By Vincent J. Cannato

When baseball legend Yogi Berra passed away this fall, baseball commissioner Rob Manfred called the late Yankees catcher "a beacon of Americana." Sportswriter Frank Deford had employed the same theme a decade earlier, calling Mr. Berra "the ultimate in athletic Americana."

That is quite a testament to a man born Lorenzo Pietro Berra to Italian immigrant parents and raised in the Italian enclave of St. Louis known as the Hill. There, he developed the outsize personality that would color the American experience with Italian wit.

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Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/