It Ain't Over: Perfect for MLB Opening Day

 

 

It Ain't Over (2022)

Written and directed by Sean Mullin

Sony Pictures Classic, 98 minutes, PG.

★★★★★

 

 

If I were to ask you what Major League Baseball player has the most World Series rings, who would you guess? Babe Ruth? Lou Gehrig? Joe DiMaggio? Mickey Mantle? Go back to the locker room, you're 0-4. The answer is Yogi Berra. He had 10 of them; 13 if you count the three he collected as a coach.

 

Mention his name and most people will think of two things: a cartoon bear created by Hanna-Barbera and a funny guy prone to malapropisms and garbled phrases. Who thinks of Berra as one of the game's greatest players? At 5'7” and a body shaped like a pear, he wouldn't even be drafted today. That would be baseball’s loss. Are you sick of guys with big contracts that strike out a lot and hit an occasional home run? In five of Yogi’s 19 years in uniform, he slammed more homers than he struck out and never fanned more than 38 times in a season. In 1950, he came to the plate 597 times and whiffed on just a dozen occasions. That's even more remarkable given that Berra often swung at pitches out of the strike zone. He had a knack for hitting pitches wherever they were hurled. That meant you couldn't defense him; Yogi used all of the park.

 

It Ain't Over is a documentary of a decent man, a veteran of D-Day, and a beloved family man. We often hear the voice of Lindsay Berra, who was royally peeved by how the media made her grandfather into a clown and ignored his accomplishments: three MVPs, 358 home runs, and 1,430 RBIs, a Hall of Famer, catching Don Larsen's World Series perfect game, and a .285 career average, which is rare for catchers, baseball's most physically demanding position. Like most biographical documentaries it contains a lot talking head testimonials. Family members weigh in—Lindsay; Yogi's children, Barbara, Dale, Larry, Tim, and video from his beloved wife Carmen. Ditto a veritable who's who of baseball: Hank Aaron, Roger Angel, Marty Appel, Allen Barra, Bobby Brown, Bob Costas, Larry Doby, Al Downing, Joe Girardi, Ron Guidry, Tony Kubeck, Don Mattingly, Willie Randolph, Bobby Richardson, Mariano Rivera, Ralph Terry, Joe Torre, Vin Scully... Derek Jeter first met Yogi when he was beginning his career and tells of swinging at a bad pitch. Yogi asked him why he swung at such a lousy pitch. When Jeter said, “But Yogi, you swung at that pitch all the time.” Yogi's retort, “Yeah, but I hit it!” 

 

It Ain't Over takes us back to The Hill in St. Louis where Berra was born Lorenzo Pietro Berra and lived across the street from his lifelong friend Joe Garagiola. It was a classic blue-collar immigrant neighborhood–not a ghetto, but not anybody's idea of posh either. It would be no exaggeration to say that Berra's parents were not crazy about his desire to play ball. He got his colorful nickname from a photo in which he and several other players in the front row were sitting cross-legged on the ground. One teammate remarked that the squat Berra looked like a yogi and it stuck. Years later the family tried to sue for Hanna-Barber for copyright infringement but lost; “Yogi” wasn't Berra's legal name.

 

Yogi was generally a portrait of calm, though he had moments of pique and stubbornness. He always insisted that Jackie Robinson should have been called “out” when he famously stole home in the 1955 World Series. When owner George Steinbrenner fired Yogi as manger after he took an aging Yankees team to the Series but lost to the Cardinals, Yogi refused to return to Yankee Stadium for 14 years until publicist Suzy Waldman convinced Steinbrenner to tell Yogi he made a mistake. That was a miracle on the line of Donald Trump admitting he was wrong! Yogi returned to his first post-apology Old Timers Game to deafening cheers.

 

This is an uplifting documentary about a man for whom no one had a disparaging word. It perhaps tries too hard to replace the clown image with one of a misunderstood “genius” and I could have done without the bombastic Nick Swisher, but Yogi Berra gets a long overdue tribute in It Ain't Over. It's such a touching film that Emily, who has zero interest in sports, declared it “excellent” and “moving.” Yep, we all love Yogi here.

 

Rob Weir