Did Yogi Berra say "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded"?

Q: Did Yogi Berra say "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded"?

No. The paradox was already a stock newspaper gag decades before Berra was famous: Quote Investigator traces it to an anonymous 1907 humor column, and the modern wording — "Nobody goes there any more. It's too crowded." — appears in John McNulty's New Yorker story of 20 February 1943, spoken by a taxicab driver. Berra was not credited with it in print until 1962, though he later said he had said it, about Ruggeri's in St. Louis.

Who really said it

Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded

Not original to Yogi Berra — a joke that predates him Unknown (an anonymous newspaper humorist) Earliest known version printed December 1907 · author unidentified

He may well have said it — but he did not coin it. Rights unconfirmed

The paradox was already a stock newspaper gag decades before Berra was famous: Quote Investigator ↗ traces it to an anonymous 1907 humor column, and the modern wording — “Nobody goes there any more. It’s too crowded.” — appears in John McNulty’s New Yorker story of 20 February 1943, spoken by a taxicab driver. Berra was not credited with it in print until 1962, though he later said he had said it, about Ruggeri’s in St. Louis.

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

For presentations

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Disputed credit — copy with the correction

“Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded” commonly credited to Yogi Berra, but the joke appeared anonymously in print in December 1907 and in a 1943 New Yorker story; Berra was not credited with it until 1962. Via Quotle.info

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

Can you use it?

We couldn’t verify where this wording comes from, so there’s no rights status to give. Safe to present as an unverified or anonymous line — just don’t assert a specific author or source.

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In context

Evoking the theme of humility. Theme: "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded". 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 "Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded". 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

Where the line actually comes from

Earliest known version: “Sparklets” humor column, New York newspaper, December 1907 — author unidentified
Earliest modern wording: Some Nights When Nothing Happens Are the Best Nights in This Place
Published: The New Yorker, 20 February 1943, p. 13, by John McNulty
First credited to Berra: Cleveland Plain Dealer, 1962

1907, anonymous: “Oh, don’t go there on Saturday; it’s so frightfully crowded! Nobody goes there then!”

1943, spoken by a taxicab driver in John McNulty’s New Yorker story: “Nobody goes there any more. It’s too crowded.” Two printings, 36 years apart, neither of them Berra

Both passages are quoted from the chronology assembled by Quote Investigator; the 1943 line is the earliest documented instance of the wording the world now attaches to Yogi Berra.

Quote Investigator: the full chronology, 1882 to 1962

How we verified this

December 1907 — the earliest strong match appears anonymously in a New York humor column called “Sparklets” and is reprinted in other papers over the next several years, per Quote Investigator ↗.
20 February 1943 — John McNulty’s New Yorker story “Some Nights When Nothing Happens Are the Best Nights in This Place” gives the modern wording to a New York hackman; McNulty wrote for the magazine from 1937 until his death in 1956 (Wikipedia ↗).
1962 — the Cleveland Plain Dealer becomes the first paper to put the joke in Yogi Berra’s mouth; Wikiquote ↗ notes it was “not attributed to Berra until 1962” and lists it as misattributed.
Later — Berra retold it as his own, about Ruggeri’s in St. Louis, and Wikipedia records the quip in that form (Wikipedia ↗) — the same article notes that at least one famous line credited to him, “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings,” was not his.

No single author can be tied to this wording, so no clean rights status can be asserted. The anonymous 1907 newspaper version is long out of copyright, but the familiar phrasing is first documented in John McNulty’s New Yorker story of 20 February 1943 — a work first published after 1930 and therefore potentially still in copyright — and even there it is presented as an overheard saloon joke rather than an original coinage. Treat the line as an unattributed folk gag, not as public-domain text.

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

How it became a Yogi-ism

This is a floating joke — an anonymous newspaper gag that changed speakers every decade or so until it found a name famous enough to stay attached to.

Yogi Berra Not the originator

Quote Investigator ↗ finds the earliest strong match in a December 1907 humor column, “Sparklets,” with no author named, and the first attribution to Berra only in 1962 in the Cleveland Plain Dealer.

Wikiquote's Yogi Berra page Listed as misattributed

English Wikiquote ↗ places the line in its Misattributed section, noting it is “found in newspapers from the early twentieth century” and was not attributed to Berra until 1962.

A New York cabdriver in a 1943 New Yorker story Earlier in print

John McNulty’s story “Some Nights When Nothing Happens Are the Best Nights in This Place” (20 February 1943) gives the modern wording to a hackman — nineteen years before Berra was linked to it, per QI ↗.

Berra himself, retelling it as his Claimed, not coined

In The Yogi Book (1998) Berra told the story as his own — talking with Stan Musial and Joe Garagiola in 1959 about Ruggeri’s restaurant in his old St. Louis neighbourhood — as quoted by Quote Investigator ↗. That he repeated it is plausible; that he invented it is ruled out by the 1907 and 1943 printings.

A stock joke of the early 1900s, author unknown, that attached itself to Yogi Berra in 1962 and never let go — see Quote Investigator’s full chronology ↗.

Context

Why this one stuck to Yogi

The line is a perfect little logic trap: it treats “nobody” as shorthand for “nobody worth counting” and then collides that with a literal reading. That shape — obviously wrong on the surface, obviously true underneath — is exactly the shape of a Yogi-ism, which is why the joke found its way to Berra rather than the other way around.

By the early 1960s Berra had become a kind of gravitational centre for paradoxical one-liners. Sportswriters needed a name to hang a good gag on; Berra was the name. He rarely fought it, and in his own books he told the story as his own, placing it at Ruggeri’s, a restaurant in his old St. Louis neighbourhood.

The joke did not come from Yogi Berra. It came to him.

The paper trail, decade by decade

December 1907 — the earliest strong match, in a New York humor column called “Sparklets”: “Oh, don’t go there on Saturday; it’s so frightfully crowded! Nobody goes there then!” No author named. It was reprinted in other papers over the following years.

1941 — a columnist reports comedian Rags Ragland crediting a version to Suzanne Ridgeway: “Now I know why nobody ever comes here; it’s too crowded.”

20 February 1943 — John McNulty’s New Yorker story “Some Nights When Nothing Happens Are the Best Nights in This Place” puts the modern wording in the mouth of a hackman. A sportswriter in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette gives it to a stock Irishman that April.

1962 — the first newspaper attribution to Yogi Berra, in the Cleveland Plain Dealer. From there it becomes a fixed Yogi-ism.

Explore

Filed under

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

Humility

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 Origin: Nobody Goes There Anymore, It's Too Crowdedquoteinvestigator.com

The definitive investigation: the anonymous 1907 “Sparklets” version, the 1941 and 1943 appearances, and the 1962 first attribution to Berra.

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

Files the line under Misattributed, noting it is found in early-twentieth-century newspapers and was not attributed to Berra until 1962.

Wikipedia: Yogi Berraen.wikipedia.org

Life, career and the Yogi-isms — including the note that “It ain’t over till the fat lady sings” was first said by someone else, not Berra.

Wikipedia: John McNulty (journalist)en.wikipedia.org

Background on the New Yorker writer (1895–1956) whose Third Avenue saloon stories carry the earliest documented version of the modern wording.

The Yogi Book — catalogue recordopenlibrary.org

Open Library record for Berra’s own collection of Yogi-isms, first published 1998, in which he tells the line as his own.

The name the joke landed on

Who was Yogi Berra?

Yogi Berra

1925–2015 · Yankees catcher, manager & accidental aphorist

Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra was born in St. Louis in 1925 and died in 2015, having spent a 19-season Hall of Fame career in the majors — all but the last of it catching for the New York Yankees. He became at least as famous for his Yogi-isms — short, self-contradicting one-liners — as for the baseball, and the label eventually acted as a magnet: lines he never originated drifted onto his name because they sounded like him. Berra saw the problem himself, and it produced the most quoted Yogi-ism of all: “I really didn’t say everything I said.”

For writers & researchers

Cite this

Earliest documented printings

John McNulty, “Some Nights When Nothing Happens Are the Best Nights in This Place,” The New Yorker, 20 February 1943, p. 13 — earliest documented instance of the modern wording. Earlier variant: “Sparklets” humor column, New York newspaper, December 1907, author unidentified; see Garson O’Toole, Quote Investigator, “Nobody Goes There Anymore, It’s Too Crowded,” 29 August 2014.

This verification page

Quotle.info. “Who really said ‘Nobody goes there anymore. It's too crowded’?” Last verified 22 Jul 2026. https://quotle.info/who-said/nobody-goes-there-anymore-its-too-crowded/