Yogi Berra? Apocryphal?
Dear Quote Investigator: Yogi Berra was a brilliant baseball player and manager. He is also famous for his comically wise sayings which are known as ‘Yogiisms’. This is my favorite on the topic of making decisions:
When you come to a fork in the road, take it.
Is this an authentic Yogiism?
Quote Investigator: This precise quotation was printed in the salient 1998 work “The Yogi Book: I Really Didn’t Say Everything I Said!”, and its author Yogi Berra provided some context for his statement: 1
I was giving Joe Garagiola directions from New York to our house in Montclair when I said this.
Garagiola was a long-time friend of Berra and a fellow baseball player.
Intriguingly, this same statement was used as part of a joke that was printed in several U.S. newspapers one hundred years ago in 1913. The humor was based on wordplay and referenced the additional meaning of ‘fork’ as a dining utensil: 2 3
Wise Directions“When you come to a fork in the road, take it.”
“I will, if it is a silver one.”
Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.
Notes:
- 1998, The Yogi Book: I Really Didn’t Say Everything I Said! by Yogi Berra, Page 48, Workman Publishing, New York. (Verified on paper) ↩
- 1913 July 31, Fort Gibson New Era, Wise Directions (Filler item), Quote Page 2, Column 6, Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. (NewspaperArchive) ↩
- 1913 July 31, Correctionville News, Wise Directions (Filler item), Quote Page 7, Column 6, Correctionville, Iowa. (NewspaperArchive) ↩
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