You Can’t Think and Hit at the Same Time

Yogi Berra? Bucky Harris? Eddie Froelich? Apocryphal?

Dear Quote Investigator: The New York Times magazine recently highlighted a quotation from a Hall of Fame baseball player:^[1]2011 June 26, New York Times, For Derek Jeter, on His 37th Birthday by Michael Sokolove, Page MM28, Section: Sunday Magazine, New York. (Published online 2011 June 23; Accessed online at New York … Continue reading

“How can you think and hit at the same time?” Yogi Berra once said, which like many of the quotes attributed to the former Yankees catcher, even the malapropisms, contains an essential truth. You can’t think and hit because there’s not time for both.

Did Yogi really say this, or do people simply believe that he should have said it?

Quote Investigator: The evidence is not completely clear because Yogi himself has made confusing pronouncements about this saying. The earliest citation known to QI appeared in an article by “The New York Times” sports writer Arthur Daley published in June 1947. Bucky Harris who was Yogi Berra’s manager selected him to perform as a pinch-hitter, and Harris attempted to give Yogi some mental advice. Emphasis added to excerpts by QI:^[2] 1947 June 12, New York Times, Short Shots in Sundry Directions by Arthur Daley, Quote Page 34, Column 7, New York. (ProQuest)

“You, Yogi,” snapped Bucky. “Go in there and hit. I realize that you’re in a slump, but you aren’t thinking enough at the plate. Think before you pick out a ball. Make sure it’s good before you swing. Think!”

The Yankee manager gave his hero a brisk pat on the back and sent him into the fray. Yogi struck out most inelegantly and stamped angrily back to the bench, muttering away to himself in a corner of the dug-out. After a while the curious Bucky wandered down and listened to him.

Yogi was repeating over and over, “How can a guy hit and think at the same time?”

Interestingly, this initial version of the quotation used the phrase “hit and think” instead of “think and hit”. Yogi expressed skepticism about the story in his 1961 autobiography, and he revisited the topic in 1998. These excerpts from Yogi are given further below.

Here are additional selected citations in chronological order.

In August 1947 an Associated Press newswire story reported this version of the tale:^[3] 1947 August 1, Mason City Globe-Gazette, Prize Yarns in the World of Baseball by Jack Hand, [Associated Press], Page 9, Column 8, Mason City, Iowa. (NewspaperArchive)

They tell a story about Larry “Yogi” Berra, the New York Yankees’ new No. 1 catcher and his Manager Bucky Harris. Yogi is known as a bad ball hitter and Bucky decided to do something about it.

“Think when you get up there,” he told Berra. “Make the pitcher come in with the ball. Don’t be too eager. Make him get it over. Think. Think.” Berra went to the plate and took 3 called strikes. He walked to the dugout and sat down.

“How can anybody think and hit at the same time,” he mumbled.

In September 1947 the sports reporter Arthur Daley told another version of the anecdote that differed slightly from his June article. Daley altered the phrase in the quotation from “hit and think” to “think and hit”:^[4] 1947 September 30, New York Times, Sports of the Times: Waiting for the World Series by Arthur Daley, Page 30, New York. (ProQuest)

This 22-year-old vest-pocket size Hercules has true baseball instincts. He doesn’t even have to think. There was, for instance, the time Harris sent him in as a pinch-hitter with instructions to think while he was at bat. “Think, think, think,” urged Bucky. Berra fanned ingloriously and returned to the bench muttering to himself, “How can a guy think and hit at the same time?” That’s the colorful Yogi for you.

In June of 1948 a former Yankee trainer told another version of the story. In this spirited tale Yogi was so aggravated that he went beyond “muttering to himself.” He broke his bat on the bat rack:^[5] 1948 June 12, Christian Science Monitor, In The Dugout with Rumill, Page 16, Boston, Massachusetts. (ProQuest)

“That reminds me,” said Red Sox trainer Eddie Froelich, formerly with the Yankees. … “He [Yogi] was swinging at anything. Finally, Bucky Harris told him one day: ‘Wait until the ball comes over the plate. Take a base on balls once in a while. Start thinking up there.’

“Well, the very next time Berra went to bat he stood there and took three strikes right through the middle,” Eddie said. “He came storming back to the bench and broke his bat on the bat rack. ‘What happened?’ somebody asked him. ‘What happened!’ Yogi yelled. ‘How can you expect a guy to think and hit at the same time!'”

In October 1948 “The Washington Post” printed this version of the story:^[6] 1948 October 30, Washington Post, This Morning With Shirley Povich, Page 13, Washington, D.C. (ProQuest)

Harris even attempted to improve Berra’s hitting by telling Yogi not to let the pitchers outguess him. “Think while you’re up there,” Harris pleaded. Whereupon Berra took a third strike and came back to the bench moaning, “How ya gonna think and hit at the same time?”

Similar stories continued to appear in newspapers in the 1950s and later. But when Yogi Berra published an autobiography in 1961 he made a very different claim:^[7] 1961, Yogi: The Autobiography of a Professional Baseball Player by Yogi Berra and Ed Fitzgerald, Page 12-13, Doubleday & Company, Inc., Garden City, New York. (Verified on paper)

Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between the stories that are true and the ones that are made up. For instance, Bucky Harris is supposed to have told me, when he was our manager in 1947, that I would never be as good a hitter as I should be unless I stopped swinging at bad balls and made the pitcher come in with it. “You’ve got to think when you’re up there,” they say he told me. And after I struck out the next time, I’m supposed to have come back to the dugout complaining, “How the hell can you think and hit at the same time?” But I never said it.

In 1985 Ed Fitzgerald, the co-author of the 1961 Yogi book, wrote a memoir. Fitzgerald was a newspaper reporter, magazine editor, and publishing executive, e.g., president of the Book-of-the-Month Club. He interviewed Berra extensively during the writing of the 1961 book:^[8] 1985, A Nickel an Inch: A Memoir by Ed Fitzgerald, Page 100, Atheneum, New York. (Verified on paper)

Sometimes it isn’t easy to find out if a story is true or not, even when you go to the horse’s mouth. Yogi said he didn’t remember it, but he probably did say back there in ’47 that Bill Dickey was learning him all his experience. But he doubts that he ever told Bucky Harris, his first Yankee manager, what he’s supposed to have said when the manager told him to stop swinging at so many bad pitches. “You have to think up there,” Bucky told him. “Aah,” the storybook Berra said, “how can you think and hit at the same time?”

But that is not the last word from Yogi. In 1998 he authored a compact entertaining book called “The Yogi Book” that collected authentic Yogi-isms and combined them with his brief commentary. Berra claimed that the saying was his, but when he spoke it he was not playing for the Yankees:^[9] 1998, “The Yogi book: I Really Didn’t Say Everything I Said!” by Yogi Berra, Page 13, Workman Publishing, New York. (Verified on paper)

“You can’t think and hit at the same time.”

If you ask me, this is true with any sport. I said it in 1946 when I was with the Newark Bears playing Triple A. My manager told me not to swing at balls out of the strike zone. He said, “Yogi, next time you’re up, think about what you’re doing.” I struck out in three pitches!

In 2009 a biography of Yogi by Allen Barra was published, and the author reported that Yogi did make the remark. The reasoning behind the quotation was given by Yogi:^[10] 2009, Yogi Berra: Eternal Yankee by Allen Barra, Page xxxv and 65, W. W. Norton & Company, New York. (Verified on paper)

As he phrased it in a Q&A session at the 1998 Montclair Booktober Fest, “You do your thinking before you get up to bat. We used to spend a lot of time before the games talking about certain pitchers, what they threw, and what was the best way to hit them in certain situations. We did a lot or talking and a lot of thinking about hitting. We just didn’t stand there thinking when we were up to bat.”

In conclusion, QI believes that Yogi Berra probably did make a remark of this type. The earliest citation in June 1947 is told from the perspective of Bucky Harris, and QI conjectures that Harris told the story to Arthur Daley who printed it. Daley gave two different versions of the quotation, and QI suggests using the June 1947 version.

(In Memoriam: Many thanks to my brother Steve for raising this question and motivating this exploration. Great thanks to Barry Popik who located the important June 12, 1947 citation.)

Update History: On November 14, 2016 the citation dated June 12, 1947 was added to the article. The article was reorganized and the conclusion was rewritten. In addition, the footnote style was changed to numeric.