Man in the Mask

Legendary catcher Yogi Berra is the man in the iron mask. Berra was a Hall of Fame catcher for the New York Yankees and a New York icon. In 2015, when Berra died at age 90, The Times said he was “one of baseball’s greatest catchers and characters, who as a player was a mainstay of 10 Yankees championship teams and as a manager led both the Yankees and the Mets to the World Series, but who may be more widely known as an ungainly but lovable cultural figure, inspiring a cartoon character and issuing a seemingly limitless supply of unwittingly witty epigrams known as Yogi-isms.”

The photo was taken by Sam Falk (1901-1991), a pioneer in 35-millimeter photography at The New York Times. He joined the staff in 1925 and retired in 1969. During the course of his career, Falk specialized in photographs of famous people and events. He covered national political conventions and championship boxing matches. He also covered the Lindbergh kidnapping trial, shot finishes of the Kentucky Derby and roamed the United States and Europe taking pictures for The New York Times Magazine. His photographs were often the subjects of one-man exhibitions, including one at the Smithsonian Institution that ran for 14 months. His work is in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art.