Special to the PRESS
“In 1985, only 16 games into the baseball season, New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner fired Yogi as manager of the team. Some people say baseball needs George Steinbrenner the way Jesus needed Judas. Not Yogi. He’d call that remark a cheap shot. Yogi Berra doesn’t backbite. If someone bad mouths somebody in his presence, he shrugs, ‘Who’s to say?’ and walks away. Yogi also doesn’t hold a grudge. He had been fired twice before as a manager—in 1964 by the Yankees and in 1975 by the Mets. ‘Firing’s part of baseball,’ Yogi explains. ‘The more you win, the less you get fired.’ So why then, after Steinbrenner fired him, did Yogi vow never to return to Yankee Stadium so long as George was owner of the Yankees? And he didn’t. Not even for Old Timers’ games. Not even when Mickey or Whitey would ask him to. For fourteen years, Yogi stayed away from home. Until Opening Day of the 1999 baseball season. In relief of the recently deceased Joe DiMaggio, Yogi came back to throw out the first pitch of the new season…What so hurt or angered that Yoda of a Yankee, Yogi Berra, that he held a grudge for fourteen years?”
This is how playwright Tom Lysaght introduces the plot of his one-man play, Nobody, don’t like Yogi.
“Why did I come back? Why did I come back?” questions Berra, alone in the New York Yankee’s clubhouse, as he prepares for his speech. The ghosts of Yankees past seem to speak to him as he reminisces about growing up in St.
Louis, his first meeting with his beloved Carmen, raising his sons and finally, his fateful confrontation with Steinbrenner before the firing.
An El Paseo Arts’ favorite, Dave Boughter, takes the stage in this 90-minute, one-man show that pays homage to the great Yogi Berra. El Paseo Arts patrons will remember Boughter’s roles in many plays including Boeing! Boeing!, Vanna, Sonya, Marcia and Spike, Rumors, Don’t Dress for Dinner, Murder at the Howard Johnson’s and the Dinner Party. He also played some memorable characters in musicals including The 25 Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, Clue, The Great American Trailer Park Musical and Christmas Musical.
As Berra, Boughter shares with us the innermost thoughts that Berra tells us he doesn’t like to think. He reads some of the most famous “yogi-isms” and speaks a dozen more as he tells us Berra’s story. He recites some of the highlights of Berra’s playing career and shares his philosophy of managing. Most importantly, Boughter shows audiences the goodness of the man, Berra.
JoAnn Evans directs the challenging production that demands numerous special lighting and sound cues, along with projections. She is aided by Mark Haggenmiller on lights and Julie Boughter on sound. Julie Boughter also coordinates set construction and props. Greg Lockwood adds to the show as an announcer at the stadium, and Judy Brewer is the house manager.
Tickets for the show are $30 per person; $25 for El Paseo Arts members. Tickets are available at SOS, the Art Incubator, the Port Isabel South Padre Press Office and online at elpaseoarts.org.
Berra was a Hall of Fame player and a winning coach and manager. He is remembered by many for his yogi-isms that have become part of the contemporary vernacular. However, it is the goodness of the man, the way he treated others, his empathy, his generous spirit and his humility that elevate him to the status of an icon
As journalist Leonard Koppett wrote: “In the brightest of publicity spotlights, for more than four decades, Yogi remained completely himself—a rarer and more difficult accomplishment than making the Hall of Fame.”
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