A popular Father’s Day present is taking Dad for a round of golf.
Going back a few years, this writer composed a piece for a magazine called “Jersey Golfer” on “Father’s Day with Yogi Berra,” as told through his third son, Dale.
The interview was done at the Yogi Berra Museum in Little Falls, N.J., which is worth visiting if you are a baseball aficionado. Unless you are so much an anti-Yankees fan that you dislike Lawrence Peter Berra, then you probably would enjoy the museum’s memorabilia. The interview with Dale went well, primarily because it was being taped for the Jersey Golfer website.
My job was to take notes and use them to write a story for the magazine, which I did. The interview lasted a little more than a half hour, as Dale explained how he and his father played frequently, including Father’s Day, at the Montclair Golf Club, located in West Orange, N.J., which is where Yogi spent many a day golfing, playing cards and hanging out in the men’s locker room.
It should be noted that Yogi was a “locker room rat.” After his retirement from playing and managing, during the offseason, he would drive from his Montclair home to Yankee Stadium, where he would sit in the Yankees’ locker room playing cards with members of the grounds crew.
The Yogi Berra Museum is part of Yogi Berra Stadium, where the New Jersey Jackals of the Can-Am League play their home games. It is located on the campus of Montclair State University, which uses the field and stadium for its home baseball games.
When the interview was concluded, the publisher of Jersey Golfer, Carmel Kerr, attempted to persuade Dale Berra to get Yogi Berra to give us a few minutes which would give the interview some more juice. Dale quickly responded that his father was unavailable.
Unbeknownst to Dale Berra, this writer was seated during the interview in a position to look into the next room. In that room, chatting on the telephone part of the time, sipping coffee and smoking cigarettes the majority of the time, was the esteemed Yogi Berra. Unavailable, he was not.
Dale Berra and his brother, Tim, were managing Yogi’s business life at that time, and they probably were reluctant to give any of their father’s time to anyone for free. Father’s Day or not, Yogi was not going to be paid for an interview, so that was a wrap.
“I remember asking if we could speak with Yogi,” Kerr said of that meeting in the spring of 2007, “but Dale was very protective of his father.”
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The Maine Chapter of the New England PGA held a Senior-Junior Championship June 14 at Fox Ridge, in which Bob Smestad of The Ledges and Bob Darling of Fox Ridge finished third (38-33—71. 1-under), which was one stroke behind the two teams that shared the championship. In fifth place was the tandem of Ron Bibeau of First Tee of Maine and Kyle Bourassa of Martindale (38-37—75), and tied for six was Greg Baker of Toddy Brook and Nick Glicos of Martindale (38-38-—76).
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The Maine State Golf Association held one of its Mid-Week events June 14 at The Woodlands, which resulted in Martindale’s Andrew Slattery winning the gross championship of Flight 1 with a 73/71. Slattery’s team of Don Flanagan, Craig Chapman and Jeff Leonardo also captured the team gross with 64/58.
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The MSGA will be conducting a Senior Tour event June 20 at Old Marsh. Then it will run a pair of Maine State Amateur qualifying events June 21 at Poland Spring and June 23 at Penobscot Valley. The MSGA will take its Weekend Tournament June 24-25 to Sunday River.
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