Joe Garagiola grew up at 5446 Elizabeth Avenue in the Italian immigrant Hill section of St. Louis. Yogi Berra grew up directly across the street at 5447. “He was my best friend,” Garagiola told me. “I’d come out of the house and if I sat on my porch long enough here he comes.”

I called Garagiola last Thursday to talk about his childhood with his buddy Lawdie, formerly known as but never called Lawrence. Berra had died about 36 hours earlier, a fact so overwhelming that Garagiola was not prepared to believe it even though Larry Berra, the oldest of Yogi’s three sons, had called to tell him minutes after Yogi died.

When did you last talk to him? I asked Garagiola.

“I haven’t talked to him in a while,” said Garagiola, at 89 nine months younger than the 90-year-old Berra.

“It’s been a tough week,” Garagiola said. “I got calls on Monday that a couple of friends died.”

“I did not need that piece of news,” he added, speaking of Berra’s death. “Had he been sick? That’s a shocker. It’s sad news but it’s reality. He was my best friend. I can’t remember not knowing him. He was a great guy to grow up with. We’ll miss him. Baseball will miss him.”

Recalling the young Berra, Garagiola said, “Even as a kid he was a great player. He could hit the ball when he was 10. He could always hit. I remember a game at Roosevelt High School. The manager of the other team was riding him something fierce. There were two hills beyond the outfield, and pretty soon he hit one on top of the second hill. As he rounded third he said to the guy who was riding him. ‘How do you like that one?’ That was the only time I ever heard him say something to somebody. He was always polite, never gave you the evil eye.”

Berra was “very popular at the playground,” Garagiola said, and “could play any sport.” He said Berra would always be the first player chosen in pickup games. That went for street games, too. “That’s where you found out about a kid – on the street. Wherever he went – and I went with him – everybody knew him.”

Garagiola recalled one other Berra trait. “He always had time for people,” he said.

No official cause of Berra’s death was given, but from a description of his health problems I was given by a close friend of many years it seemed likely that congestive heart failure was at least a contributing factor. His friend said he also suffered terrible back pain.

In his 18 years as an all-star catcher and sometimes outfielder, the squat, 5-foot, 7 ½-inch Berra was not a role model for anyone who wanted to epitomize physical beauty. Some people, in fact, said he resembled a gnome. Post-retirement, though, Berra became engrossed with exercise, thanks to John McMullen, long-time neighbor in Montclair, N.J., and one-time owner of the Houston Astros and employer of Berra as a coach.

“John put him on a diet and got him exercising every day,” Fay Vincent, the former baseball commissioner, related. “He got him to quit smoking. He lost weight and gave up smoking. John had a big influence on Yogi.”

McMullen, who died in 2005, and Berra seemed to be an unlikely couple, but McMullen’s wife, Jacqueline, said,” Yogi latched onto John in the best terms. He gravitated to John and relied on John a lot. They came here every Christmas eve and we’d have cocktails.”

Jackie McMullen and Carmen Berra were close friends until Mrs. Berra died last year after having been married to Yogi for 65 years. Now Mrs. McMullen is the only member remaining from the Montclair quartet.

“She was so responsible for Yogi’s career,” Mrs. McMullen said, not meaning that Carmen hit any of his 358 home runs or drove in any of his 1,430 runs batted in. “Yogi depended on her completely.”

Berra, though, did all right on his own and was especially adept in baseball matters. He was far more intelligent and knew a lot more than he got credit for. And I had an experience with him that demonstrated how quick he was on his feet. It is probably my most vivid personal memory of Yogi.

I don’t remember exactly when it occurred or what question I asked him that prompted Berra to do what he did. He was managing the Mets at the time, and they were playing at Shea Stadium that night. It was before the game, and I was talking to Berra in his office. We started walking through the clubhouse so he could go to the dugout and the field.

I asked what I guess – or at least what Yogi thought – was a tough question. As soon as I asked it, Berra stopped walking and said he had left something he needed in his office. Making a U-turn, he headed back to his office. I stayed where we had reached in the clubhouse and waited for Berra to return. And waited and waited and waited.

After I don’t know how many minutes, I realized I had been had. Berra hadn’t forgotten anything. He didn’t want to answer my question, and that was his way of avoiding it. He had another exit from his office, and he used it. He took another path to the dugout and left me standing alone in the middle of the clubhouse. And some people thought Yogi was dumb.

Another memorable moment occurred in 1985, though in this one Berra was not the central figure. He was more a supporting actor. His son, Dale, was the leading actor.

It was August, and I was working with another New York Times reporter, Michael Goodwin, on a series of articles about cocaine in baseball. It was the summer of drug trials in Pittsburgh, and Dale Berra, then a 28-year-old Yankees’ third baseman, was deeply implicated as a witness who would testify about his acquisition and use of cocaine.

The four-part series, which would become the runner-up for a Pulitzer Prize, was running in the Times that week. Seeing Berra in the Yankees’ clubhouse before a game, I asked him if he had told Yogi about his involvement with cocaine and the trial. He said he had not.

Dale, I said, speaking more like a parent than a reporter because I knew how I would feel if it were my son, the article about you will be in the newspaper this week. Do you want your father to find out about you and cocaine by reading about it or directly from you? He mumbled something about telling Yogi, but I wasn’t convinced and I never found out what he did or how Yogi reacted to the news, however he learned it.

His former teammates and colleagues loved to tell Yogi stories. McMullen had one, too.

“One day we were in the room reading,” Brown once told me. “I had to take an exam when I got back to medical school that fall so I was reading ‘Boyd’s Pathology.’ Yogi was reading a comic book of some sort. We both finished about the same time and Yogi asked, ‘How did yours come out?’”

Mike Ferraro was a member of the Yankees’ coaching staff with Berra and became a chronicler of Berra’s bon mots, including:

“We were ordering jackets from a guy in California and I asked Yogi if he wanted any. He said, ‘Order me a navy blue and a navy brown.’”

“Dale was watching a Steve McQueen movie on television sometime after McQueen died and Yogi came in. He said: ‘Gee, that’s Steve McQueen. He must have still been alive when he made that movie.’”

“We were playing golf in Florida and Yogi was talking about putting. He said: ‘Ninety percent of the balls that fall short of the hole don’t go in. The other 10 percent, the wind blows them in.’”

Many such remarks are attributed to Berra, but they are the creation of others. It’s an easy exercise to embellish the legendary literature of the former player, coach, manager, three-time most valuable player and Hall of Famer:

Yogi gets home, and Carmen tells him, “I saw ‘Dr. Zhivago’ this afternoon.” Yogi asks her, “What’s wrong with you now?”

Did that happen?

“No, that wasn’t true,” he told me, a broad grin nevertheless revealing his own enjoyment of the story. “That’s false. That is false.”

How about the one about a restaurant where Berra supposedly remarked, “It’s too crowded; nobody goes there anymore.”

“I said that,” he acknowledged.

Then there was this exchange heard and related by Fay Vincent at Larry Doby’s funeral in 2003.

Ralph Branca, the former major league pitcher, said to Berra, “It’s very nice of you to come to Doby’s funeral.” Berra replied, “I go to your funeral so you’ll come to mine.”

THIS ROSE HAS NEVER SMELLED SWEET

The end is nigh for Pete Rose. That is, the end of the Pete Rose saga is near.

Rose met with Commissioner Rob Manfred last Thursday in his bid to gain reinstatement to Major League Baseball, which he agreed to leave in 1989 as a result of his betting on games when he was managing the Cincinnati Reds.

Besides his violation of Major League rule 21, which prohibits betting on baseball, Rose has to overcome 15 years of lying about his betting generally and additional years of lying about specifics of his betting, such as his claim that he never placed bets from the manager’s office.

It is so unlikely that Manfred will restore Rose to MLB’s good graces that I refuse to say it can’t happen. I don’t believe it will and I don’t think it should happen, but I’ll be patient and wait for Manfred’s decision, which he said he will make by the end of the calendar year.

His predecessor, Bud Selig, received a Rose application for reinstatement in 1997 and never acted on it, letting it languish in a desk drawer or a file cabinet for 17 or 18 years. Maybe that was Selig’s way of telling Rose this is what you deserve, but more likely it was just Selig’s typical way of dealing with decisions he didn’t want to have to make and preferred to leave to the next guy.

As far as De Jon Watson knows, no team that seeks or expects to seek a general manager has asked his employer, the Arizona Diamondbacks, for permission to talk to him about filling its need. Tony La Russa, the Diamondbacks’ chief baseball officer, confirmed Watson’s knowledge Saturday.

Watson, the Diamondbacks’ senior vice president of baseball operations and their third ranking baseball executive, is also their second ranking black baseball executive behind General Manager Dave Stewart.

Given Watson’s vast experience and impressive resume, he should be highly considered for one of the many vacancies Major League Baseball teams have and will have in the next month or so. That Watson has been ignored to this point doesn’t speak well for Commissioner Rob Manfred’s stated effort to enhance minority hiring for decision-making positions.

The Watson situation prompted one executive to speculate on the reason. “Maybe,” he said with a touch of cynicism, “they’re afraid they wouldn’t be able to come up with an excuse not to hire him.”

“He’s at the top of the minority list,” the executive added.

Apparently, though, white guys continue to have an advantage over minorities. While Watson can’t even get an interview, Billy Eppler, the Yankees’ white assistant general manager, is soon to become the Angels’ general manager.

Eppler had interviews with the Angels this year and in 2011 and with the Mariners this year. A major league executive told me Saturday evening Eppler is getting the Angels’ job.

Eppler, in his 16^th year in baseball, will replace Bill Stoneman, the Angels’ retired general manager, who returned as interim general manager during the summer after Jerry Dipoto resigned in a power struggle with veteran manager Mike Scioscia.

In an upcoming change, the Athletics plan to elevate celebrity general manager Billy Beane to a loftier titled position while removing assistant from David Forst’s assistant general manager title. The A’s are promoting the pair to avoid losing Forst, who very likely would be in demand elsewhere as general manager.

Beane will very likely be named president of baseball operations, a relatively new title that is held by Theo Epstein of the Cubs, Michael Hill of the Marlins, Andrew Friedman of the Dodgers, Jon Daniels of the Rangers, Mike Rizzo of the Nationals, John Hart of the Braves, Walt Jocketty of the Reds and Dave Dombrowski of the Red Sox.

In reality, the president of baseball operations performs the general manager’s duties while the general manager is essentially the assistant general manager.

In other developments at the top level of baseball’s front offices, Seattle fired Jack Zduriencik, Philadelphia dismissed Ruben Amaro Jr., Ben Cherington either left or was let go by Boston, Doug Melvin is relinquishing his position as baseball operations president with Milwaukee and Jeffrey Loria, the Miami owner, has to decide if Dan Jennings will remain the team’s manager, return to the general manager’s office or leave altogether.

Those vacancies should create enough openings to give owners opportunities to hire an African-American or a Latino, but minorities and advocates of their hiring should not expect such a development. Watson would welcome an opportunity, but he has a different view of the issue as it concerns him.

He said, in a telephone interview Friday, that he is interested in getting a general manager’s job and would “definitely talk” to clubs about it, “but I’m not in pursuit” of it.

Furthermore, Watson said, he doesn’t want to be interviewed just because he is black and would allow a team to fulfill its obligation under the Major League Baseball rule to interview minorities for decision-making positions.

“I don’t want to be that guy,” Watson said. “I don’t see myself as a minority candidate. I consider myself a legitimate candidate.”

Teams don’t always adhere to the rule, but when they do they often conduct sham interviews just to say they met the requirement. I recall that one so-called black candidate was interviewed on the telephone, hardly a meaningful or fair opportunity to get the job.

“If they want to look at a qualified candidate,” Watson said, “I’m that guy. I don’t see myself as a minority candidate. If I weren’t qualified, that would be a different story. Show me a list of candidates and I’ll stand up to any of them.”

Watson, in no way sounding boastful, cited his 30 years in baseball, the first five as a minor league outfielder-first baseman, as evidence that he is well prepared to become a general manager.

He is in his first year with the Diamondbacks, but before that position he worked for the Los Angeles Dodgers for eight years, most recently as vice president for player development, and he also worked for the Indians, the Reds and the Marlins in various scouting capacities.

Watson, however, has not been a hotly pursued candidate for the job of general manager. He said he has had three interviews for that position, two with Arizona, one with Baltimore.

Newspaper and Internet reports have linked Watson’s name to the Red Sox, who have a president of baseball operations but not a general manager. The Red Sox, though, have not sought the OK to talk to Watson so how accurate can those reports be?

La Russa and his general manager, Dave Stewart, have noticed the absence of general manager interest in Watson. “Dave and I met and discussed if it would be proper to make calls on his behalf,” said La Russa, who became impressed with Watson as soon as he met him. “He’s articulate, very impressive and he works hard.”

After he interviewed Watson last year, La Russa said he talked with Ken Kendrick, the Diamondbacks managing partner, and Derrick Hall, the club president, about Watson and said, “We have to figure out how to add him to our organization.”

They added him and there he’ll stay unless he is invited to join another team as general manager.

“I have a job to do here,” the 49-year-old Watson said, declining to dwell on the general manager thing.

The executive who said Watson topped the minority list said, “He’s got a good personality, he’s a real nice guy and well liked. There’s nothing that should keep him from getting a job.”

Nothing but his color apparently.

THE WORD FOR G.M. CANDIDATES IS ANALYTICS

Clubs generally don’t disclose the names of candidates they interview, but some names emerge – accurately or not. Of the names that have emerged in recent weeks, only two presumed candidate are minorities. They are Dana Brown, special assistant to the Toronto general manager, and Tyrone Brooks, the Pirates player personnel director.

The Mariners reportedly interviewed Brown, though he seems to be an unlikely candidate because the team president, Kevin Mather, has said he was looking for a general manager with experience. Brown’s advanced experience is limited to the six years he has been in his present position.

The Brewers’ owner, Mark Attanasio, has said he wants a young general manager who is well versed in analytics. That is the trend in baseball today, and Attanasio aims to ride it all the way to the World Series, with Brooks the engineer if Attanasio decides he’s the right man for the job.

In the great 1967 Dustin Hoffman film “The Graduate” his character Benjamin is embraced by a friend of his parents who wants to give him a piece of priceless advice. It’s one word – plastics. The comparable advice in baseball today is analytics.

If the Mariners and the Brewers, meanwhile, were serious about considering a minority, why would they consider Brown and Brooks and not De Jon Watson? I would guess they would find it easier to reject Brown and Brooks. Talk about sham interviews.

These are names linked to the Mariners’ search: former general managers Jerry Dipoto (Angels), Dan O’Dowd (Rockies), Larry Beinfest (Marlins), Frank Wren (Braves), Ben Cherington (Red Sox); assistant general managers Mike Hazen (Red Sox), Mike Chernoff (Indians), Thad Levine (Rangers), Billy Eppler (Yankees).

Names linked to the Brewers: Hazen, Rays vice president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom, Athletics assistant general manager Dan Kantrovitz, Pirates player personnel director Tyrone Brooks, Brewers vice president for amateur scouting Ray Montgomery.

These names had been linked to the Angels before they decided on Eppler: Bud Black, former Padres’ manager; assistant general managers Hazen, Matt Klentak and Scott Servais (Angels), vice president of player personnel Ross Atkins (Indians).

With the Blue Jays on the verge of making the playoffs, their general manager, Alex Anthopoulos, seems to be safe to remain on the job. In fact, Mark Shapiro, the team’s new president, might have already spread that word privately.

Mike Rizzo, on the other hand, has presided over a disaster in Washington and could be the next general manager to go. If it happens and happens soon enough, Rizzo could join the white crowd competing for the other jobs.

A “Keeping Score” column in The New York Times last week caught my attention with this start to a sentence: “While batting average may no longer hold much sway…”

Written by Benjamin Hoffman, the piece was about Yoenis Cespedes, the New York Mets’ surprising sensation, and his chances of winning the National League most valuable player award.

Curious about that “batting average” phrase, I called Hoffman Tuesday night and asked him about it.

I don’t know Hoffman, never met him, never had spoken with him. However, simply by taking my call, he showed a lot more class than his superiors in the Times sports department.

“I think there’s been a pretty widespread move to emphasize other statistics, with organizations, even with fans,” Hoffman said.

And with Metrics Monsters. Don’t forget them. They concoct new metrics – I don’t like even the sound of that word – and in their arrogant way expect everyone to accept them as the Ten Commandments of baseball. You know, Thou shalt use WAR to vote for MVP and the Hall of Fame.

What has taken the place of batting average? “People have gone all over the place with it,” Hoffman said, “with some emphasizing on-base, slugging, adjusted figures that account for different parks and eras.”

I cannot tell you what magical letters denote those adjusted figures. I don’t want to know what they are. They are meaningless to me.

Baseball has been played for more than 100 years in parks of many different sizes. My parents were great baseball fans. They never gave a second’s thought to the difference between home run distances at Forbes Field and Wrigley Field. No matter where Ralph Kiner hit a home run; it was a home run, and they didn’t care how he compared with Johnny Mize or Hank Sauer.

When Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams played as contemporaries, the Yankees and the Red Sox briefly considered swapping them because Fenway Park and its Green Monster would have benefitted the right-hand hitting DiMaggio while Yankee Stadium with its short right field porch would have been great for Williams.

The players, however, were fan favorites and entrenched where they were, and the teams never made the trade. It didn’t matter. DiMaggio and Williams were two of the greatest players in baseball history, and their playing location didn’t detract from their careers or the fans’ appreciation of them.

Meanwhile, if batting average has lost its sway, you can’t tell from the daily statistics, whether they’re in newspapers, on websites or on lists of league leaders in all MLB press boxes.

Batting averages appear in every box score, they are the first category listed in NL and AL leaders, team batting averages are the first column in team statistics and in listings of individual statistics, batting average is listed ahead of on-base and slugging percentages and OPS, which combines on-base and slugging. If and when newspapers run league leaders, batting average leaders are the first listed.

Why, then, is batting average so prevalent?

“I may not believe there is much predictive nature in r.b.i.,” Hoffman said, “but I still look at it.”

The supposed diminished significance of batting average is reminiscent of something I “learned” a couple of years ago when I was told and then read that wins for pitchers no longer mattered and never really did matter.

The Metrics Monsters and their allies decided that too many variables and factors entered into pitching’ decisions, and it therefore made no sense to credit a pitcher with a win just because he started a game, lasted at least five innings and his team won the game.

Just think. All those years we talked about 20-game winners, and now we had to discard all of that information and those records. It was bad enough when an MLB committee in 1992 defined or redefined what a no-hitter was. I didn’t agree with the committee’s decisions, and I don’t agree with all of this WAR and VORP business, though as a writer friend pointed out the other day we don’t hear much about VORP these days.

When the Times created the Keeping Score column, I was a baseball columnist for the paper and I told the sports editor I thought it was a bad idea. It was mostly used to open the paper’s sports pages to statistical nonsense in which most readers had no interest.

The sports editor didn’t heed my warning and look at the Times sports section now. Soccer has become the sport of the Times. Baseball has become a minor league sport.

It has been part of a desperate effort to attract new readers and new advertisers for the paper and its web site. I don’t know if it has succeeded, but it has ruined the sports section for those of us who have been long-time readers.

The New York Daily News is suffering the same plight. On Wednesday, after the owner had failed in his effort to sell the paper, it dismissed about a third of the sports staff, including the sports editor, Teri Thompson, and the long-time baseball writer, Bill Madden, who is a fellow winner of the J.G. Taylor Spink award from the Baseball Writers Association.

The columnist Mike Lupica was on the hit list but was said to be continuing his effort to negotiate a new contract to replace the one that expires at the end of this month.

In 2008, the Times initiated a series of buyouts that prompted many senior staff members to leave the paper. I took the buyout and left the paper on the same day as Linda Greenhouse, who did a fantastic job covering the United States Supreme Court, and Dr. Lawrence Altman, the excellent medical writer.

At the time, the Times’ move reminded me of the Florida Marlins’ slashing their payroll after they won the 1997 World Series. The Times, like the Marlins, was slashing payroll, offering attractive buyouts to induce its highest-paid employees to leave. Just as the Marlins traded away its best players to shed their salaries, the Times willingly let many of its best and most experienced people leave to reduce its payroll.

Contributing to my decision to take the buyout and leave was a series of lies told to me by the then sports editor, Tom Jolly.

He subsequently was moved to the news side as a night editor. Times people said it was a delayed punishment of his direction a few years earlier of the Times’ aggressive coverage of the Duke University lacrosse scandal, in which three players were accused of sexually assaulting a stripper who had performed at a team party.

The case turned into a fiasco, and the players were subsequently cleared when police determined that the woman had lied.

Jolly, incidentally, was the sports editor who started the “Keeping Score” column.