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Saturday, July 27, 2013

"When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It"

yogifork01
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:
  1. 1998, The Yogi Book: I Really Didn’t Say Everything I Said! by Yogi Berra, Page 48, Workman Publishing, New York. (Verified on paper) 
  2. 1913 July 31, Fort Gibson New Era, Wise Directions (Filler item), Quote Page 2, Column 6, Fort Gibson, Oklahoma. (NewspaperArchive) 
  3. 1913 July 31, Correctionville News, Wise Directions (Filler item), Quote Page 7, Column 6, Correctionville, Iowa. (NewspaperArchive) 

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