“It ain’t over till it’s over.”

Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra (May 12, 1925 – September 22, 2015) was an American professional baseball catcher, manager, and coach who played 19 seasons in Major League Baseball (MLB) (1946–63, 1965) (all but the last for the New York Yankees). He was an 18-time All-Star, and won 10 World Series championships as a player—more than any other player in MLB history. Berra had a career batting average of .285, while compiling 358 home runs and 1,430 runs batted in. He is one of only five players to win the American League Most Valuable Player Award three times. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest catchers in baseball history, and was elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1972.

Berra quit school after the eighth grade. He was known for his malapropisms as well as pithy and paradoxical statements, such as “It ain’t over ’til it’s over”, while speaking to reporters, known as “Yogi-isms”. He once simultaneously denied and confirmed his reputation by stating, “I really didn’t say everything I said”. His “Yogi-isms” very often took the form of either an apparently obvious tautology or a paradoxical contradiction, but often with an underlying and powerful message that offered not just humor, but wisdom.