Had me worried there, I thought you said Yogi Bear. None the less, he had a very good life doing what he loved. How many people can say that when the time comes?

He was a wise man. I understood him. You will be missed sir...RIP.

I have yet to understand why he wasn't a first ballot HOFer. 67.2% in 1971 and he was the leading vote getter - also on the ballot were future HOF'ers Early Wynn, Ralph Kiner, Slaughter, Mize, Reese, Schoendienst, Kell, Newhouser, Rizzuto, Lemon, Snider, Doerr, Fox and Ashburn. The Vets put in 7 weak candidates plus Satchel Paige got in ... just imagine if Berra made it that same year between him and Paige it would've been the most entertaining speech year of all time.

Berra has always been my choice as the greatest catcher who ever lived. This may disturb at least one veteran Bauxite, who would surely cast his vote for Johnny Bench. I would acknowledge Bench as the greater defensive player, but Berra was a fabulous defensive player himself. Bench hit .267/.342/.476 over his career; Berra hit .285/.348/.482 while playing half his games in one of the greatest pitcher's parks the game has ever had. (Mike Piazza was obviously the greatest hitter who ever spent his career behind the plate.)

Bench's peak seasons are better, as are Campanella's, but unlike them Berra never had an off season. He was just relentlessly great, year after year after year.

Aw man, he'll be sorely missed!
Best catcher in MLB history? He's got my vote.
But, with all due respect Magpie, the best catcher that ever lived is Josh Gibson.

Great, great player and an icon of the game. I have no idea whether he was better than Bench; he obviously didn't have Bench's throwing arm, but he seems to have quite a handle on the softer skills. It probably comes down to peak vs career. Yogi was the durable one.

Roger Angell (at 95!) on Yogi. Long may he write.

I’ve been enjoying reading the tributes and reminiscences about Yogi.  People write with such affection for the man, which is awfully nice in this acerbic time.  As kids, we tended to just take him for granted:  yeah, of course, Berra will be great.  He always is.  We *expected* him to come through; and time after time, he did.  That was just one of the laws of the baseball universe.  No chest-thumping about it from Yogi either.  He was the antithesis of flashy.

He was shorter than Marcus Stroman!   But just as centred.  (And far less good-looking, of course.)  Everybody liked Yogi.  He was dumb like a fox, playing the simple-simon role to perfection.  (One of my favourite NY headlines from the fifties, after a brief injury-scare, was “Doctors x-ray Berra’s head.  Find nothing.”  I often felt Yogi might have suggested it himself.) He had amazing baseball smarts;  always where he should be, when he should be there.  As one story I saw yesterday put it, he represented everything that is good about baseball.  Sorry he’s gone.

Thanks for the link to the Angell piece Mike. This, like almost all Berra obits, didn't mention one fascinating aside to Yogi's return to Yankee stadium after his self imposed exile (after Steinbrenner finally apologized for sending a minion to fire Yogi 15 years earlier).
Don Larsen threw out the ceremonial first pitch to Yogi that day recreating the battery for the only perfect game in World Series history.
This evidently appeased the baseball gods as David Cone then went out and pitched, you guessed it, a perfect game.
Fitting, or perhaps more fitting, perfect.
RIP Yogi.