LA QUINTA, Calif. - Steroids? "I don't even know what steroids look like,'' said Yogi Berra. But he knows what baseball looks like. And life looks like. And success looks like.

Lawrence Peter Berra, 84, master of the malaprop, genuine good guy, genuinely great ballplayer, full of stories but not of himself, was talking about everyone from Bob Hope to Mark McGwire.
Yogi is Ambassador for the 51st Bob Hope Desert Classic, the PGA Tour event down Highway 111 from Palm Springs, five rounds on four courses, a tournament with movie stars, retired athletes - Vinny Testaverde for one - and this week weather which may make everyone regret they came.

Except for Yogi, who was bundled in a jacket and wearing, what else, a cap of the New York Yankees, the team with which he played in 14 World Series, the team with which he won three American League Most Valuable Player Awards.

Hope himself used to be one who gave the quotes and made the jokes, tossing out one-liners and when he played a few holes sometimes knocking in one-putts.

Bob, who died in 2003, has been irreplaceable, and George Lopez was brought in to prove as much. Then Arnold Palmer, a five-time winner of the Hope Classic, and beloved in the desert, served as the spokesman. Now it's Yogi, irrepressible Yogi, a 16-year entrant, standing tall.

"I'm a lousy golfer,'' said Berra on a Tuesday of chill and rain. "But I have fun.''

Yogi is everyone's punch line, mocked for his Yogi-isms, the "It ain't over ‘til it's over,'' or "Nobody goes there anymore it's too crowded.''

But he's been making sense, commercials and a great deal of money since the early 1950s. And in 2005 The Economist magazine named him "Wisest Fool of the Past 50 Years.''

There was nothing foolish in his remarks about McGwire, who finally confessed during his own career he used steroids, if, in his words, for medicinal purposes.

Berra is in the Baseball Hall of Fame. He doesn't believe McGwire will be joining him, even with that 70-home run season in 1998.
"He waited too long to announce it,'' Berra said of McGwire's disclosure. "If he had done it at the beginning, he might have a chance. Like (Jason) Giambi. You've got to admit it right away.''

What happens to others from the era, Barry Bonds, Alex Rodriguez, those who conceded they used illegal substances or are believed to have used them?

"That's going to be up to the president of the league, I guess,'' said Berra. "I never took them, I know that.

"They claim to make you bigger and everything. But we had some very big guys when we played. (Joe) DiMaggio wasn't small. Mickey Mantle wasn't small. Hank Bauer, Johnny Lindell, Allie Reynolds. Them guys were big.''

And they were teammates on the Yankees from the late 1940s to the early 1960s, teams Berra was asked to compare with the New York World Series winner of 2009.

"We won five in a row,'' reminded Berra of the championships from 1949 through 1953. "We had good pitching staffs and guys who could play different positions. We had three catchers (including Berra),and we all played outfield. Gil McDougal made the All-Star team at second, short and third . . . I played right field and left. When I first came up I was a lousy catcher.''

That was in 1946, after World War II, after 18-year Lawrence Berra of the U.S. Navy had survived the allied landings at Normandy, bombs bursting, rockets firing.

"It was like Fourth of July,'' he said. "No kidding.''

Bill Dickey, the man who immediately preceded him at the position, taught Berra the requirements of catching. "He came over in 1949. And he worked my butt off. I owe him a lot.''

Berra first encountered Bob Hope, arguably America's most popular entertainer from the 1940s through the 1980s, in an elevator in Cleveland, saying to himself, "Gee, I'm in an elevator with Bob Hope.''

Whether Hope said, "Gee, I'm in an elevator with Yogi Berra,'' we'll never know.

"He was a good man,'' said Berra of Hope. "I've been at his home. And what he did for charities, it's amazing how much this tournament gives out.''

Berra the last few years has been seen in those AFLAC commercials, sitting in a barber's chair offering bon mots while that duck walks in.

"That's a live duck that was in front of me, too,'' said Berra. "They train them. I'm not kidding you now. He stops. They ring a bell, and he stops. They train him for six months. If he doesn't do it right, they bring in another duck.''

And to steal a Berra line, it's déjà vu all over again.