Who really said it

If people don't want to come out to the ballpark, nobody's going to stop them

Q: Did Yogi Berra say "If people don't want to come out to the ballpark, nobody's going to stop them"?

No. The gag was already in print in 1952, when columnist Leonard Lyons quoted the concert impresario Sol Hurok: "If people don't want to come, nothing will stop them." Yogi Berra did say a baseball version of it — the earliest citation linking it to him is from 1962 — and he later printed his own wording in a 2001 book, but he did not invent the joke.

Not originally Yogi Berra — the joke starts with Sol Hurok Sol Hurok 1888–1974 · Russian-American impresario

Disputed: Berra popularized a ballpark version, but the line is documented earlier from Sol Hurok. In copyright

The gag was already in print in 1952, when columnist Leonard Lyons quoted the concert impresario Sol Hurok: “If people don’t want to come, nothing will stop them.” Yogi Berra did say a baseball version of it — the earliest citation linking it to him is from 1962 — and he later printed his own wording in a 2001 book, but he did not invent the joke.

Last verified 22 Jul 2026 · how we verify · spot an error?

For presentations

Put it on a slide

Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“If people don't want to come out to the ballpark, nobody's going to stop them” Sol Hurok, quoted by Leonard Lyons in The Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY), 16 August 1952: "If people don't want to come, nothing will stop them." The ballpark version — "If people don't want to come out to the park, nobody's going to stop them" — is Yogi Berra's later adaptation, first linked to him in 1962 and printed in his 2001 book "When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!"

The slide-ready mistake: crediting this to Yogi Berra. Use the credit shown above instead.

Can you use it?

Still under copyright (rights held by The estate of Yogi Berra and Hachette Book Group (for the 2001 book); the rights holders in Leonard Lyons’ 1952 syndicated column for the Hurok wording). A short, credited quote is generally fine for talks, teaching, and internal decks; for commercial, published, or large-scale reuse, get permission.

Image direction — grounded in this quote’s real context; paste into your image tool

In context

Evoking the world of Sol Hurok — Russian-American impresario. Theme: "If people don't want to come out to the ballpark, nobody's going to stop them". Atmospheric and restrained, cinematic directional light, a muted period-appropriate palette, fine grain and texture. Compose with generous empty space for the quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Minimalist

Minimalist editorial slide for the quote "If people don't want to come out to the ballpark, nobody's going to stop them". Clean background, a single muted accent color, generous negative space, subtle paper or linen texture, no literal illustration — let the words carry it. Reserve clear space for a serif quote and a small credit line. No lettering in the image itself.

Provenance

The paper trail

Earliest documented: “Doings in Rome,” a Leonard Lyons column, The Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY), August 16, 1952
Speaker: Sol Hurok, concert and ballet impresario
Earliest Berra link: Times-Picayune (New Orleans), 1962, reporting Joe Garagiola’s banquet speech about Kansas City attendance
Berra’s own printing: When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It! by Yogi Berra with Dave Kaplan, 2001

I’m enough of a showman to have learned at least this: If people don’t want to come, nothing will stop them. 1952 · Leonard Lyons column

Sol Hurok, warning the producers of the film Tonight We Sing, as quoted by Leonard Lyons in 1952. The ballpark noun and the “nobody’s going to stop them” ending arrive later, with Berra.

Quote Investigator’s full chronology

How a showman’s line became a baseball line

1952 — Leonard Lyons’ column of August 16 quotes Sol Hurok: “If people don’t want to come, nothing will stop them.” Quote Investigator ↗
1959 — LIFE magazine of June 1 runs a Hurok profile, “Impresario Who Booked the Bolshoi,” carrying the line again as “When people don’t want to come, nothing will stop them.” Quote Investigator ↗
1962–1964 — Joe Garagiola tells banquet audiences that Yogi said it about Kansas City; the 1964 Boston Record American version reads “Those fans in Kansas City don’t want to come out and see their ball club—and nobody is gonna stop ’em.” Quote Investigator ↗
2001 — Berra prints his own wording in When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!, written with Dave Kaplan — the closest published match to the phrasing that circulates today. Publisher page ↗

In copyright

Nothing here is old enough to be public domain in the United States. The earliest documented printing is a 1952 newspaper column, and the version closest to the modern wording appears in a book first published in 2001 — both well after the 1931 public-domain cutoff. Short quotation with attribution, as on this page, is ordinary fair use; reprinting the surrounding text is not.

Rights status is our research, not legal advice — and copyright varies by country and edition. For commercial or published use, confirm with the rightsholder. See terms.

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Fact-check

Berra repeated it. Hurok said it first.

This is not a fabrication — Yogi Berra really did say a version of this line, more than once, and put one in his own book. It is a priority problem: the joke was already circulating under someone else’s name.

Yogi Berra popularizer

The earliest citation tying the quip to Berra is a 1962 report of Joe Garagiola’s banquet speech, quoting Yogi on sagging Kansas City attendance: “If they don’t want to come out, nobody’s gonna stop ’em.” Berra printed his own version in 2001, per Quote Investigator ↗.

Sol Hurok earliest documented

Leonard Lyons’ column of August 16, 1952 quotes the impresario: “I’m enough of a showman to have learned at least this: If people don’t want to come, nothing will stop them.” A 1959 LIFE profile carries the same line, per Quote Investigator ↗.

Joe Garagiola transmitter

Berra’s childhood friend and fellow catcher was the one telling the story from banquet podiums in 1962 and explaining it in print in 1963 — the mechanism by which a showman’s line became a baseball line, as documented by Quote Investigator ↗.

Verdict: the thought and the wording belong to Sol Hurok in 1952; Berra moved it to the ballpark and made it famous. Wikiquote files it under Disputed ↗ for exactly this reason.

Context

Why this one keeps getting pinned on Yogi

Yogi Berra is one of the internet’s great quote magnets, and he knew it: he liked to say he never said everything he said. Attendance jokes are exactly the kind of thing that drifts toward him, because the shape of the line — a sentence that sounds like a tautology until you hear the shrug inside it — is the shape of every Yogi-ism.

But this one had a previous owner. Sol Hurok spent half a century selling seats for singers and ballet companies, and the fatalism is his: you can advertise, you can beg, you cannot make people show up. What Berra did was move it from the concert hall to the ballpark — in the 1960s citations, specifically to the thin crowds in Kansas City.

You can advertise, you can beg. You cannot make people show up.

Read the full story

Quote Investigator’s chronology runs: Leonard Lyons’ column of August 16, 1952 (Hurok, “If people don’t want to come, nothing will stop them”); LIFE magazine, June 1, 1959, in a Hurok profile titled “Impresario Who Booked the Bolshoi” (“When people don’t want to come, nothing will stop them”); then, in 1962, Joe Garagiola telling a banquet audience that his friend Yogi had said, of Kansas City’s attendance, “If they don’t want to come out, nobody’s gonna stop ’em.”

The 1964 Boston Record American version is longer and more explicitly about Kansas City: “Those fans in Kansas City don’t want to come out and see their ball club—and nobody is gonna stop ’em.” The clipped modern wording — the one on the mugs — is closest to the form Berra himself printed in 2001.

Explore

Filed under

More provenance-checked quotes on the same theme, each with its reuse status.

Wisdom Freedom

Go further

Dig deeper

Trusted places to keep pulling the thread — primary archives, fact-checks, and scholarship. We show how we used each one before you leave.

Quote Investigator: “If People Don’t Want to Come, Nothing Will Stop Them”quoteinvestigator.com

The definitive chronology: Hurok 1952 and 1959, Berra via Garagiola in 1962, and the 2001 Berra book. This page is the anchor for everything here.

Wikiquote: Yogi Berra (Disputed)en.wikiquote.org

Lists the ballpark line in its Disputed section, noting the Hurok 1952 origin and the 1962 Berra attribution.

Quote Investigator: all Yogi Berra investigationsquoteinvestigator.com

Tag archive collecting QI’s work on lines credited to Berra, including “Nobody goes there anymore, it’s too crowded” and the predictions/future quip.

Sol Huroken.wikipedia.org

Biography of the impresario the joke actually starts with: 1888–1974, Marian Anderson’s 1939 Lincoln Memorial concert, the Bolshoi’s 1959 American tour.

Yogi Berraen.wikipedia.org

Biography of the man it gets credited to: Yankees catcher 1946–1963, ten World Series rings, and a lifetime of Yogi-isms he only half claimed.

When You Come to a Fork in the Road, Take It!hachettebookgroup.com

Publisher page for the Berra and Dave Kaplan essay collection in which Berra printed his own version of the line.

The man who actually said it first

Who was Sol Hurok?

Sol Hurok

1888–1974 · Russian-American impresario

Sol Hurok was the twentieth century’s most famous concert impresario — the man behind the “S. Hurok Presents” billing that carried Marian Anderson, Arthur Rubinstein, Feodor Chaliapin and Van Cliburn to American stages. Born in the Russian Empire in 1888, he emigrated in 1906 and became a naturalised American in 1914. He arranged Anderson’s landmark 1939 Lincoln Memorial concert and brought the Bolshoi Ballet to the United States in 1959, and he talked about box office with the fatalism of a man who had spent fifty years selling tickets.

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented source

Leonard Lyons, “Doings in Rome,” The Post-Standard (Syracuse, NY), August 16, 1952 — earliest documented instance, quoting Sol Hurok: “If people don’t want to come, nothing will stop them.” Earliest documented attribution to Yogi Berra: Times-Picayune (New Orleans), 1962, reporting Joe Garagiola’s banquet speech. Chronology per Quote Investigator, “Quote Origin: If People Don’t Want to Come, Nothing Will Stop Them,” October 30, 2014.

This verification page

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