Derek Jeter in It Ain’t Over (Daniel Vecchione/Sony Pictures Classics)

The name Yogi Berra often conjures images of a buffoon prone to malapropisms. He juggled the English language in such pronouncements as “You can observe a lot while watching,” “You’re not out of it ’til it’s mathematical,” and the infamous, “It ain’t over ’til it’s over,” which helped spread Berra’s fame far beyond the baseball diamond. However, as It Ain’t Over (What else were the filmmakers going to title it?) demonstrates, Berra was much more than his wonderful Yogi–isms. Indeed, the movie makes a compelling case that he was one of the greatest players to ever play in the major leagues.

Consider this: In his 18 seasons with the Yankees (1946–’63), Berra was on 10 Yankee teams that were World Series champions, and he won three Most Valuable Player awards in seven seasons while being at or near the top of several offensive and defensive categories. All the while he played with the far more prominent Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, and Whitey Ford, and was considered the backbone of those loaded Yankees teams. He also was the catcher for Don Larson’s perfect World Series game, which baseball purists know is just as important a feat, even though Larson receives the lion’s share of accolades to this day.

Director Sean Mullin and executive producer Lindsay Berra—the Yankee great’s granddaughter, who also narrates—have a murderer’s row of baseball luminaries (Bobby Brown, Bobby Richardson, Ron Guidry, Willie Randolph, Joe Torre, Derek Jeter, for starters), sportscasters and sportswriters, Berra’s family, and longtime family friend Billy Crystal on hand to discuss their love for and appreciation of Berra. Lindsay, in fact, gets the most screen time telling touching personal tales of Berra as a loving family man.

Yes, the documentary includes many of immortal Yogi–isms: on-screen titles contrast a classic epigram with one of Berra’s. For example, there’s Napoleon’s, “In war, the moral is to the physical as three to one” and Yogi’s “Baseball is 90 percent mental—the other half is physical.” It turns out that eight of Berra’s bon mots have entered Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations, a standard reference work. So, it comes as a surprise to hear that some of Berra’s Familiar Quotations are not even his: A couple of copy writers assert they created a few for Berra to mouth in several TV commercials he made at the height of his off-the-field fame. Lindsay even admits that her grandfather’s most famous quote, which gives the film its title, might not even have been said by him. But, as she notes wryly, “The myth outgrew the facts.”

Of course, the baseball stories are terrific, especially those about Jackie Robinson, who broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947 when he joined the Brooklyn Dodgers. Berra and Robinson got along famously, despite Robinson stealing home against Berra in game one of the 1955 World Series between the Dodgers and Yankees. Or did he? It looks mighty close on the replay—although Robinson seems to beat Berra’s tag by a millimeter—and both men went to their graves convinced they were right. Sportswriter Claire Smith smilingly suggests that, after Berra died in 2015, the two of them continued their disagreement in heaven. (Robinson passed away in 1972.)

But off-the-field moments, highlighting the human side of Berra, are equally memorable. When the Yogi Bear cartoon became a TV hit in the early 1960s, Crystal says that he was really hurt by it. Mimicking Berra’s inimitable voice, Crystal enacts his response: “I’m not a cartoon—they made me a cartoon!” The production company Hanna-Barbera avoided a lawsuit from Berra by claiming it was just a coincidence that the animated creature had a name one syllable removed from his.

Hearing about Berra’s relationship with his beloved wife, Carmen—they were married for 65 years, and she died 18 months before his death—is guaranteed to draw a tear, as everyone from family members to teammates to Crystal affirm their love for each other. By all accounts, as so many of the talking heads declare, Berra succeeded greatly, both on and off the field.