This Baseball Legend Was Right in the Middle of the Historic D-Day

​Article by: Peter Caceci

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Today, June 6, 2019, marks the 75th anniversary of the infamous D-Day landings. Over 70,000 American soldiers took part in what was the beginning of a long and grueling campaign against tyrannical forces.  What does this topic have to do with Heated Sports?  Well, one of the greatest catchers in the history of baseball took it upon himself to help fight for his country, Yogi Berra.

Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra, a 13 time World Series champion as both a player and manager, served as a gunner’s mate in the Normandy landings.  From here, he was part of a six-man crew on a Navy rocket boat that would fire rockets and machine gun ordinance at the German defenses trying to repel the soldiers on the beach.  Yogi Berra would later be discharged from the military at the end of the war, serving a total of 3 years in active service.

Following his heroic actions to help preserve the freedoms of the American people, Yogi was later called up to the New York Yankees in 1946.  Despite his short 5’7” stature as a catcher, he would prove that size did not matter even then by being a strong defensive player and a slugger.  Following his tenure in baseball, Yogi’s statistics as a player were .285 batting average, 358 home runs, and 1,430 RBIs.  Along with those stats, he would also appear in more than 100 games in each of the fourteen years that he played, as well as play in 14 World Series, a record that is current to this day.

The members of Heated Sports would like to thank the soldiers who gave everything they could on top of their service on that long and violent day.  Being a player in a major league sport is easy, as well as writing up articles about such players, in comparison to fighting for the good of mankind like baseball legend Yogi Berra.

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