Friday, May 12, 2006

 

Spotlight: Happy 81st birthday to one of baseball's greatest catchers and managers, Yogi Berra, known as much for his ... interesting way of expressing himself, as he is for his baseball prowess. Three times the American League's MVP, Berra was the first manager to lead both an AL team (NY Yankees) and a NL team (NY Mets) to the World Series. Along the way, he inadvertently entertained with his Yogiisms. Berra's comment about them? "I never said most of the things I said."

Quote: "You gotta be careful if you don't know where you're going, otherwise you might not get there." – Yogi Berra

Today in History:

• odometer: invented by pioneer William Clayton (1847)
• Berlin blockade: ended after nearly a year (1949)
• hurricanes: US Dept. of Commerce announced storms would no longer be named after women only (1978)

Today's Birthdays:

• Florence Nightingale: mother of modern nursing and first woman to be awarded the Order of Merit (1820-1910)
• Burt Bacharach: American composer, "Raindrops Keep Fallin' on My Head" (77)
• Sawyer & Sullivan Sweeten: twin brothers Geoffrey and Michael Barone on Everybody Loves Raymond (11)

Word of the Day:  pleonasm: redundancy; many of Yogi Berra's most memorable quotes were pleonastic: "It's déjà vu all over again," "I never make predictions, especially about the future."   (© )