Notable deaths last week: Yankees Hall of Fame catcher; renowned American novelist

• The lovable legend of Yogi Berra, that ain't ever gonna be over.

The Hall of Fame catcher renowned as much for his linguistically dizzying "Yogi-isms" as his unmatched 10 World Series championships with the New York Yankees, has died at age 90.

Berra, who filled baseball's record book as well as "Bartlett's Familiar Quotations," died of natural causes at his home in New Jersey, according to Dave Kaplan, the director of the Yogi Berra Museum.

Berra played in more World Series games than any other major leaguer and was a three-time American League Most Valuable Player.

For many, though, he was even better known for all those amusing axioms.

"It ain't over 'til it's over" is among eight of them included in Bartlett's.

"When I'm sittin' down to dinner with the family, stuff just pops out. And they'll say, 'Dad, you just said another one.' And I don't even know what the heck I said," Berra insisted.

Short, squat and with a homely mug, Berra was a Yankees great who helped the team reach 14 World Series during his 18 seasons in the Bronx.

Berra served on a gunboat supporting the D-Day invasion in 1944 and played for the Yankees from 1946-63. His teammates included fellow Hall of Famers Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Whitey Ford and Phil Rizzuto.

He was a fan favorite, especially with children, and the cartoon character Yogi Bear was named after him.

Until recent years, he remained a fixture at Yankee Stadium and in the clubhouse, where the likes of Derek Jeter, Joe Torre and others in pinstripes looked up to the diminutive old-timer.

In 1956, Berra caught the only perfect game in World Series history and after the last out leaped into pitcher Don Larsen's arms. The famous moment is still often replayed on baseball broadcasts.

After his playing days, Berra coached or managed the Yankees, New York Mets and Houston Astros. He led both the Yankees and Mets to pennants.

In 1985, his firing as manager by the Yankees 16 games into the season sparked a feud with George Steinbrenner. Berra vowed never to return to Yankee Stadium as long as Steinbrenner owned the team.

But in 1999, Berra finally relented, throwing out the ceremonial first pitch of the Yankees' season-opener.

Berra published three books: his autobiography in 1961, "It Ain't Over ..." in 1989 and "The Yogi Book: I Really Didn't Say Everything I Said" in 1998. The last made The New York Times' best seller list.

• Trumpeter Ben Cauley, a member of the Stax Records group the Bar-Kays and the only survivor of the 1967 plane crash that killed most of his bandmates and Stax star Otis Redding, has died in Memphis. He was 67.

CWhile he has long been known as the sole survivor of the crash that killed Redding, Cauley was a survivor in many other ways.

He had struggled with health issues for years, including a stroke he suffered in 1989, but he persevered through all of it and continued to play his trumpet.

"He was just a real humble, debonair gentleman," Cauley-Campbell said. "He really loved his music. His music was really his life. He breathed music."

Cauley was playing with the Bar-Kays while still attending high school at Booker T. Washington High School in Memphis, his daughter said. When he was a senior he would be picked up at high school on a Friday, travel and play with Otis Redding on the weekends and then come back to school the next week. She said some of the band members needed permission slips from their parents to travel with the band.

On Dec. 10, 1967, they were traveling on Redding's new twin engine Beechcraft when it went into Lake Monona near Madison, Wisconsin. Able to hold on to a seat cushion, Cauley was the only survivor. Another band member, bassist James Alexander, was on a different plane.

After the crash, the pair rebuilt the Bar-Kays and backed Isaac Hayes on his landmark album, "Hot Buttered Soul," according to the Memphis Music Hall of Fame's website. The Bar-Kays were inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2013.

• Jeremy P. Tarcher, whose eponymous publishing house released an eclectic wave of best-sellers ranging from Joan Rivers' "Having a Baby Can Be a Scream" to "Bikram's Beginning Yoga," has died.

Penguin Group (USA), the parent company of Jeremy P. Tarcher Inc., announced that Tarcher died from complications related to Parkinson's disease. He was 83.

Tarcher, the brother of best-selling author Judith Krantz and widower of puppeteer Shari Lewis, founded his company in the early 1970s and enjoyed success with a wide range of titles. The Tarcher catalog includes Mind/Body/Spirit guides (Betty Edwards' "Drawing On the Right Side of the Brain"), New Age favorites ("Bikram's Beginning Yoga") and "Celebrity Kosher Cookbook."

• Al LoCasale, who spent more than three decades as Al Davis' confidant with the Raiders, has died. He was 82.

LoCasale, one of pro football's most colorful figures - like his boss, Davis - spent 50 years in the sport. He was an executive with the American Football League when it was born in 1960, working for the Chargers, and also was the first personnel director for the expansion Cincinnati Bengals before joining the Raiders. LoCasale also was one of the foremost historians on the AFL.

• The novels of Jackie Collins dramatized the lives of the most elite people and places, but they were read by everyone, everywhere - from airports to beaches to, sometimes, under the covers with a flashlight to hide from disapproving parents and partners.

Collins, whose books like "Hollywood Wives" were as brazenly sexual as they were proudly pulpy, sold hundreds of millions of novels in dozens of countries, and it led to a level of wealth, celebrity and glamour that in many ways surpassed her own characters, and arguably matched that of her older sister, "Dynasty" actress Joan Collins.

Collins died at age 77 of breast cancer in Los Angeles, her publicist Melody Korenbrot said.

Collins' tales of sex, glamour, power and more sex were a forerunner to the culture of "Desperate Housewives" and "The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills." Her books provided at first more than some wanted to hear, but she became the kind of author from whom readers could never get enough, providing forbidden fodder for housewives and for teenagers raiding their parents' bookshelves.

Collins told The Associated Press in a 2011 interview that she "never felt bashful writing about sex."

"As a writer, you can never think about who is going to read your books. Is it going to be my mom? My children? A lot of people say to me, 'Oh, I read your books under a cover with a flashlight when I was really young and I learned everything I know about sex from you.' "

She was born Jacqueline Jill Collins in London in 1937, the daughter of a theatrical agent and a dance teacher.

Her first novel, "The World is Full of Married Men," was a story of sex and show business set in "Swinging London" in the mid-1960s. It came out in 1968 and became a scandalous best-seller, banned in Australia and condemned by romance writer Barbara Cartland.

"Barbara Cartland said to me, 'Oh, Miss Collins, your books are filthy and disgusting and you are responsible for all the perverts in England,' " Collins told Porter Magazine in 2014. "I pause for a few moments and said, 'Thank you.' "

Collins followed in the 1970s with books like "The World is Full of Divorced Women" and "Lovers & Gamblers."

By the 1980s, she had moved to Los Angeles and turned out the 1983 novel she is still best known for, "Hollywood Wives," which has sold more than 15 million copies. It came at the same time that her sister hit the height of her own fame on "Dynasty."

"Dynasty" producer Aaron Spelling would also produce the 1985 hit TV miniseries of "Hollywood Wives," which featured Candice Bergen, Angie Dickinson and Suzanne Somers, among others.

• Todd Ewen, the former NHL enforcer called "The Animal" for his rugged play and fighting ability, has died at 49.

Ewen had 36 goals, 40 assists and 1,911 penalty minutes in 518 career games in 11 seasons with St. Louis, Montreal, Anaheim and San Jose. He helped Montreal win the 1993 Stanley Cup.