Yogi Berra will soon be all over — your mail, that is.
The New York Yankees great who was from St. Louis and was known for his funny malaprops will be featured on a new stamp this year, the U.S. Postal Service announced — truly making him a man of letters.
A 10-time World Series champion as a player and three-time American League MVP, Berra filled baseball’s record book along with “Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.”
Among his more notable Yogi-isms: “It ain’t over till it’s over” and “when you come to a fork in the road, take it” and “the future ain’t what it used to be.”
Born as Lawrence Peter Berra, the Hall of Fame catcher died in 2015 at 90.
The preliminary design of Berra’s stamp shows him smiling in catcher’s gear while wearing Yankees pinstripes.
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Author Ursula K. Le Guin and artist Emilio Sanchez also will be portrayed on stamps this year, along with ones depicting a mallard duck, sun science and tap dancing.
The issue date for the new stamps will be announced later, and maybe fans will flock to the post office to get Berra’s stamp.
Or maybe not.
As Yogi famously said about a popular spot: “Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”
Analyzing LeMahieu deal
After a protracted, awkward dance that delayed a pairing that seemed inevitable, the New York Yankees and second baseman DJ LeMahieu finally found a pathway to extend their marriage: with a contract that somehow managed to be both a win and a loss for each side.
The six-year, $90 million deal that reportedly was being finalized Friday achieved both sides’ primary mission: cementing a reunion between the 2020 American League East runners-up and the player who clearly was their most valuable one. Although both sides explored other options and there had been signs in recent weeks of a potential split, the deal got done with a little more than a month to go before spring training camps are scheduled to open.
With this deal, both sides also achieved their secondary mission.
For LeMahieu, 32, that meant securing a guaranteed figure — $90 million — that represents by far the largest in baseball this offseason (though Trevor Bauer, George Springer or J.T. Realmuto eventually could exceed it) and one that comes close to the $92 million third baseman Josh Donaldson (over four years) received from the Minnesota Twins a year ago. The latter was thought to be LeMahieu’s target at the start of the free-agent signing period.
For the Yankees, the secondary mission was keeping LeMahieu’s average annual value — $15 million, as it turns out — low enough to allow room for the addition of a starting pitcher while still keeping their 2021 payroll below the luxury tax threshold of $210 million. The Yankees might have made their move later Friday, when they reportedly agreed to a one-year contract with right-hander Corey Kluber, a two-time AL Cy Young winner.
The trendy phrase of this offseason is “financial flexibility,” and the Yankees — despite being on the hook for more than half a billion dollars to Giancarlo Stanton and Gerrit Cole through 2028 — achieved a measure of it with the LeMahieu deal.
But consider the significant concessions each side had to make to keep the marriage together. LeMahieu, coming off an MVP-caliber season in which he hit .364 with a 1.011 on-base-plus-slugging percentage, receives an average annual salary that probably won’t rank among the top 60 in the game in 2021.
It is a solid bet LeMahieu could have made more on a per-year basis elsewhere — with the Toronto Blue Jays believed to have been the most aggressive suitor — had he opted for that over the larger guarantee. But it is also possible he encountered a free-agent market that had been depressed somewhat by the economic fallout of the coronavirus pandemic.
The Yankees’ concession was related to LeMahieu’s age. He turns 33 in July, which means the team will be paying him an average of $15 million annually through the end of 2026, by which point he will be 38.
Of course, if LeMahieu becomes unproductive in the late stages of his career, the Yankees, with their vast resources, can afford to carry him — particularly at such a relatively low salary. But it is still jarring, in the age of financial flexibility, to see a team overextend in terms of years to sign a player who is soon entering his mid-30s, and it is a safe assumption that, all other things considered, the Yankees would have preferred a shorter deal. Just as LeMahieu chose guaranteed dollars over average annual salary, the Yankees chose the opposite.Ultimately, LeMahieu with the Yankees was a marriage both sides wanted to extend. It took them long enough to figure it out, and neither side got everything it wanted, but they ultimately found common ground and worked out a solution. Which, come to think of it, is pretty much the definition of a marriage.