Four Hall of Fame Catchers Interviewed by Tim Russert in 2003

[Music] [Applause] [Music] let's he played more games hit more homers than any catcher is synonymous with one of the greatest moments in world series history the original pudge let's welcome hall of famer carlton fisk [Applause] eleven-time all-star two-time all-star mvp the lifeblood of the montreal expos known as the kid he brought a world championship to shea stadium with the mets let's welcome hall of famer gary carter played 17 seasons with the big red machine awarded 10 gold gloves two mvps the starting catcher on major league baseball's all century team let's welcome hall of famer the late great johnny bench [Applause] [Applause] and he played on more pennant winners 14 world champions 10 than any other player in history he is a three-time mvp we are in his house the one the only yogi baron before we talk about what is the uniqueness of being a catcher the first thing many people on our audience want to know tonight are nicknames pudge where did it come from well it's pretty obvious when you if you realize that i weighed 36 pounds when i was a year old and never really outgrew that i mean i weighed 120 pounds when i was in fifth grade and never grew into that until i was 14 or 15 years old so i was passed my freshman year in high school when i started to stretch out as a matter of fact i grew from the from the beginning of one year like january to the beginning of my junior year i grew eight inches in that particular eight month period so the nickname stuck but the look did not but you always had a laid back way to the game when you went to the mound they called it the pudge trudge because you took your time i always felt as though being a catcher i was in control of the game i was in control the pace of the game i want to control my pitching staff i although i wanted to let him you know so maybe sometimes we didn't have the best pitching step so i had to control his emotions and try to get him to give me his best so uh it was all in an effort to to uh to win the game and you know it is that why is that why the game is more than one finger when i you know fudge is that why the games you played in were the longest games that they uh not in any american league history one other thing on my own defense here was that when the game first started there was only a starter and then if he got in trouble there was a reliever and then as the game progressed over the the next decade or two or three there became more specialized guys so every time there was a change there was a trip to the mound so now you've got four or five pitching changes that adds the length of the game and you know i feel better now i'm sure it's right jumping in over here on the right was someone called the kid right where'd the kid come started first big league spring training camp and um uh i was 18 years old excited and of course back then veterans were you know kind of looked at as royalty you know you bowed down to them and all well i was invited to a card game at the americana hotel which was our team hotel and i was able to watch them play cards it was like mike jorgensen and mike torres kenny singleton tim foley all those guys then finally all of a sudden mike torres says hey kid why don't you go get us some ice cream so i ran down ran across the street 31 flavors and brought them all back their ice cream that they wanted and the way i was just kind of a very enthusiastic tried to win every race and wanted to take you know an extra swing in every batting practice and all the names stuck and uh it's nice to be almost 50 and be called a kid again yeah yogi how did lorenzo pierce become yogi well they came when i was 16 years old playing american legion ball bobby huffman played with the new york giants we were on the same club you know we didn't have dugouts when we played we sat on the ground and i always had my legs crossed and my arms crossed and they said i look like a yogi this guy here was called jb even i can figure that out i was actually called a little general early really yeah i just i just felt like everybody had to be on the field everybody had to do the right thing you know with the kid taking you know one more swing that wasn't going to get it i mean everybody you were supposed to be doing this you're supposed to be doing that it was cut and dry and i was anal i mean i was i mean i thought there was only one way you're supposed to do thing and that's the baseball way but johnny this is a very important point you are all hall of fame catchers you all believe passionately it's the best position in baseball because on the field you are the general we are we are we are talking about true even though the if you go down the background of all of us none of us were catchers i mean our background is somewhere else where you were shortstop shortstop left fielder and shortstop yoki actually didn't play professional on catcher until professional professionally and i was the third baseman because we had a kid in high school because we had 10 out for baseball we only had 21 kids in the graduating class we had one kid that would catch and wouldn't play third and so i played third and i went to american legion and said another town and so i was the first baseman but we all learned other positions but we all i don't know in their hearts but i mean in our hearts we all felt like we were catchers even though i think we would have taken anything like we were in charge right regardless of what position we played i mean in my adult life i was always the commander it was the general i was the commander but i was never surfaced above pudge but uh i think being a catcher the way we the reason we all became catchers is because we were sort of natural-born leaders talk about the technique of catching what's expected of you well i think it's important for for my sake i i tried to study all the hitters i would like to try to remember who was hot who was not and i was one of the ones that kind of ran the team meetings and stuff and tried to you know tell my pictures this is the way we're going to approach the game and they had a lot of confidence in me and when i would put a pitch down most of the time they would go with that i mean if they didn't you know that's okay we we go to another pattern but basically i think that the importance of a catcher is to know all of the other you know players on the other teams and know how to call a game i think it's important more than anything being able to block pitches in the dirt being able to block home plate being able to throw runners out that's another thing but to be able to handle 10 personalities now maybe 11 personalities is something that takes a little bit more of a challenge and to be able to call a game for each one of those guys and know which guys you can pat on the back which guys you got a kick in the butt right and which guys that you can say hey you're doing a great job when you're in the dugout yogi this was all before computers and now you pick up usa today and you see little boxes where the ball is going like that you had to have it in your head that when ted williams came to the plate at a certain point of the game what pitch you wanted what do you oh it depends what park here's what yogi all depends what park you want here we go ted williams pitcher before in boston we pitched ted in and out in the yankee stadium we pitched away if you wanted to walk good for him you ain't going to get any ball of poop you used to talk to ted williams when he was probably yeah he used to tell me to shut up what did you say to him i said where you going tonight you know where you going fishing and all that stuff but i believe what what the carter says here you know pitchers think they're dumb to me i think mr carter i think pitchers are the dumbest guys on it for me oh wait a minute whitey ford call home why they never shook me off but i'm just saying you're going like he's throwing a team meeting the uh the one guy said well this guy can't hit a curveball and i would pop up yeah he can't eject her well but he could hit him right that is the whole key yeah right i mean that whole kid gary i didn't we never we never had the meeting was here's what this guy's doing i don't i don't want any pictures in my meeting that's right i want every i want everything to know what comes from me but it was always that it was always amazing this guy couldn't hit a curveball yeah he can hit your curveball right how much you don't have a curveball yeah you know it's like there was guys there were guys that you pitched you did i mean if you walked williams fine right i mean the amazing thing is that people always thought this guy walked four guys in the game so he didn't have control i walked three of them right i didn't want them swinging the bats i can get the next guy out or the guy in the dugout's still coming out i mean there's few guys in your life that you never could get out willie mccovey i had no clue to this day i still don't know how to get willie mccovey out but that's fine he wasn't going to beat me in the game but as yogi said that's fine look they had no clue i mean most of them had no clue and if they did you admired them and respected them if severe was pitching you let him shake you off if another guy was out there you walked out the mountain said don't you ever shake me you were and you would have been the first one to go out there too i know that i went out there because this guy had nothing and you took a while doing it but go ahead i had to figure out how i was going to approach him and approach him without hurting his feelings so bad that he wouldn't pitch so what did you do so you'd go out there and you'd let him know i let him know that i was in charge and he was not in charge if he thought that pitch was going to get somebody out he was sorely mistaken so i always felt as though that what i try to do behind the plate one i tried to think which was something the pitchers never did catch it tried to and i tried to be somewhat creative in what i asked them to do now and in that whole thing you got to realize how fragile the pictures are so you can't ask him to do with something he can't deliver even though you know in that situation that would be the right thing to do so then you have to sort of back around and do all this kind of stuff and you went out there and spent all this time they had no clue that's exactly right exactly we had them confused we've got to go we'll get back to this later but i had a guy that said comes he's pitching one day and he comes and he goes back on the bench and says boy i just can't get into it today i don't know what the story is and i went i slapped him upside down and said you can't get into today i gotta catch every day 150 days a year you pitch 30 times a year and you can't get into it you better get into it or i'm going to kick your butt in defensive pitchers i asked mighty ford one time about all these yogisms i said why did the yogi say all the things they say he said it's worse than you think whitey's why do you say he was out with mickey one night came to the park the next day and a little bit prepared to pitch probably not in his best shape and he said chicago white sox first ball nelly fox single to right second pitch louis eparicio single left third pitch he hit minnie minoso fourth ball he threw ted klazewski gone grand slam four balls four nothing white socks casey staying around to the mound yogi ran to the mound casey said hey yogi why do you have a stuff tonight yogi said how the hell did i haven't caught a ball yet is a tough position on the wear and tear on the body johnny bench you've had a broken ankle a broken left foot a broken left foot a broken finger and seven broken athletic supporter cups true it's amazing i have access to get that thing out of the way i've had 15 broken bones in each or 12 broken bones in each foot but it's amazing that people even these sick people out here today will imagine that you mentioned 15 broken bones i had lung surgery shoulder surgery i've had hip surgery now and that when you mention seven broken cups they say oh that hurt [Laughter] it's well it did hey i know it didn't really hurt and yogi yogi this is just telling us that he has had he'd never had a broken cup but you don't have to understand yogi at whatever height he is never squatted so everything was like this to begin with so there was no way that he could get hit you were the first catcher of any prominence to wear a protective helmet yeah sherman lawler won the helmet i kept throwing the helmet breaking it cost me 35 to replace the helmet and i kept getting these foul tips that i would throw to second the mask would go sideways and i said i've got to be able to find a better way of doing this and so i had seen sherm lawler at some point wearing a helmet i said you know if i wear my helmet i can't throw it i have to have it on my head i'd make it out i turn it around put on the mask and it and as a result everybody started doing it one-handed catching became part of what randy hundley did so it was all sort of a copy everything is sort of a copy of somebody but it was just sort of like i had developed a style that worked for me paj what was the wear and tear on your body for catching in the major leagues for so long how long do you have yeah how many knee surgeries you know i've had my left knee reconstructed and uh in 1974 has have had to operate on four times since have my left up my right knee operate on three times i've had two operations on this hand and one on uh that hand [Music] i never operated on my cup and i and i were and after and i got hit in the in the head with a back swing uh in the minor leagues with a cloth hat on that one i was catching so then i went to a you know a helmet catching and uh after the first two or three broken plastic cups i went to a metal cup so i never did break a cup after that but gary carter all of you up here on the stage knew that by being a major league catcher you were going to shorten your careers that if you played another position you'd probably could have a few more years in the bigs and yet you chose to be this wouldn't have been gary carter i don't know if anybody ever he would have been carl you don't you don't yeah i was lucky short these guys are all tall except you have to work that over see see tim i i don't know if i would have enjoyed the game or had as much success if it wasn't for being behind the plate if i'd have played another position i don't think i like johnson's rubber locker yeah you've been bouncing off because i just had a lot of enthusiasm and i i loved the game and when carlton was talking about his surgeries and all i've had 14 major surgery i've had nine knee surgeries seven on my right two on my left i'm gonna have another one in december on my left i've had you know two broken thumbs all these things but i'm saying all of us have been through that but that's the thing that we appreciate about our position we have been through it we've been through the war basically because and and we would play with these injuries i know john played with with uh broken bones and so did pudge and i know yog maybe he didn't know that he had him but anyway he would play with well they wouldn't take you to surgery yogi the nose you got tell what happened after you got hit in the nose i got a broken nose that's what happened what else happened hey tell us what happened when you broke your nose the funny part i had sinus trouble i really did i had sinus trouble when i broke my nose i never had sun if you couldn't be a catcher you had to play one other position on a baseball team what would it be uh for me probably first base you a little hot for you left for you yeah yeah shortstop pitch i want the days off i want to play golf i want to throw hard i want to throw that breaking ball i want to knock people on their ass but you also on that whole thing you'll get your lunch too no no you'll get your lunch i'll be in american league where all the wimps play yeah right that way they wouldn't have winters you wouldn't have your weak band in the lineup either johnny johnny's raised an interesting point knock him on their ass quote unquote who called the brush back pitches you or the pitcher it worked both ways it worked both way there were pictures out there there were certain guys you know that there were certain guys lamar all those guys they would knock people down just in a heartbeat they wanted people i mean you had to back off there were managers that that walked up to the pitcher and said i won him down and there were guys that did it and there were automatics that you already knew to protect your other guys but i'm sure yogi my gosh yogi back farther back than we were they had a written it was just written you had a home run the next guy went down yoga it was part of the game that was part of the game that's right it was i had two pitchers tell me to go to hit me dizzy trout and gary bell they hit me before the game yeah before the game you hit four of the game you hit me too good they said you guys were gonna knock you down but they didn't hit you in the head no they hit the butt they hit you there was some honor in a brush back oh yeah and it was an important part of the game gary carter yes to establish control and respect i think that the pictures of today because of the rule that's been implemented where if they throw in and and there's these brush backs and all that there could be um a picture ejected okay because they're coming in and the warning to the benches and if they come inside they hit somebody they're rejected from the game i think it should still be a part of the game it's important for a pitcher to establish inside if he doesn't work inside he's going to lose his control and that's why the success for guys like randy johnson and pedro martinez and curt schilling and guys like that and when you're talking about knocking somebody down you know the part of the game when to do it when not to do it you don't want to wake the opposing team up sometimes but i think that the other part is is that you get a feel for it if a guy has slid into one of your guys and has tried to hurt him and you can see the feel of the game then that's when you got to go inside and knock them down simple as that you don't want to be a headhunter though no no you know i think there's some honor in that uh i think that's one of the biggest reasons you see some of these obscene offensive numbers going up on the board because there is no fear but there was also the other side of it where you if you threw at a guy i mean let sleeping dogs lie you woke a guy up right robin you didn't want to throw it in because he got mean the same way i loved it if somebody threw it i was going to get fired up go ahead throw at me you can't drive you're writing no not me at all no i just give you a little adrenaline who was the toughest pitcher for you to hit well it was uh rick russell and bill singer i never could see him never pick them up for me nolan ryan i'd go nolan ryan he knowing ryan and frank tanana when before frank hurt his arm you go out there and you'd be overrated you think you don't even belong in the same league right or you go to baltimore when you have those four 20 game winners over there you go you come out of there one for four pitchers and you go i don't think i can play at this level for me it was a guy by the name of don robinson played for the pirates i don't know what it was but this guy i just didn't get any hits i hit the ball hard sometimes it was right at somebody he was a meter and a snake dude yeah he was you'll get a big old head who had your number herb score herb scarred his eye knocked out by gimmick dude my birthday may 7th wow a terrible day yeah maybe he had good stuff just like colfax i don't know you guys faced colfax john you've missed did you face cool facts no you're really old okay you know when i was over with the mets they told me you're lucky you don't have to bet against crawfight i said you should have batted him when he couldn't find home plate greatest moment you bear your greatest moment in baseball well i guess i've had a lot of them i got to say the no-hitter don lawson pitch perfect game perfect game this never happens over a hundred years and uh what about this what about the slide robinson at home well i want to talk about that if you guys give me permission may i talk about that thank you guys sure 19. i haven't even explained to the audience what we're talking about what slide is that thank you page was not wasn't he going like this did you get upset yo all right 19 let me set the stage 1955. whitey four is on the mount jackie robinson he's on third base you're behind the plate all right let's see that footage let's roll that's good drama let's roll that foot let's roll it there he goes there he goes there he goes look it there's the slide perfect slide safe [Music] what does that mean i'm going to tell why do you throw on that fastball it was yeah that was a fast ball it was a slow faster wasn't it was why are you losing his stuff back was he scuffing it in those days too [Laughter] oh god your greatest moment um probably a moment would be the home run against some guy's team that's sitting next to me over here that that it was in the later part of the game and uh it won the game because it stayed fair all right the red stocks won that series three games to four that's exactly right all right let's let's three games to four we won there she goes watch him watch get it hit it stay fair stay fair yes that's a fair ball and there's a happy man right there joe morgan said hey i was trying to wave at foul and you waved it fair i said joe i'm a lot bigger than you so johnny did you say the red sox went on to win that world series yeah we did i actually did actually uh it was it was probably the greatest game in world series history i mean it was just an amazing thing and carlton really worked it over that moment he hammed it up so bad i got it i'm almost embarrassed i'm almost embarrassed for the rest of us i had a plan that would work just it was a good sinker actually down and he went and got it and it was uh you know for that bernie carver hit the three-run homer in the in the early part of the game eighth inning eighth inning tied the game up and then they actually load the bases in the nine with nobody out i got crossed up the pitch we've been using these signs for eight months folks i got crossed up on the pitch and i probably wouldn't have caught the ball and denny doyle would have scored from thirds but fred lynch swung at it hit her down the left field line george foster was about 200 feet out there who hadn't thrown out a guy all year but he had 49 home runs drove 152 runs so he didn't have to throw anybody out anyway he don zimmer's the third base coach he's saying no no no and then he thought he said go go go he tries to score tags up it's a double play and i tell i tell mac and any i said you crossed me up i gave you one two three one three for the slider he said yeah i guess i did well sometimes those things work out don't they and walk back to the mountain i mean it was just amazing but the 12th game then we were lucky enough to come back in the seventh game and won the series and then swept the yankees the next year but once again you really know how you hold the crowd right there johnny right there yeah boy these catchers are geniuses you've had enough if you haven't been out there in the yogi's museum and if you haven't been you should be here he's got 412 world series rings out there 1975 seventh game red sox oh you act like you're so disappointed 1986 the mets red sox and now the playoff game against the yankees this past year is there a curse he's moved to chicago is there a curse um i spent 75 in that in that town playing and then 86 i wasn't there and this year obviously i wasn't there the curse i believe is a manifestation of the media and they get every ounce or every mile of workings out of that you know i don't think the players ever think about that you know i know players don't read about that you know they can read their stats they like to read what the other team's doing but as far as some editorial on the third page of the sports page where some guy invokes the curse of the bambino or in chicago the cubs the the curse of the goat or whatever it is out there um you know i don't i it's the players playing it has no in the curse isn't it sometimes you have good luck sometimes you have bad luck sometimes in a situation has come and gone twice since you guys won and why did they have died it just has to do with your one out too short one picture too short one inning short they still believe it up there and they then some people believe let me see i never believed it but why do they have divers going out and looking for babes piano in the lake [Music] the game has changed in many ways if you look at the players now and compare it to video when you guys played they are big these guys today all lift weights yogi you told me that you were not allowed to lift weights we weren't allowed to lift weights why not they came in at the beginning tight you couldn't do it in those days there were the thing is there's a difference between functional strength and gym strength everybody thought if you lift the waist you're going to go in the in it come out looking like arnold schwarzenegger and if you did go lift unsupervised weight training then you actually strengthened the wrong muscles for the sport that you were playing it and that's where the premise was that everybody would get tight and you couldn't throw the ball but functional strength sports specific strength and i got into that at the you know late in my career but i played you know like when i was 36 or 37 and i played for until i was 45 that the functional strength was the most important part about the conditioning program in that a stronger better conditioned athlete in your sport is going to be a better player and nobody believed that until it was proven you take a look at some of the guys now they look like oh i mean they look hercules they do too much to me i think they they like you said that the off scene they're starting to work out right now that's right some of them that's right they come to spring training you know they do they get tired of it i don't think they put out as much as spring training that they did in the world because they don't have to get in shape in spring training they probably could take spring training and break it back down to maybe four weeks instead of seven weeks oh we did when we come out of clubhouse run around the park that's all do your exercise jumping jacks jacks that's all play a little funko jumping jacks and go get it baby you're ready then you run like another huge change and you gentlemen know it better than anybody is the money yogi what was your biggest salary your biggest payday as a player 65 000 60 carry mine fortunately in 1988 and again this is when the era changed in the early 80s uh dave winfield was the one that kind of broke the bank with george steinberg when he signed that 10-year contract for 20 million and was making 2 million a year i fortunately got to the level about 2.3 in 1989. and prior to that prior to that my minimum salary first year in 1975 was 16 000. biggest payday i made 6 000 my first year and i got up to 12.50 an hour after that more than you're making the night big guy that's just about right you know everybody can talk about how the game has changed and specifically in that area you know i don't know if it's important to say well what did you make you know your first year i can tell you what i made i caught 144 games i was on the all-star team i was the first ever in american league any unanimous choice work of the year and i made 11 500 and believe me you know when you go through you know the normal salary increases but we ran into a lot of things that the kids aren't running into now either i had to worry about to you know weekend national guard duty i all the labor contract problems that we all had you know the collusion in the middle 80s where where it knocked down the salary level so you know none of us made anything what's going on now the only thing that really bothers all of us and again shouldn't speak for everybody but for me is that the attitude with which they they not all the players feel that they're entitled to make this kind of money and they look down on the players that came before them in that they are somewhat inferior because they didn't make as much money so therefore they determine they are better players and we are failing to realize that the reason that the players are experiencing such a level of affluence now is because we in our beginning of our career basically set the foundation for the system that allows them to do that so uh personally that's the only thing that i feel uh offended by is that the attitude with which the players make the money not every era that you ever played in every era that there ever was in the game the best players always made the most money for whatever error that they were the best players always made the most money and it still holds true now the best players still make the most but what bothers of me and a lot of players is that the players that can't play no i shouldn't say can't play because they're magic players the players that aren't as accomplished still are making oodles of dough you know more than noodles of dough it's like the guys on uh cnbc sunday morning guys sunday morning guys yeah especially yeah the hardest working man in the news business right there huh not enough johnny an hour what do you think yogi berra could make in 2003 with his number now he can't run worth anything anymore i think in his age george wouldn't pay more in 12 or 15 a year in his prime million oh yeah i mean there's no question over there 12 million dollars a year that wouldn't be bad you raise the issue of attitude there's a famous story i wish you'll share with our viewers about neon dion sanders and you and what you perceive as his attitude this will be censored probably but i thought that that was maybe i don't know if it was the beginning of the attitude but it was an attitude that baseball hadn't experienced at that time his attitude was a self-promotion of himself of neon dion and it just didn't fit into the game of baseball at least for the team he played for and for the rivalry of the teams at the time you know the red sox and the yankees i'm speaking up and we go to yankee stadium and yankee stadium is the house that ruth built it's with the facade i mean it has more history than i mean the first time i stepped into yankee stadium it was almost a religious experience for me i walked around the outfield i went and looked at the monuments i mean it was just like what am i doing here i mean with all the guys that played here and all the championships and the players that come through here and here comes dion sanders through here who wasn't a baseball player i grant i grant you that but he comes through and he's wearing the yankee pinstripes and one night against the yankees playing against the yankees he comes up man on base he hits he'll pop up to the infield and doesn't move he just stands there and goes and i've seen a lot of people do that but to prep to preface that whole thing he used to come up to home plate and take his bat and draw a dollar sign in the dirt he'd draw a dollar sign in the dirt and i go it's [Music] so he hits this ball i mean every time he came up he do that he hits his ball it doesn't run and he stands there and stands there and i said run the ball out and he goes what i said run the ball out of you pieces so he runs up and takes a little right turn about the coach you know about the 45-foot marker and goes into the dugout he comes back up the next time up that's the same frigging thing you know the dollar sign in the dirt i don't know if i had to be telling this on tv or not dollar sign in the dirt i go oh man i'm ready this guy's just really going to take it right to the edge so he steps in now pardon this intrusion too he steps in and goes amen days of slavery are over i went what are you what what just got to do with that that make a difference what color you are what color i am and that's when things started i will turn down i go you know something there's a right way and a wrong way to play the game and you're playing it wrong and guess what it offends guys like me so if you don't play this friggin game right i'm going to kick your ass right here at home plate in yankee stadium [Applause] and why i would say that for a guy wearing the yankee uniform after wearing the red sox uniform all this time i don't know but there's a certain respect for the game the the yankees yankee stadium the tradition i don't care whether you're playing in san diego or you're playing in yankee stadium or family park or cincinnati or wherever you are you're wearing this you know you represent more than just yourself inside that uniform and he wasn't representing anything but himself and i swear that guys and they were turning over in their graves watching this guy play baseball in yankee stadium and it offended me i mean i we had the greatest rivalry in the american league i don't know about the national league but i can't speak about that but we had the greatest rivalry in the american league in the history of the american league the red sox and the yankees and this guy was stomping all over and those guys are turning over in their grave i'm sorry i'll tell you what you're getting really passionate about the game and this guy i mean he's right i mean absolutely it's all perception before we go how tough is it gary carter to know when it's time to get out to give up the game well it's very difficult i went through that my last year in 92 and it was very difficult to let it go because it was something that i've been doing since i was like eight years old and uh when you when you come to grips at 38 and realize and just to finalize what these guys were saying there was a respect for the game i loved the game and i was so fortunate to have been able to play 18 major league seasons to play against guys like johnny play in all-star games against guys like pudge and to watch guys like yogi growing up in southern california and and being a fan and having a big baseball card collection and all that kind of stuff when you come to grips with that and still a young man and to say it's over it's very difficult very very difficult how did you know uh because my body was so beaten up and broken down with all these knee surgeries and all that i had i realized uh in in 92 when i finally played my last game i was hurting really so bad and i had double knee surgery at the end of that year and it was the right time and when i did say goodbye you know god really blessed me by in my last game to have a game-winning double you know and standing out there on second base and felipe lou had a runner come in and run for me and then it was over and it was like you know it's it's like a relief but then it was like when it came close to spring training i was chomping at the bit and wanted to get back out there again but i realized it was time to let it go yogi how did you know when did you know when i when i was 38 years old through i missed one year because i managed to run over the meds and when tony klein just dropped me out three times that's the way i had it i never struck out three times in my life that was it that was it and did you have a hard time adjusting to not going back to the springtime no i always went back i pray i want to coach for the mets yeah very much easier when did you know and how did you know uh when i when i needed the surgery on the elbow and everything was kind of aching but i i didn't look forward to going to the ballpark and i couldn't play like johnny bench right and once you have a standard and a level that that you don't need to be out there so uh there was this third person in many ways in your mind johnny bench there was always there's always three lives there was the lie before there was life during baseball there's life after baseball and when you had to move on you had to go through the stages but yeah there was always you were always dealing with that and it was uh where was i going what was i going to do and i couldn't be who i wanted to be on the field and it was time and as long as you step away on your own accord you can live with it you hit more home runs after the age of 40 than any man who's ever played major league baseball you played you're 45 years old when did you know how did you know to get he still thinks he can play maybe he can and he probably could i mean he's in good physical shape and probably i always thought that i had something to contribute whether i could play every day or not but i think the saddest i don't know for the a player i i know i was not the player that was could recognize when i was done because i think the saddest part about being a player is the day that you admit to yourself and i never did that's why i played as long as it i never admitted that i couldn't play anymore but the saddest part is that when you say i can't play anymore there's something in you that dies something is me died and because right now i've the only thing i wish he said you miss baseball you know i don't miss anything but being young enough and having the ability to play i miss that part of the game of baseball i don't miss anything else you know the hits the runs the strikeouts the rest of it i don't miss that part i miss being able to play the game and i know i can't play it anymore but the fact that when i played throughout the course of my career the surgeries the the the rest of it you know i missed six going on seven years in the prime of my career because of surgeries and injuries and but then to get back to the condition part i did play until i was 45 and as a result when i was done i knew i was done there was nothing left in the tank so i have no regrets about whether i think i left too early or whether i could have played but i did not leave i didn't quit i got the pink slip who's the biggest influence on your life mega man my father oh wow on my life or my career both probably my mother and father and a guy named daryl johnson ditto with johnny mickey mantle and my dad my brothers amen my dad didn't know anything about baseball he was working too hard yeah what a great night what a great thing gary carter thank you punch pudge johnny [Applause] the yogi bear museum and learning center thank you all [Music] you

Channel: pianopappy

Views: 309,940

Keywords: Tim Russert, Major League Baseball, New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, Cincinnati Reds, Gary Carter, New York Mets, Yogi Berra, Johnny Bench, Montreal Expos, Carlton Fisk

Id: 8BdR5DpZDXU

Length: 44min 13sec (2653 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 31 2020