MONTCLAIR, N.J. — As Spencer Ross, a longtime metropolitan New York area sportscaster, crossed North Fullerton Avenue after a memorial Mass for Yogi Berra, he was approached by a small gray-haired woman.

The woman, Mary Anne DeVarti, 56, had come to stand with dozens of others behind barricades opposite the Church of the Immaculate Conception, where a private service was offered Tuesday morning in the town where Berra lived for more than half a century.

DeVarti, from Keyport, about an hour’s drive south of Montclair, told Ross that she had long wanted to meet Berra — whom she admired so much — but never had. Would Ross be kind enough to give her the program for the service he was holding so she might have something personally connected to Berra to remember him by?