He hardly looked the way a Yankee was supposed to look, much less a professional athlete. He certainly wasn’t regal, the way DiMaggio was. He was a funny-looking stump of a man who, against all odds, became a 10-time world champion, Hall-of-Fame catcher and king of the malaprops – and endures now as The Greatest Living Yankee, one of the most beloved sports figures of the past 50 years.

He grew up as Lawrence Peter Berra in an Italian section of St. Louis called “The Hill,” and one day, during an American Legion sandlot game, Bobby Hofman, one of the kids from the old neighborhood, noticed Berra sitting on the ground with his legs and arms crossed waiting his turn at bat. “You look like a yogi,” Hofman yelled, meaning yoga, a mystical religious figure in Indian culture.

In 1947, as a rookie with the Yankees, an umpire named Bill McGowan asked Berra to sign a ball. Berra signed it “Larry Berra.” McGowan had heard other players calling him Yogi, and asked him to sign another ball that way. Berra obliged, and from that point on, signed in as “Yogi Berra.”

His breakthrough came in 1949 when the Yankees brought in Bill Dickey, their Hall-of-Fame catcher, to work with Yogi. Berra knew how to call a game, and became Casey Stengel’s pet. Stengel called him “my assistant manager.” He was one of the great clutch hitters of his time, and the man his teammates wanted at the plate with the game on the line. He was an amazing bad-ball hitter, and his left-handed stroke blooped many 297-foot home runs over the Stadium’s 296-foot porch in right field.

He was a fixture behind the plate in October, and the angriest anyone ever saw him was when Jackie Robinson was called safe stealing home in Game 1 of the 1955 World Series. The happiest anyone ever saw him was the following fall when, after Don Larsen had just pitched a perfect game against the Dodgers, he leaped into the pitcher’s arms.

It was Yogi’s birthday the night of the famous Copacabana brawl, but most of the time, Yogi would retire early, hours before Mantle and Whitey Ford and the Yankee night owls.

Yogi often grunted answers to questions, but one day early in his career he was honored in his hometown. The Yanks were playing the St. Louis Browns, and Yogi’s roommate, Bobby Brown, wrote a thank-you line for Yogi, who was supposed to say, “Thank you for making this day possible.” Except that Yogi wound up saying, “Thank you for making this day necessary.”

Yogi was the Yankee manager in 1964 when, on a hot and silent bus following a four-game sweep at Comiskey Park by the White Sox, Phil Linz began playing “Mary Had A Little Lamb” on a harmonica he had purchased for a dollar the previous day. Yankee third base coach Frank Crosetti stormed to the back and told Linz to stop. Linz did, but when Crosetti had returned to the front, he started up again. Yogi turned around and said, “Stop with that harmonica!”

Linz turned to Mickey Mantle and asked what Yogi had said. Mantle, a notorious instigator, said, “Yogi said to play louder.” Linz obliged, so Yogi got up and barked, “Give me the harmonica,” Linz flipped it, and Yogi slapped it with his hand, hitting Joe Pepitone, seated next to Linz. “You got me in the knee!” Pepitone wailed. Yogi fined Linz $200 the next day.

But the Harmonica Incident rallied the Yanks, who went on to win the pennant, only to lose the World Series in 7 to the Cardinals. When he returned to his Montclair, N.J. home, Yogi got a call telling him to report to Yankee offices at 9 a.m. the next day. He thought he was getting a contract extension. He was fired instead. Days later, Stengel called, and Yogi became a coach with the Mets.

He was the manager in August of 1973 when the Mets were falling out of the race and writers asked him if it was over. “It ain’t over ’til it’s over,” Yogi said, and sure enough, it wasn’t; the Mets got to the World Series, only to lose in seven games to the A’s.

The Yogi legend, enhanced by childhood pal Joe Garagiola, who invented malaprops for him, keeps growing. Long before the Aflac commercials that air today, Yogi appeared in a commercial for a chocolate drink, chirping “Mee hee for Yoo Hoo.”

No. 8 on your scorecards, No. 1 in your hearts.

YOGI-ISMS

“All pitchers are liars or crybabies.”

“A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”

“Baseball is ninety percent mental. The other half is physical.”

“Bill Dickey is learning me his experience.”

“He hits from both sides of the plate. He’s amphibious.”

“How can a you hit and think at the same time?”

“I always thought that record would stand until it was broken.”

“I can see how he (Sandy Koufax) won twenty-five games. What I don’t understand is how he lost five.”

“I don’t know (if they were men or women fans running naked across the field). They had bags over their heads.”

“If people don’t want to come out to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them?”

“I’m a lucky guy and I’m happy to be with the Yankees. And I want to thank everyone for making this night necessary.”

“I’m not going to buy my kids an encyclopedia. Let them walk to school like I did.”

“In baseball, you don’t know nothing.””I never blame myself when I’m not hitting. I just blame the bat and if it keeps up, I change bats. After all, if I know it isn’t my fault that I’m not hitting, how can I get mad at myself?”

“I never said most of the things I said.”

“It ain’t the heat, it’s the humility.”

“It gets late early out there.”

“I think Little League is wonderful. It keeps the kids out of the house.”

“It’s like deja vu all over again.”

“I wish everybody had the drive he (Joe DiMaggio) had. He never did anything wrong on the field. I’d never seen him dive for a ball, everything was a chest-high catch, and he never walked off the field.”

“Little League baseball is a very good thing because it keeps the parents off the streets.”

“Nobody goes there anymore because it’s too crowded.”

“So I’m ugly. I never saw anyone hit with his face.”

“Take it with a grin of salt.”

“The game’s isn’t over until it’s over.”

“The towels were so thick there I could hardly close my suitcase.”

“You can observe a lot just by watching.”

“You should always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise, they won’t come to yours.”

“You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going because you might not get there.”

“We made too many wrong mistakes.”

“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”

WORLD SERIES RECORDS10 championships

14 series

75 World Series games

259 at-bats

71 hits

12 home runs (third all-time)