno-compromised people are at little additional risk from Covid — even people with serious conditions, such as multiple sclerosis or a history of many cancers. A much smaller group, such as people who have received kidney transplants or are undergoing active chemotherapy, face higher risks.

Covid’s toll, to be clear, has not fallen to zero. The C.D.C.’s main Covid webpage estimates that about 80 people per day have been dying from the virus in recent weeks, which is equal to about 1 percent of overall daily deaths.

The official number is probably an exaggeration because it includes some people who had virus when they died even though it was not the underlying cause of death. Other C.D.C. data suggests that almost one-third of official recent Covid deaths have fallen into this category. A study published in the journal Clinical Infectious Diseases came to similar conclusions.

Dr. Shira Doron, the chief infection control officer at Tufts Medicine in Massachusetts, told me that “age is clearly the most substantial risk factor.” Covid’s victims are both older and disproportionately unvaccinated. Given the politics of vaccination, the recent victims are also disproportionately
Republican and white.

Each of these deaths is a tragedy. The deaths that were preventable — because somebody had not received available vaccines and treatments — seem particularly tragic. (Here’s a Times guide to help you think about when to get your next booster shot.)
***

From the great Maureen Dowd:

As I write this, I’m in a deserted newsroom in The Times’s D.C. office. After working at home for two years during Covid, I was elated to get back, so I could wander around and pick up the latest scoop.
But in the last year, there has been only a smattering of people whenever I’m here, with row upon row of empty desks. Sometimes a larger group gets lured in for a meeting with a platter of bagels."

--- Dowd writes about the lost world of journalists clustered in newsrooms at all hours, smoking, drinking, gossipping, making phone calls, typing, editing.
***
"Putting out the paper," we called it.
Much more than nostalgia.
---https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/29/opinion/journalism-newsroom.html

Talking About Yogi Berra: NYC, July 1

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