Nearly everyone knows Yogi Berra from his oft-quoted lines, with their circular truth (“It ain’t over till it’s over”) and their creative math (“Ninety percent of baseball is mental; the other half is physical”). To baseball fans, he’s unquestionably one of the greatest catchers in history, a 10-time World Series champion with the Yankees who was elected into the Hall of Fame in 1972.

Now, when the baseball season would normally be in its early days, Jon Pessah’s biography “Yogi: A Life Behind the Mask” arrives to help fill the void. It’s a book that covers the funny quotes and the exceptional career, but also the complicated and sensitive person often obscured by the image. Below, Pessah talks about Berra’s shyness, the abuse he received as an Italian-American and just how great a player he was.

When did you get the idea to write this book?

I wanted to write something that would put a smile on a reader’s face, and as soon as that clicked on in my head, the next thing was: Yogi Berra. When I tell people I’m doing a book about Yogi Berra, even if they don’t know baseball, they smile. It’s probably a coincidence that he was my father’s favorite player, which is why my father played catcher and why I played catcher.

I caught the tail end of Yogi’s career, so I only knew him as a part-time outfielder, although I did see him catch 22 innings against the Tigers when he was 37. He was a physical marvel, even though he looked like he was put together with spare parts: short, stubby legs; big head; long arms; a torso of someone 6-2 and the legs of someone 5-4.