Storytime With Sweeny: Yogi Berra And Luis Castillo’s Dropped Pop-Up

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One of the most memorable games I’ve covered was the 2009 Subway Series game that ended with Luis Castillo’s dropped pop-up.

Yankees and Mets fans remember this well, I’m sure. Friday night, June 12, two outs, two on in the ninth, Mets leading 8-7.  Francisco Rodriguez gets Alex Rodriguez to pop to short right field for what looks to be the final out of the game and a Mets win.  But Castillo, the second baseman, drops the ball. Derek Jeter and Mark Teixeira, both running with two outs, race around the bases, and the Yankees win 9-8 on one of the craziest walk-off wins you’ll ever see.

My favorite part of this actually took place the next day.  Standing in the Yankees clubhouse, I saw Yogi Berra walk into the entrance near Jeter’s locker. Yogi would come by about once a homestand back then for a pregame visit. 

I wondered what Yogi thought of the ending the night before.  With all the baseball he had seen in his life, I wondered if he remembered seeing anything like that before.

Yogi Berra in 2007Nancy Ostertag/Getty Images

“Hey Yogi, what did you think of the end of the game last night?” I asked. “Crazy, huh?”

Yogi grinned a devilish grin, grabbed my arm like he had been waiting all day for someone to ask him that question, and with a twinkle in his eye said, “It ain’t over till it’s over.”

You haven’t lived until you get a Yogi-ism face-to-face.

You can listen to the rebroadcast of the aforementioned 2009 Yankees-Mets game at 7 p.m. Wednesday on WFAN.
Follow Sweeny on Twitter at @YankeesWFAN.