Yogi Berra •
The Yogi Book •

If your dear old dad is a baseball fan, find him a copy of this book for Christmas or his birthday. He’ll laugh so hard he may forget all about that dent in the fender of his car.

The unintentional witticisms of Yogi Berra, a celebrated catcher for the New York Yankees, are legendary—and a wordmonger’s delight. The Yogi Book is a capsule tribute to one of baseball’s more colorful characters, with photos of Berra, his teammates, friends, and family interspersed with such classic sayings as “It gets late early out there” and “I’m as red as a sheet.” When his wife told him she had taken their son to see Doctor Zhivago, Berra demanded, “What the hell’s wrong with him now?”

There are eight introductions—one would never be enough to do the man justice—and short explanations of the circumstances surrounding each quip. The final pages show a picture of Berra with his wife, children, and grandchildren accompanied by quotes from them all, under the title “Apples Don’t Fall Far from the Tree.” My favorite: “This is very poorly unorganized.”

Maybe the grandson who said that should meet the little girl who wrote a book report about penguins.