Yogi Berra of the New York Yankees 1949 Bowman Reprint Baseball Card

Yogi Berra Bowman 1949 Baseball Reprint card is available through this site.

Yogi Berra played minor league baseball with the Newark Bears before being called up for seven games in the major leagues in 1946. The following season he played 86 games for the Yankees, and he would play more than a hundred in each of the following fourteen years.

During his nineteen-year career as a Yankee, Berra's teams dominated baseball. Berra appeared in fourteen World Series, winning ten championships, both of which are records.Because Berra's playing career coincided with the Yankees' most consistent period, it enabled him to establish the major league records for World Series games (75), at-bats (259), hits (71), doubles (10), singles (49), games caught (63), and catcherputouts (457). In Game 3 of the 1947 World Series, Berra hit the first pinch-hit home run in World Series history off Brooklyn Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca (who later served up Bobby Thomson's famous home run in 1951). Though Yogi Berra played in 14 World Series, he played every game in just nine of them, one fewer than Joe DiMaggio, who played every game in all ten of his Series appearances.

Berra has become a beloved, cuddly figure in American sport, which in some ways has obscured his immense talents as a competitive athlete. Yogi Berra was a fifteen-time All-Star, and won the league's MVP award three times, in 1951, 1954 and 1955. From 1950 to 1957, Berra never finished lower than 4th in the voting. He received MVP votes in fifteen consecutive seasons'tied with Barry Bonds and second only to Hank Aaron's nineteen straight seasons with MVP support. (Ted Williams also received MVP votes in every year of his career, but it was twice interrupted by military service.) Between 1949 and 1955, on a team filled with stars such as Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio, it was Yogi Berra who led the Yankees in RBI for seven consecutive seasons.

Berra was excellent at hitting bad pitches, covering all areas of the strike zone (as well as beyond) with great extension. He was simultaneously able to swing the bat like a golf club to hit low pitches for deep home runs, and chop at high pitches for line drives However, despite this wide plate coverage, he also had great bat control. Five times, Yogi Berra had more home runs in a season than strikeouts. In 1950, Berra struck out twelve timein 597 at-bats. This combination made him a feared "clutch hitter"; rival manager Paul Richards once called Berra "the toughest man in the league in the last three innings."

As a fielder, Berra was truly outstanding. Quick, mobile, and a great handler of pitchers, Berra led all American League catchers eight times in games caught and in chances accepted, six times in double plays (a major league record), eight times in putouts, three times in assists, and once in fielding percentage. Berra left the game with the AL records for catcher putouts (8,723) and chances accepted (9,520). He was also one of only four catchersto ever field 1.000 for a season, playing 88 error less games in 1958. Later in his career, he became a good defensive outfielder in Yankee Stadium's notoriously difficult left field. In June 1962, at the age of 37, Berra showed his superb physical endurance by catching an entire 22-inning, seven-hour game against the Tigers.

One of the most notable days of Berra's playing career came when he caught Don Larsen's perfect game in the 1956 World Series, the only no-hitter ever thrown in post-season play.The pictures of Berra leaping into Larsen's arms following the 27th out are among the game's most memorable images.

On 18 July 1999, Larsen and Berra celebrated the feat with a ceremonial pitch for "Yogi Berra Day" at Yankee Stadium (the 74-year-old Berra did not jump into the 70-year-old Larsen's arms, though). This was a part of the celebration to mark the return of Berra to the Stadium, which ended his 14-year feud with Yankees' owner George Steinbrenner. The feud started in 1985 when Steinbrenner promised Berra a full chance as manager, then fired him in the third week of the season. Berra vowed to never return to Yankee Stadium so long as Steinbrenner owned the team. Amazingly, Yankees pitcher David Cone then hurled his own perfect game against Montreal Expos, only the 16th time it had ever been done in Major League history.

In 1946, Berra wore uniform No. 38 on the Yankees, switching to 35 the next year. In 1948, he changed to No. 8, which he kept for the rest of his career on the Yankees (and later, the Mets). The No. 8 was retired in 1972 by the Yankees, jointly honoring Berraand Bill Dickey, his predecessor as the Yankees' star catcher. Berra's uniform number and stocky build were familiar enough to baseball fans that Sports Illustrated once used a photo of Berra facing away from the camera as its cover, with the blurb "YOGI'S BACK". Yankee television announcer Michael Kay has introduced Berra on Old Timers Day as "one of the best known faces on the planet."

Yogi Berra Bowman 1949 Reprint Baseball Card

"It ain't over till it's over".

"If you don't know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else".

"It's like deja-vu, all over again".

-Yogi Berra

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