New Jersey set another world record on Sunday — inspired by the legacy of Yogi Berra — and I was lucky enough to be part of it.
Participating with my 12-year-old, Travis, was an easy call after hearing the stadium named for the late Yankees and Mets baseball icon was planning to assemble the largest-ever game of catch.
Yogi’s Big Catch was seeking to dethrone Dadfest, which took place on Father’s Day in 2017 in Illinois and set a Guinness World Record with 972 pairs of people tossing balls to each other.
The New Jersey attempt to set the record was the latest in a series of events organized by the Yogi Berra Museum & Learning Center in Little Falls to mark the centennial of Berra’s birth in 1925. The museum overlooks Yogi Berra Stadium on the campus of Montclair State University.
Berra was a Montclair resident for much of his life.
Many who showed up Sunday appeared to be parents with young children. The minimum age to participate was 7, which meant the youngest kids on the field had not been born when Berra died in 2015.
Participants were given a museum-branded baseball featuring the familiar silhouette of Berra, facing away in his No. 8 uniform.
The rules were pretty simple: Stand nine feet apart and toss a ball back and forth. Participants were advised to lob the ball underhanded for safety reasons because everyone was packed in tightly on the field.
“It does not have to be perfect. If you drop the ball, you can pick it up,” the Guinness adjudicator Michael Empric told the crowd.
What participants could not do, Empric emphasized, was use a cellphone. This was, after all, a game of catch. You shouldn’t be holding a phone.
Official observers, 37 in all, were milling around to check the rules were being followed. They removed several participants from the official Guinness count, Empric said afterward.
The results were announced just before 2 p.m., about 15 minutes after the catch concluded. Yogi’s Big Catch had set a Guinness World Record with 1,179 pairs.
Christina Chappus, who made a Herculean effort to participate with her daughter, Alex, was thrilled.
Chappus said she drove about 600 miles from Michigan, arriving around midnight Friday, and planned to head home later Sunday.
“I drove 18 hours to play catch with my daughter for five minutes,” Chappus said, laughing as she calculated the roundtrip distance.
“It was kind of, not really a bucket-list type thing, but something unique and different,” Chappus said.
Yogi’s Big Catch is the latest effort in New Jersey to secure a world record certified by Guinness, which lists an expansive range of accomplishments often driven by ingenuity.
Records set in New Jersey include the most samurai swords juggled at one time, the longest-ever ribbon-cutting and the longest distance tap-danced by a man — 32 miles in 7 hours and 35 minutes in Red Bank in 2000.
Sunday was my second participation in a world record attempt. In August 2022, I joined the largest parade of canoes and kayaks, totaling 1,105, on the Toms River.
What if another group attempts to break the new record set at Yogi Berra Stadium for the largest-ever game of catch? There’s actually a “Yogi-ism” — the term for the enduring witticisms attributed to Berra — that would apply to the situation.
“In the immortal words of Yogi Berra, who once said, ‘My record will stand, until it’s broken,’ we’ll see if we break the record here today,” the legendary broadcaster Bob Costas, who was the event’s emcee, told the crowd before the start.
Costas introduced a lengthy list of VIP participants as they entered the field from the bullpen — everyone else entered from the stands — including Larry Doby Jr. His late father, Larry Doby, lived in Paterson as a teenager and in 1947 became the first Black player in the American League.
More than 20 of Berra’s family members, including all three of his sons, were present.
The crowd also included several retired players with ties to the Yankees or Mets, including Ron Guidry, Willie Randolph, Rick Cerone and Lee Mazzilli.
Kevin Cronin, a TikTok celebrity known as Kickball Dad, arrived with his daughter, Alyssa.
Montclair State University alumni taking part included pro wrestler Anthony Bowens and Paul Mirabella, a retired pitcher who played with the Yankees in 1979.
Little Falls Mayor James Damiano got the hometown perk of being introduced with his daughter, Olivia.
With the dignitaries in place, Costas concluded by saying, “Let’s have a catch.”
Participants paid $25 per pair to participate. Entry included t-shirts and a commemorative baseball. All proceeds from the event will go toward education programs at the museum, which serves 10,000 middle school and high school students annually, organizers said.
Jeff Testa of Verona and his young son, Ryan, were among those who signed up for the sold-out event. They were playing catch next to me and my son.
Ryan recently attended a baseball camp at the stadium, his father said. Jeff Testa was wearing an Aaron Judge t-shirt — his son’s favorite player.
“It’s an amazing event that we’ve really been looking forward to doing,” Testa said.
Afterward, there was a very long line of participants waiting to enter the museum, which featured Berra’s actual plaque from the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum on display.
Hall of Fame President Josh Rawitch took part in the catch.
A large banner signed by many of Sunday’s participants will be added to the exhibits at Berra’s museum, next to the certification letter from Guinness.
Eve Schaenen, the museum’s executive director, offered a fitting acknowledgement to attendees from the podium.
“In the words of the great Yogi Berra, from his Hall of Fame induction speech: ‘Thank you for making this day necessary,’” Schaenen said.