Yogi Berra, the host of the 2010 Bob Hope Classic, spent part of Tuesday squinting into television lights, smiling for cameras and shaking hands.
His golf game is lousy, Berra said, but on the eve of the first round of the tour’s only five-day pro-am, the Yankees great handled reporters’ questions the way he did pitches from Whitey Ford some 50 years ago — deftly.
Jackie Robinson did not steal home plate on him in the 1955 World Series.
“He was out!” Berra said with emphasis.
The home run by Pittsburgh’s Bill Mazeroski in the bottom of the ninth to win the 1960 World Series might not have happened if manager Casey Stengel had not started Art Ditmar in Game 7.
“He shoulda started Whitey [Ford],” Berra said.
And should Mark McGwire, who last week admitted he used steroids during his record-breaking home run season of 1998, get into the Hall of Fame?
“I think it’s going to be pretty rough for him to get in the Hall of Fame, I really do,” Berra said. “Just like Pete Rose, you know, he’s got tough sledding.”
At 84, Berra moves slower, but his mind does not. Almost 12 years of denial by McGwire were just too many, Berra said.
“I think he waited a little too long to announce it,” Berra said. “If he’d done it at the beginning, he might have a chance to get in.”
Berra pointed to the Yankees left-hander Andy Pettitte and the former Yankee Jason Giambi, who were forgiven after timely admissions of drug use.
“Say, like Pettitte did,” he said. “He admitted it. If you admit it, it would be all right. Like Giambi, the same way. You admit it right away.”
Berra cheered when the Yankees won the World Series last year. He was circumspect about any comparisons with Yankees teams on which he played.
“We won five in a row there,” he said. “I played 17 years, and I was in 14 of them. So we must have had pretty good teams.”
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