Berra’s Exile Self-Imposed

He doesn’t go to Yankee Stadium anymore, which is the same as if Joe DiMaggio had exiled himself from the place.

DiMaggio is known as the greatest living Yankee. If that is true, Yogi Berra is the one who is most loved, along with Phil Rizzuto.

They can have all the plaques they want for him. Until he comes back, which would mean another full pardon for George Steinbrenner, it is as if there is a whole wing of Monument Park vacant.

So when you spend time with him, you always have to ask the question.

“Is there any chance you’ll ever come back?”

He is 72, after all, 73 next May. He has the right to change his mind.

“We’ll have to see what happens,” he said the other day at Giants Stadium, there to watch the Jets play the Raiders.

“So at least there’s a chance?”

Yogi smiled.

“Leave it like this,” he said, “if anything ever does change, I’ll let you know.”

He was there in Box 219B, a guest of commissioner Paul Tagliabue, and the moment he walked in there, a very good sports day got better. There is the old joke about somebody brightening up a room just by leaving it. Yogi Berra, No. 8, is the opposite of that. He has always been a bit of a comic in people’s minds, because of all the funny lines attributed to him. And all who have ever met him know this about Yogi Berra:

He is not the clown prince of baseball, just one of the princes of the world.

Steinbrenner fired him after 16 games of the 1985 season after saying Yogi could have the job all year. Yogi did not forgive, or forget, not just the firing but the abusive way Steinbrenner had treated him while he had the job.

Yogi walked out of Yankee Stadium and said he would never be back as long as Steinbrenner ran the team. And has not come back. And is missed.

The one time he did go to a New York ballpark this season, he went to see a Mets-Astros game at Shea Stadium, mostly because he is so fond of a couple of Houston ballplayers, Craig Biggio and Jeff Bagwell.

Another Yankee October will start without Yogi next week. He will be absent from the ballpark again.

So he talked about another ballpark Sunday afternoon, a wonderful ballpark that will open next March at Montclair State University, to be called Yogi Berra Stadium. The Montclair State team will play there, and there is also a plan to have an independent Class A team play its games there in the summer. There will be a Yogi Berra Museum on the premises as well. A beautiful thing, all of it.

Once, a long time ago, part of his legend, he stood up at a dinner in his honor and promptly blew his line. “I’d like to thank everyone for making this night necessary,” he said. Now a college not so far from where Yogi and Carmen Berra live in New Jersey wants to thank him. For making this ballpark, in his name, necessary.

“It’s gonna be a beauty,” he said. “Thirty-two hundred seats, but we can expand to 7,000 down the road. They’re talking about holding Division III playoffs there.”

At least there, at Yogi Berra Stadium, will be playoffs he can attend.

“The infield’s down already,” Yogi Berra said Sunday.

He wore a green golf sweater over a Jets golf shirt. At halftime, he posed for so many pictures somebody joked that he would be able to charge his appearance fee. When the people in the stands in front of Box 219B saw him, it was as if a whole section stopped watching the football game for a minute and turned and applauded.

This was Yogi, right in front of them. All he did in his baseball career was play 14 World Series in 17 seasons as a player, and then manage both the Yankees and the Mets to the seventh game of the Series.

“I guess I was just born at the right time,” he said.

Then he was talking about the five consecutive titles the Yankees won between 1949 and 1953, and the amazing home run power of the ’61 team, and those two marvelous World Series the Yankees played against the Braves in 1957 and ’58.

“You ever watch that Classic Sports?” he said. “I love that thing. I was watching our ’58 Series against the Braves the other night. You know when we came back from three to one down in games? I never got to see it before.”

He nodded his head.

“That was pretty good what we did that year,” he said.

He likes this Yankee team, thinks it has a terrific shot to repeat, maybe even play two Series in a row against the Braves, the way he once did. Then he was back to ’61 again, and Mantle and Maris. No one has more memories than he does.

He said that Don Mattingly did call him before Mattingly Day at the Stadium, to ask if Yogi might come back. Yogi smiled in the telling and said, “I told him that I didn’t show up for Scooter’s day, either. I said to Donnie, ‘Scooter understood, and you’ll have to understand, too.’ ”

He was as tough and good as anyone to ever wear the uniform, and still is. He says now what he said before last October, that he will sit in front of the television with his family and do what you would expect him to do, which is root for the Yankees.

Last week, I asked him this question.

“What do you miss most about the Stadium?”

Yogi Berra never hesitated.

“October,” he said.