Excerpted from YOGI: A Life Behind the Mask. Copyright (c) 2020 by Jon Pessah. Available from Little, Brown and Company, an imprint of Hachette Book Group, Inc.
It’s another hot and humid St. Louis summer in July 1941. But that’s not what 16-year-old Lawdie Berra is thinking about right now. He’s sitting in the back seat of Cardinal General Manager Branch Rickey’s big black Lincoln on his way to Forest Park with his friend Joe Garagiola up front and some kid named Schoendienst fidgeting in the seat next to him. Poor guy is covered with angry red bites all over his arms and neck.