By George F. Will

The 18-year-old US Navy enlistee, thinking it sounded less boring than the dull training he was doing in 1944, volunteered for service on what he thought an officer had called "rocket ships." Actually, they were small, slow, vulnerable boats used as launching pads for rockets to give close-in support for troops assaulting beaches.

The service on those boats certainly was not boring. At dawn on June 6, 1944, that sailor was a few hundred yards off Omaha Beach. Lawrence Peter Berra, who died Tuesday at 90, had a knack for being where the action was. Because he stood — when he stood; as a catcher, he spent a lot of time crouching at baseball's most physically and mentally demanding position — 5 feet 7 inches, he confirmed the axiom that the beauty of baseball is that a player does not need to be 7 feet tall or 7 feet wide. The shortstop during Yogi's first Yankee years was an even smaller Italian-American, 150-pound Phil Rizzuto, listed at a generous 5 feet 6.

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Source: http://nypost.com/