In heaven I can hear the greeting now: “It’s about time,” Thurman Munson says to Bobby Murcer. “What took you so long? How’s Lou (Piniella) doing?”
To me, Bobby Murcer was the New York Yankees when I began following baseball and a big reason why I became a baseball and a Yankee fan.
That’s why today – Saturday, July 12, 2008 – I remember Bobby Murcer fondly on the day he passed away from a 16-month battle with brain cancer.
I was born in 1963 and can remember first becoming a Yankee fan in 1970, although I also rooted for the Mets in the beginning as well. I became a Yankee fan only in 1972 after my first trip to the old Yankee Stadium that year.
On that day I saw Thurman Munson get the game-winning hit. That was the beginning of me arguing for the rest of the 1970s that he was better than Boston’s Carlton Fisk and that he was the best catcher in the American League.
Munson and Murcer will forever be linked together.
While Munson was, still is and always will be my favorite athlete of all time, Murcer is right there with him.
I shed many tears when Thurman died almost 29 years ago. I could also shed a few tears for Bobby Murcer today.
When I first began to be a die hard Yankee fan and made it a practice to memorize every single statistic from newspaper and monthy Baseball Digest accounts, Murcer and Munson were the headliners for the early 1970s Yankees, before Steinbrenner came along in 1973 and before general manager Gabe Paul had the vision to trade for players such as Piniella, Graig Nettles and Chris Chambliss.
However, it bothers me when I hear Michael Kay and other people talk about how Murcer was the only good Yankee at the time and how Kay and others say how bad the team was.
The Yankees did suck from 1965-1969, but from 1970-1975 – before they got back on top – they were not that bad.
Doesn’t Kay know that the Yankees finished in second place in 1970 after winning 93 games? Doesn’t Kay know that the Yankees, while not great, still posted winning seasons in 1971 and 1972 and were in a pennant race briefly in September of 1972?
Doesn’t Kay know that the Yankees spent almost three months – from roughly May to August – in first place in the American League East in 1973 before the team did not play well down the stretch and finished 80-82, which would be its last losing season until 1982?
Doesn’t Kay know that the Yankees almost won the AL East in 1974, finishing second to Baltimore and not being eliminated until the second-to-last day of the season?
Murcer and Munson were the stars of those Yankee teams, who also had another pretty good player in left fielder Roy White. I had the good fortune to sit down with White – one-on-one – and interview him at La’Affaire in Mountainside.
In those days you had White in left, Murcer in center and someone else in right.
Murcer and Munson were to the Yankees in the early 1970s what Tom Seaver and Cleon Jones were to the New York Mets.
Anyone my age will remember the Mayor’s Trophy Games played in September. If the Yankees won, I could brag. If the Mets won, I couldn’t say a word. One year the exhibition game ended in a tie, which to me still meant that the Yankees were better.
While I wished that I could have met Munson in person or better yet had the opportunity to interview him – he probably would have blown me off, but that still would have been OK with me – I did have the good fortune of meeting Murcer in person on two occasions.
The first was Monday, Aug. 2, 1999 at Yogi Berra’s Museum in Montclair. It was the exact 20-year anniversary of Munson’s passing and Murcer was there with Gene Michael, Munson’s widow Diane and Munson biographer Marty Appel. Munson and Michael were roommates in college at Kent State – pre April of 1970 when innocent students were gunned down on campus.
Had I known what I found out about a week later, I would have brought it up in the question segment. Munson’s first home run came after Murcer homered and before Michael homered.
In the bottom of the sixth inning of a 5-1 win over the Oakland A’s at Yankee Stadium on Sunday, Aug. 10, 1969, Murcer – batting fifth in the order – led off with a home run, his 16th. Munson, playing in only his second major league game after only 99 in the minors, followed with his first career round-tripper.
Two days earlier in the second game of a doubleheader against the A’s, Munson – batting eighth ahead of pitcher and Trenton native Al Downing – went 2-for-3, with two RBI and one run in his major league debut. The pitcher he had immediate success against was none other than Jim “Catfish” Hunter, who he would later catch as a teammate from 1975-1979. Hunter, born one month and 12 days before Murcer, died of Lou Gehrig's disease in 1999 at the age of 53.
After Oakland’s Lew Krausse gave up home runs to Murcer and Munson, Michael stepped to the plate and smacked only his second home run of the season. The Yankees led 2-1 going into the inning and ended up scoring the game’s final three runs with those back-to-back-to-back home runs that made lefty Fritz Peterson a winner as he evened his record at 12-12. White also homered in the game.
The second time I met Murcer was in early 2004 at a memorabilia store in Wayne. He autographed a photo of him standing in front of the three monuments in deep center field at the old Stadium. There were times when he had to go in between the monuments of Babe Ruth, Miller Huggins and Lou Gehrig to retrieve a ball hit that far. It’s quite something to see clips of the old Stadium with the monuments in playing territory.
The second game I saw at the old Stadium was Saturday, Aug. 11, 1973 against Oakland, which was two weeks after my 10th birthday. That was the last year of the old Stadium and at the time the Yankees were only a game and a half out of first place while Oakland was two out in the AL West.
Vida Blue beat Mel Stottlemyre 7-3, with the A’s going on to win the World Series again – over the Mets – and the Yankees finishing fourth.
In the last Old Timer’s Game at the old Stadium, Mickey Mantle homered off Whitey Ford, batting right handed and hitting the ball over the left field fence. That’s something, too, I will always remember.
Murcer will be missed greatly at this year’s Old Timer’s Game and many more to follow. He will also be missed in the broadcast booth.
In 12 days – July 24 – it will be the 25-year anniversary of the Pine Tar Game, where George Brett’s ninth-inning, go-ahead home run off Goose Gossage was disallowed because the home plate umpire ruled that his bat had too much pine tar on it after Billy Martin argued that it did. (The game was later continued with the home run counting and the Yankees lost it.)
Murcer’s last game was June 11 of 1983 as he was asked to retire so that Don Mattingly could be brought up. Murcer did not hesitate to agree and then immediately went to the Yankee broadcast booth. Just a month and a half later, Murcer called the Pine Tar Game on television that Sunday afternoon along with play-by-play man, the late Frank Messer.
While Bobby Murcer batted .331 and made the first of five consecutive All-State Game appearances in 1971, he struggled mightily in 1974, which was the first of two seasons the Mets shared Shea Stadium with the Yankees, while Yankee Stadium was being refurbished.
Murcer hit only 10 home runs that season, although he still knocked in 88 runs. His batting average slipped to .274 and during the course of the season first-year manager Bill Virdon moved him to right field in favor of former Union High School and University of Michigan standout Elliott Maddox, who the Yankees had obtained from the Texas Rangers after the 1973 season.
Then on Oct. 22, 1974 – right after the Oakland A’s won their third straight World Series to become the only team other than the Yankees to accomplish that feat – Murcer was traded – straight up – for San Francisco Giants center fielder Bobby Bonds.
I remember first hearing of the news at my grandparents’ house in Nutley, the same grandparents who took me to Yankee Stadium on Old Timer’s Day in 1973 and then to Shea Stadium in 1974 and 1975 to see the Yankees and to Yankee Stadium again in 1976.
At first I was miffed, because I loved Bobby Murcer. Then I said, maybe Bonds could help? Then I quickly said, wow, how could they trade away Bobby Murcer?
As it turned out, Bonds started the All-Star Game, won a Gold Glove and hit 30 home runs (actually 32) and stole 30 bases for the Yankees in 1975, although the Bronx Bombers finished just 83-77 and in third place because of a rash on injuries that season and the fact that Boston was better that year.
Not many Yankees have hit for the cycle, but Murcer is in that select group. He did so on Sunday, Aug. 29, 1972 in a 7-6, 11-inning win at Yankee Stadium over the Texas Rangers.
Murcer went 4-for-5, with an intentional walk. His fourth and final hit that gave him the cycle was a leadoff home run in the bottom of the ninth that tied the game at 6-6. The Yankees won the game with a run in the bottom of the 11th as Sparky Lyle ended up being the winning pitcher in relief.
The only other Yankee cycle since then was produced by the last regular Yankee shortstop before Derek Jeter. On Sept. 3, 1995 at Yankee Stadium, Tony Fernandez achieved the feat in a game the Yankees lost 10-9 in 10 innings to the Oakland A’s.
So Murcer still has the last Yankee cycle in a Yankee victory, which is now almost 36 years old.
Entertainers that I loved watching while growing up passed away earlier this year, including Charlton Heston, Harvey Korman and George Carlin. Now Bobby Murcer has passed away.
Murcer, like Munson, was the Pride of the Yankees when the Yankees weren’t making it to the World Series every year. Although Murcer was not on the Yankees when they won the pennant in 1976, 1977 and 1978 and the World Series in 1977 and 1978, at least he got to play in the 1981 World Series two years after returning to the Yankees in 1979.
Murcer homered four straight times in a doubleheader against Cleveland in 1970.
Who could forget the game he had on Monday night, Aug. 6, 1979 after giving one of the eulogies earlier that day at Munson’s funeral in Canton, Ohio?
The Yankees trailed Baltimore 4-0. Murcer hit a three-run homer to right. He then ended the game at Yankee Stadium with at two-run double to left in the bottom of the ninth off former Yankee pitcher Tippy Martinez.
Munson died six days after my 16th birthday. Murcer died 15 days before what will be my 45th (provided I get there, knock on wood).
Munson - from Akron, Ohio - lived until the age of 32. Murcer - from Oklahoma City, Oklahoma - until 62.
Both of them left all of us much too young.
Today, a part of my childhood took a hit.
If more people were like Bobby Murcer, the world would be a much better place to live in.
