Venerable, lovable, quotable Yogi Berra rose to baseball greatness from the humblest of beginnings.
He was born Lawrence Peter Berra in St. Louis in 1925, and grew up with three brothers and a sister in the city’s poor, mostly Italian “Hill” section during the thick of the Depression.
Parents Pietro and Paolina were immigrants from Malvaglio, near Milan. His father came over “ready to work,” and was a laborer in a brickyard, Berra said in a 2005 interview for the Baseball Hall of Fame. “And he didn’t know what baseball was.”
His mother couldn’t pronounce little Lawrence’s American name, calling him “Lawdie” instead of Larry — a nickname that stuck around only into his mid-teens.