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“Thank you for making this day necessary.” This was how Yogi Berra opened his talk in Palm Desert, California on January 16, 2007. The occasion was a fundraiser for the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center, on the campus of Montclair State University, in New Jersey. In addition to Yogi and his wife, Carmen, the luminaries in attendance included Don Sutton, who is in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and Roger Clemens, who is certain to be inducted into the Hall of Fame as soon as he is eligible.
I was fortunate to have a chance to talk to both Yogi and Carmen, both of whom grew up in St. Louis (he on The Hill, she in the Central West End). I learned that they’ll be coming back here in May, when he will be awarded an honorary degree from St. Louis University. Although we didn’t discuss what he planned to say in his acceptance speech, I’d be willing to bet that he begins with the phrase that he made famous, “Thank you for making this day necessary.”
 I told Yogi that the first time I ever saw him in person was at the old Busch Stadium (formerly known as Sportsman’s Park) in October of 1964, when the Cardinals played the Yankees in the World Series. I was in the stands while Yogi, the manager of the Yankees, was in the visiting team’s dugout. In light of the fact that Yogi was fired after his Bronx Bombers lost to the Redbirds, his memories of this World Series weren’t as happy as mine. More than 42 years later, he was still upset that Whitey Ford, who had been the ace of the Yankees’ pitching staff, had re-injured his shoulder in game one of the series, leaving Mel Stottlemyre to start against Bob Gibson in the deciding seventh game.
When Carmen joined the conversation, I told her that Yogi and I were talking about the 1964 World Series, which I remembered so vividly. When she responded, “Yes, I remember we lost,” I asked how she, who had grown up in St. Louis, could bring herself to say, “We lost,” when the Cardinals had become world champions. I then added that I had tremendous respect for the Yankees of Yogi’s era in part because they still played real baseball, i.e. without the use of designated hitters. To my delight, Yogi emphatically agreed that allowing the use of designated hitters in baseball was a big mistake.
Not surprisingly, neither Yogi nor Carmen Berra had ever heard of Schlafly Beer, which was founded long after they moved to the New York area. Such was decidedly not the case, however, with Joe Torre, another Italian-American who lived in St. Louis before managing the New York Yankees. Unlike Berra, who has lived away from St. Louis his entire adult life, Joe Torre reached the pinnacle of his Major League playing career with the Cardinals in 1971, when he was named the Most Valuable Player in the National League. He returned to the Cardinals as their manager in 1990, a job he held until 1995. It was during this time that Joe and other members of the Torre family became very familiar with The Schlafly Tap Room.
The Cardinals, who were owned at the time by the largest brewery in St. Louis, fired Torre in 1995. Shortly thereafter he was hired to manage the New York Yankees, whom he led to championships in four of the next five World Series (1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000). Interestingly, when Joe’s wife Ali wanted to tell his daughter Tina that her father had been hired by the Yankees, she called The Tap Room. Sure enough, as Ali had guessed, Tina was at the bar enjoying a Schlafly Beer when the phone rang. As a result, the patrons at The Tap Room that night in 1995 were the first people in St. Louis to know Joe Torre would soon be managing the Yankees.
When Torre left the Cardinals and St. Louis for the Yankees, he joined the only team in baseball that has won more world championships than the Cardinals, in the only city that has won more World Series than St. Louis. While the Yankees have won the World Series 26 times, the Cardinals have won it ten times, which is more than any other team in baseball. This is more than the combined World Series championships won by the teams from any other city, including the cities from which two different teams have won the Series (Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia). This is also more World Series championships than have been collectively won by the New York Giants, the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Mets, i.e. the New York teams other than the Yankees.
With the Cardinals reigning as world champions; and with spring training upon us, one would think that baseball fans in St. Louis would have spent the off-season savoring the dramatic win last October and eagerly anticipating the team’s defending its title in 2007. Unfortunately, the World Series championship seems to have been overshadowed–at least in some media and among some fans–by allegations involving the use of various performance-enhancing drugs and dietary supplements.
Against this backdrop, it’s important to keep in mind that Major League Baseball and other professional sports aren’t the only ones who are concerned that participants might be enhancing their performances with substances and practices that jeopardize their health. Consider the world of high fashion. In the salons of haute couture, the concern is not about bulking up, as it is in football and baseball, but rather with excessive slimming down. Last fall, while the Cardinals were in danger of faltering in the pennant race, the Pasarela Cibeles, a prestigious fashion show in Madrid, banned models who were too skinny. Letizia Moratti, the Mayor of Milan, called on the sponsors of fashion shows in that city to do the same.
One is reminded of the timeless wisdom of the actress Mae West, who famously engaged in a beer drinking contest with the actor Gary Cooper to celebrate the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. As reported by Maureen Ogle in her book Ambitious Brew, their appointed judge declared the match a draw. After catching her breath, Mae then asked, “Now that beer is really back and we will all be drinking it, why not wage a campaign for the return of the woman’s natural figure?” The voluptuous Ms. West continued, “We haven’t had any perfectly natural figures since the war took beer away from us.”
If Yogi Berra had been present, one can easily imagine his saying, “Thank you for making this beer necessary.”
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