With a load of household love and cooperation, the documentary “It Ain’t Over” celebrates the accomplishments of St. Louis-born, New York Yankees-bred Lawrence “Yogi” Berra (1925-2015), whose expertise for phrasemaking and so-called Yogi-isms had a nagging tendency to outshine his slugging and catching and managing prowess.
Problem was, he mentioned plenty of memorably humorous issues, although he was no comic and the furthest doable distance from anybody’s thought of an insult comedian. Berra exemplified coronary heart, identical to the track from “Damn Yankees” put it. He was an genuine delight with a giant, beneficiant ticker, given to aphorisms and phrases of knowledge similar to:
“It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”
“Always go to other people’s funerals, otherwise they won’t come to yours.”
“You can observe a lot just by watching.”
With materials like that (although plenty of the Yogi-isms got here from advert copywriters and sportswriters and the like), already you’re in legend territory, even with out Berra’s precise, formidable statistics on the diamond. The better of the Berra traces transcended punchlines, albeit some nice ones on the order of, “Ninety percent of baseball is mental. The other half is physical.” They’re eloquent pretzel-logic pearls of knowledge.
Yogi-isms inevitably take up a specific amount of writer-director Sean Mullin’s participating doc, hosted and voice-overed by sports activities columnist, broadcaster and sports activities and health skilled Lindsay Berra, the oldest of Yogi’s 11 grandchildren. During the 2015 MLB All-Star Game, Berra and her grandfather watched the “greatest living players” shows chosen by fan vote, honoring Hank Aaron, Sandy Koufax, Willie Mays and Johnny Bench. “Are you dead?” Lindsay recollects asking her grandfather, kidding however solely half. Where was Yogi in that lineup?
The stats spoke for themselves: Only Joe DiMaggio and Berra hit greater than 350 homers and struck out fewer than 500 occasions throughout their respective careers. Berra sported 10 World Series rings. New York and most of America liked the man. Like Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia, one other essential, compact emblem of twentieth century New York life, Berra’s humble stature belied the wiles so many underestimated.
As broadcaster and MLB veteran Vin Scully says within the movie, he represented “the stickball kids in the street.” Both Scully and New Yorker author Roger Angell died final yr; interview footage of each males waxing rhapsodic about Berra is included right here. Angell’s deft shorthand description of the person: “Everything about Yogi was round … the whole structure was circular.”
The film itself is extra of a sq. than a circle — easy and honorific, peppered with outdated and newer archival footage. The dugout and backroom melodrama of Berra’s up-and-down-and-up profession rises sometimes to operatic heights, because the soundtrack pumps it up with music from “The Magic Flute” or the “Peer Gynt Suite.” Yet Berra’s ground-level enchantment retains the documentary from getting too stuffed with itself.
As baseball fan Billy Crystal says on digital camera: He was “the most overlooked superstar in the history of baseball.” No one 90-minutes-and-change doc can take care of anybody’s entire story. Consider “It Ain’t Over” an easygoing primer in regards to the Navy man injured at Omaha Beach, who didn’t put in for a Purple Heart as a result of it would fear his mom; the soul of the Yankees’ golden age; and the inventor of “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
“It Ain’t Over” — 3 stars (out of 4)
MPA score: PG (for smoking, some drug references, language and temporary warfare pictures)
Running time: 1:38
How to observe: Opens in theaters May 19
Michael Phillips is a Tribune critic.
Twitter @phillipstribune
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Source: www.bostonherald.com