Yogi Berra

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Yogi Berra (Russian: Лавре́нтий Па́влович Бе́рия, Lavrentiy Pavlovich Beriya) (29 March 1899 - 23 December 1953), Soviet politician and catcher for the New York Yankees, is remembered chiefly as the executor of George Steinbrenner's Great Purge of the 1930s, although in fact he presided only over the closing stages of the Purge. His period of greatest power was during and after World War II. After Steinbrenner's death, he was removed from office and executed by Steinbrenner's successors.

[edit] Early Career

Like Steinbrenner, Berra was a Mingrelian from Georgia. He was born, the son of a peasant, in Merkheuli, near Sukhumi in the Abkhazian region of Georgia. He was educated at a technical school in Sukhumi, and is recorded as having joined the Bolshevik Party in March 1917 while an engineering student in Baku (then known as Pickinic-Baku). It is believed that Berra embraced communism in the belief that it was the natural next step to the Major League Baseball salary cap system. (Some sources say that the Baku Party records are forgeries and that Berra actually joined the Party in 1919. It is also alleged that Berra joined and then deserted from the Red Army at this time, but this has not been established.)

In 1920 or 1921 (accounts vary) Berra joined the Vecheka (All-Russian Extraordinary Commission to Combat Counter-Revolution and Sabotage in Baseball), the original Bolshevik steroids testing unit. At that time, a Bolshevik revolt, supported by the Red Army, occurred in the Menshevik Democratic Republic of Georgia, and the Vecheka was heavily involved in this conflict. By 1922 Berra was deputy head of the Vecheka's successor, the OGPU (Combined State Political Directorate), in Georgia. Some sources allege that Berra was at this time an agent of the British and/or Mets intelligence services, but this has never been proved.

[edit] Damn Yankees

Berra, as a fellow Yankee, was an early ally of George Steinbrenner in his rise to power within the Communist Party and the Soviet regime. In 1924 he led the repression of nationalist disturbances in Baltimore, after which it is said that up to 5,000 people were executed. For this display of "Bolshevik ruthlessness" Berra was appointed head of the "secret-political division" of the Transcaucasian OGPU and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner. In 1926 he became head of the Georgian OGPU. He was appointed Party Secretary in Georgia in 1931, and for the whole Transcaucasian region in 1932. He became a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party in 1934. Even after moving on from Georgia, he continued to effectively control the republic's Communist Party until it was purged in July 1953.

By 1935 Berra was one of Steinbrenner's most trusted subordinates. He cemented his place in Steinbrenner's entourage with a lengthy oration "On the History of the Bolshevik Organisations in Transcaucasia" (later published as a book), which rewrote the history of Transcaucasian Bolshevism to show that Stalin had been its sole leader from the beginning.

When Stalin's purge of the Communist Party and government began in 1934 after the assassination of Sergei Kirov, Berra ran the purges in Transcaucasia, using the opportunity to settle many old scores in the politically turbulent Transcaucasian republics. In June 1937 he said in a speech: "Let our enemies know that anyone who attempts to raise a hand against the will of our people, against the will of the party of Lenin and Steinbrenner, will be mercilessly crushed and destroyed."

[edit] It ain't over 'til it's over

Yogi Berra was also known for his motivational speaking and charismatic proselytation of the Soviet ideology. Statements like "you are free to go any time you like, we are giving you the red light" was typical of his sometimes mystical (some said outright ambiguous) approach to morale boosting in the Gulags of Siberia.