AMERICA’S FIRST SPORTS DRINK? (Or, "SHAKE YOUR YOO-HOO!")

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Back when I was a youngster there were no home video games, iPods, or cell phones. And, in fact, there were very few malls. So we boys spent most of our time playing sports. It was always Twinkie, Wally Murphy, my brother Napoleon, and me (plus whoever else had found a way out of doing their household chores) and we were always playing something.

If we weren’t involved in an organized baseball game at Sunset Little League then it means we were out on the street playing Wiffle Ball. Or if it wasn’t that, then we were at Marine Park playing tackle football, Over-The-Line, or Pickle. How many boys today could even explain Over-The-Line or Pickle?

Pickle – as in “you’re in a pickle” – was a way for three boys to practice their base-stealing skills. One kid would be trying to see how many bases he could steal back-and-forth, while the other two boys were trying to get him in a run-down and tag him out. The player who managed to steal the most consecutive bases by the end of the Pickle session was the winner. And a Pickle session ended when the boys were too tired to run anymore or when it was time to go home for dinner. Meaning, of course, the latter, because we boys NEVER reached a point where we were too tired to run anymore! For Twinkie, Wally, Nappy, and I, the bases at Marine Park were usually represented by two trees. (I wonder how big those trees are today!)

And if we weren’t playing Little League Baseball, Wiffle Ball, tackle football, Over-The-Line, or Pickle, then it means we could be found in the backyard playing “Birdie Ball” - a form of baseball we had invented using a miniature souvenir bat and badminton birdies.

Anyway, there were very few fat kids during my boyhood era because we were all too busy playing sports. We never thought of it as “exercising”.

Nowadays, there are a lot of fat kids around because the only thing they exercise are their thumbs via texting and Xbox (“virtual” sports).

In that same era, Twinkie, Wally, Nappy and I also drank a good deal of YOO-HOO. Yoo-Hoo, which is still around today, is a chocolate flavored beverage. I would describe it as tasting like a nonfat or lowfat chocolate milk.

Of course, the packaging design changed a great deal over the years, but back in ‘The Days Of Pickle’, the labels used to say “Shake! It’s Great!” and also “A Chocolate Flavored ACTION Drink”.

Although in our Santa Monica stores we always found Yoo-Hoo bottled, read the label on the second can from the left in the photo below:



You always had to shake a Yoo-Hoo well before drinking it because otherwise all the chocolate syrup would be coagulated at the bottom of the bottle. “Shake! It’s Great!”

About three years ago, Yoo-Hoo entered into a conversation that brother Nappy and I were having about “the good ol’ days”. And recalling how the labels used to read “A Chocolate Flavored ACTION Drink”, I jokingly remarked: “Forget Gatorade. Yoo-Hoo was America’s first sports drink!”

I thought that was kinda funny in a facetious sorta way. That is until a year later when I acquired a copy of ‘THE YOGI BOOK: I Really Didn’t Say Everything I Said!’ by Yogi Berra.

You know Yogi, right? The great Hall Of Fame catcher who played for the New York Yankees and who is almost as well known for all his famous malapropistic sayings.

“It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”

“It’s déjà vu all over again!”

“We were overwhelming underdogs.”

“The future ain’t what it used to be.”

“A nickel ain’t worth a dime anymore.”

“We’re lost, but we’re making good time!”

“Nobody goes there anymore. It’s too crowded.”

“If people don’t want to come to the ballpark, how are you going to stop them?”

And many more . . .

Well, I was greatly surprised to discover in ‘THE YOGI BOOK’ that way back when – long before I was drinking Yoo-Hoo and playing Pickle with the boys - Yogi and some of his Yankees teammates were acting as spokesmen for that “Chocolate Flavored ACTION Drink”. So, in a sense, I mighta been sorta correct: It seems Yoo-Hoo might really have been advertised as America’s first "sports" drink. (And here I thought I was being clever!)









And wouldn’t you know it? There’s even a screwy Yogi Berra remark associated with Yoo-Hoo! ‘THE YOGI BOOK’ contains this little anecdote:

At a YOO-HOO convention, a woman asked Yogi, “Is Yoo-Hoo hyphenated?” Yogi answered, “No, ma’am, it isn’t even carbonated!”

One of my favorite players on the 2001 World Champion Arizona Diamondbacks team was Reggie Sanders. He only played that one season with the D-Backs, but he had a pretty good year for a power-hitting outfielder: .263 Average; 33 Home Runs; 90 RBI; 14 Stolen Bases.



I’d noticed that Sanders had a quirky little habit. When he was standing near home plate, about to enter the batter’s box, he would often hold his baseball bat at the center of the thick barrel and shake it back and forth three or four times. Whenever I saw him doing that in important, pressure situations, just for good luck, I would call out to Reggie through the TV screen, “Shake your Yoo-Hoo!” It was amazing how often that seemed to bring positive results.



Hey, baby, show us your Yoo-Hoo! . . .



Hmmm... I think I’d rather have Yoo-Hoo in me than on me.

~ Stephen T. McCarthy

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