Today we add the great Yogi Berra to my on-going 1971 "Minor League Days: Legends Edition" sub-set, celebrating all-time greats and their time toiling in the Minors:
Yogi
spent one season with the Norfolk Tars in 1943 as an 18-year-old,
"making his bones" so to speak before losing a couple of seasons serving
in the military between 1944 and 1945.
In that one season he hit .253 over 111 games, with 56 runs batted in and 53 runs scored with seven homers.
After
the war he came back to the Minors, playing for the Newark Bears before
a call-up to the New York Yankees in 1946, where he came to stay.
Well, we all know what he would do once in the Majors...
Besides being a three-time American League Most Valuable Player, he was a FIFTEEN-TIME
all-star, and received Most Valuable Player votes every single year
between 1947 and 1961. As a matter of fact, between
1950 and 1956 he never finished lower than fourth for the MVP, with
three wins, and two second place finishes!
That's seven top-4 finishes in seven years! Just awesome.
Except for four
scant games in 1965 with the New York Mets, Berra played the rest of his
19-year career with the Bronx Bombers, amassing 358 homers, 1430 runs
batted in and a .285 average.
One other note about his amazing career: the man only struck out 414 times over 8359 at-bats!
YOGI!!! I loved that man!
A true baseball treasure…