You Can Observe A Lot By Watching: What I've Learned About Teamwork From the Yankees and Life (Hardcover)

by Yogi Berra (Author), Dave H. Kaplan (Contributor)
Key Phrases: straight championships, good teammate, World Series, Mickey Mantle, Red Sox (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Notorious for his run-ins with the English language, baseball great Berra has become an improbably prolific author. He and coauthor Kaplan follow up 2002's What Time Is It? You Mean Now? with this charming, if meandering, book about teamwork. In anecdote after anecdote about his legendary career with the Yankees, his not-so-legendary career as a manager, and his days growing up on the streets of St. Louis, Berra shows how respect and cooperation made him a success on the field and in life. Lessons include the importance of punctuality, owning one's mistakes, and a positive attitude. For better or worse, nuggets of wisdom ("Never give an opponent added motivation") are buried beneath a mountain of less-than-insightful sports ephemera (Derek Jeter is "a good leader because he always knows and does what's right"). Still, Berra's optimism and wry, absurdist sense of humor make it a fast read that should resonate with fans; as one would expect, Berra includes plenty of well-meaning advice in his signature, well-near-meaningless style: "Unless you have an excuse, there's no excuse."
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Review
Notorious for his run-ins with the English language, baseball great Berra has become an improbably prolific author. He and coauthor Kaplan follow up 2002’s What Time Is It? You Mean Now? with this charming, if meandering, book about teamwork. In anecdote after anecdote about his legendary career with the Yankees, his not-so-legendary career as a manager, and his days growing up on the streets of St. Louis, Berra shows how respect and cooperation made him a success on the field and in life. Lessons include the importance of punctuality, owning one’s mistakes, and a positive attitude. For better or worse, nuggets of wisdom (“Never give an opponent added motivation”) are buried beneath a mountain of less-than-insightful sports ephemera (Derek Jeter is “a good leader because he always knows and does what’s right”). Still, Berra’s optimism and wry, absurdist sense of humor make it a fast read that should resonate with fans; as one would expect, Berra includes plenty of well-meaning advice in his signature, well-near-meaningless style: “Unless you have an excuse, there’s no excuse.” (May) (Publishers Weekly, June 2008)

"...[it] offers nearly half a century's distilled wisdom on the subject of teammates and the value of team play from the biggest winner (14 pennants and 10 World Series rings) in baseball history..." (YouCanObserveSyn, April 13, 2008)

"...[it] offers nearly half a century's distilled wisdom on the subject of teammates and the value of team play from the biggest winner (14 pennants and 10 World Series rings) in baseball history..." (Post Dispatch (St Louis), April 6, 2008)

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Wiley (May 12, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0470079924
• ISBN-13: 978-0470079928
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #91,429 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Yogi again surprise with his insight and real wisdom, September 24, 2008

By	Michael R. Chernick "statman31147" (Holland PA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is a little different. It is not filled with Yogi quotes like in the book "I Never said half the things I said" but it does have his typical humor. It is a great book for a Yankee fan like me who followed and watched the great Yankee teams of the 50s and 60s that Yogi played on. The theme of the book is that too many modern players are selfish and that no matter how great an individual player might be it takes team work and unselfishness by the whole team to make a champion. Yogi describes this in players like Mantle, Ford, Reynolds and DiMaggio from his era but he also sees it in guys like Paul O'Neill and Scott Brosius from the 1998 Yankees, perhaps the best baseball team ever! I wasn't expecting it but Yogi also saw it in the 2004 Red Sox and pointed to an unselfish act by Tim Wakefield that he thought was the key to their comeback against the Yankees. It was not something that many fans or broadcasters would have noticed but Terry Francona and his Red Sox teammates did.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This is true Yogi!, July 31, 2008

By	Ronald W. Belscher (Centre, AL) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

We need to have every young ballplayer read, and hopefully understand the message that Yogi is passing on based on his years of experience! Team work is as important now as it was back "in the day" and the young individuals of today need to understand that.

It is a great book, well worth the time to read.

5.0 out of 5 stars The Best Book Dealing With Teamwork, Period!, June 3, 2009

By	M. Fisher (Yukon, Oklahoma United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: You Can Observe A Lot By Watching: What I've Learned About Teamwork From the Yankees and Life (Paperback)

If everyone dealing with sports, professional or kids, were to read this, then perhaps the world of sports wouldn't be in the mess it is today. Yogi Berra deals out something the world has been short on for a long, long time . . . common sense. And it's refreshing to read. His other books are chock full of it, and this one deals in particular with the necessity of teamwork as only Yogi can tell it. And no one knows the importance better than Yogi, who has more World Series rings than anyone and is a D-Day survivor. We need to do more than read his books, we need to learn his lessons. Yogi is a Hall of Famer in baseball, true, but his books prove to us that he is a Hall of Famer in life as well, and a life's model to us all.