Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain (41 page)

“You never see players in such an out-of-character moment,” said Noble. “To see Rivers, who was always so happy-go-lucky, and White, who was always so stoic and unemotional, was an amazing sight.”

Rivers broke free and embraced Steinbrenner, who had traded him away days before. Mickey became overwhelmed by tears and was helped by White.

George Steinbrenner made an executive decision. “We’re going to the cemetery,” he said. “We’re going to be with him till the end.”

The team got back on the buses, passing by Marv Albert of WNBC and Chee Chee Williams of WABC, who had come to Canton to file reports back to New York.

The route was about seven miles, ending up at the cemetery entrance on Everhard. Along the route, people stood, some with hats or their right hands over their hearts. Many knew what was happening and what this cortège represented. Some just seemed enthralled that the New York Yankees were passing through town. Some kids rode their bikes alongside, oblivious to the meaning of it all. Others seemed to know that this was the Thurman Munson funeral procession. At one point the procession passed a row of fast-food restaurants.

“Only Thurman would get buried next to a Burger King and a pizza parlor,” said Nettles.

One image rolled through Nettles’s mind. After the 1976 World Series the Yankees and the Royals went to Hawaii to compete in a “Super Teams” competition for ABC television. In the swimming relay, “Thurman got about halfway through the second lap of his two laps and he started rolling around in the water like a big walrus. He started laughing and we all started laughing. We lost the relay because he ran out of gas. It was hilarious. I was smiling to myself as I thought about him while I was sitting in the bus.”

The three buses parked by the entrance, and all the other cars parked behind them. I was somewhere near the end. We walked into the cemetery and headed right toward the mausoleum where his casket would be placed. I walked with Mickey Morabito, my onetime assistant and now the team’s PR director. Mickey wanted to stay close to Billy for support.

It was at this point, according to Diana, that Darrell Munson approached the coffin and said, “You always thought you were too big for this world. Well, you weren’t!”

“Look who’s still standing, you son of a bitch!” he added, according to
Esquire
magazine’s Michael Paterniti.

With this, Tote Dominick came by and took him by the elbow and escorted him away.

“Got to get back to Tucson right away,” he said over his shoulder. “Got somebody meeting me there.”

Duane, driving back to Maryland, would drop his father off in Pittsburgh to catch a plane home.

We all assembled at random, Reverend Coleman delivered another blessing, and it was over very quickly. But it felt very right and proper that we were all there for this final moment.

The players and some of the wives reboarded the buses and departed for the airport, now back on schedule to play their game against the Orioles.

About nine of the wives returned to the Munson home to spend the rest of the day with Diana. Among them were Kay Murcer, Audra Chambliss, Helen Hunter, Ginger Nettles, Juanita Gamble, Anita Piniella, Linda White, and Lynn Stanley. “We sat in Diana’s bedroom and talked about the loss,” said Audra. “Diana described the details of the accident as she knew them at that point. She had to be a strong woman to be married to such a strong man, and she was.”

Steinbrenner had ordered two small planes to take the wives back. When they arrived in New York, they went to Yankee Stadium and joined the game in progress. Larry Wahl and Gerry Murphy, there to assist Diana even beyond the team’s departure, finally departed for Cleveland for a late flight.

I drove to Cleveland for a late-afternoon flight and was back home in Westchester by six. I was exhausted and had no desire to go to the stadium for the game. It was hard to imagine that the players could take the field after such a day.

What had been an emotional day would soon end with a unique game, one of the most memorable in Yankee history. In a franchise built as much on sentiment as it had been on championships, there was one more act of drama left.

In the still-dazed Yankee clubhouse, Graig Nettles reached into a bag and pulled out a tape. It was Neil Diamond’s
Hot August Night
. It just was. And the song that played was “Done Too Soon,” about departed celebrities. He looked at sportswriter Marty Noble and they both made the sound of a
Twilight Zone
moment. It was all too creepy.

In the WINS radio booth, Rizzuto was letting his emotions out in his own inimitable way. Authors Tom Peyer and Hart Seely would later publish a book called
O Holy Cow!
and turn the Scooter’s musings into poetry. This was Phil, speaking to Frank Messer and to grieving Yankee fans that evening:

Billy Martin, meanwhile, now turned his attention to the game. On the flight home he told Murcer he wouldn’t play that night against the Orioles. But Bobby objected. “I feel like I need to play tonight,” he told Martin. He needed to complete a day that had begun at five a.m., and which took him beyond any emotion he had ever experienced.

And so Murcer played left field and batted second, with Ron Guidry, equally spent, on the mound. One had to wonder whether the Yankees would go through the motions on this night, or whether they would “win one for Thurman” before life resumed as normal.

ABC television had received permission from Steinbrenner to lift
a blackout that would have limited the viewership of the
Monday Night Baseball
telecast. Earlier, George had gone to the clubhouse to further console his players. He patted Chambliss on the shoulder. He stopped in the training room, where Piniella and Randolph were asleep on tables. Luis Tiant slept on the floor.

Appearing on camera with Howard Cosell during the game, Steinbrenner said: “Well, Howard, I think we’re all emotionally drained in the Yankee family, and yes, but Bobby Murcer spoke in the Munson house, Thursday night, and he came to see me Friday morning when we were talking about it and he said Diane asked for one thing—that Thurman never quit when he was hurt, and everyone on that ballclub was hurting and has been for four days, but we’re Yankees and they don’t quit, and so a determination was made that it was best for the team and we play and we played them right to the wire every game.”

“So the trading of Rivers was not a give-up sign?” asked Cosell.

“Not at all, we proved that last year, and we’ve had more adversity than any team I ever saw this year but they all got up this morning at 5:30—they’re drained emotionally, they’re tired, but they wanted to be there right to the grave, and right to the end, and that’s what the Yankees are.”

“I know you wanted Diane to see the Yankees tonight. Thank you for lifting the blackout.”

The Oriole players intended to wear black armbands, arranged by Mark Belanger, but couldn’t pull it off by game time. Earl Weaver had held a clubhouse meeting before the game to try to spark some life in his team under difficult circumstances. Many of the Baltimore players had hoped not to play. Ken Singleton (born three days after Thurman) recalled Munson’s constant behind-the-plate chatter when he would come to bat.

Dennis Martinez started for the Orioles. He struck out Murcer in the first inning, and then got him on a fly ball deep to right and on
a liner to short. The Orioles were up 4-0 as the Yanks batted in the seventh.

With two out, Dent walked and Randolph doubled him to third. Suddenly, Bobby found the power that used to keep him among the league leaders in his younger days as a Yankee regular. He swung at a fastball and lifted a three-run homer into the right field seats for his first Yankee home run since September 1974, and his first in Yankee Stadium since September 1973. It had been one hundred at bats since his last home run, that one with the Cubs.

“That’s for Thurman,” Bobby said to Billy Martin as he reached the dugout.

“Suddenly,” said Guidry, “we were back as a team, professionals playing the game. It changed our focus. Until then, we were just going through the motions.”

In the ninth, Guidry was running out of gas. Martin went to the mound to replace him, but the Gator, like Murcer, had an inner calling.

“No, Skip,” he said. “I’ve got to finish this one.”

He retired the Orioles in the ninth.

By the last of the ninth, Tippy Martinez had replaced Dennis Martinez on the mound, with the Yankees still trailing 4-3. Dent led off with a walk, and Randolph laid down a sacrifice bunt that was thrown away by Tippy, putting runners at second and third, with Randolph representing the winning run. A hunch—nothing but a hunch—told Billy Martin to let Murcer hit. It went completely “against the book.” Bobby’s fellow eulogist, Piniella, was available to pinch-hit from the right side. Martin’s gut told him to stick with Murcer.

Now it came down to Tippy facing Bobby Murcer, both filled with thoughts of Munson. Tippy loved Munson, who never treated him like a rookie, and always encouraged him. “Thurman taught me how to pitch inside—he forced me to be there,” says Tippy. “I never really
understood it before. But he made me understand it. He’d also argue for his pitchers with the umpires all the time in a quiet way. I didn’t go to the funeral because I just don’t like funerals, but I was feeling badly about not going to his. I was on the mound facing Murcer, who I owned. Lefty-lefty I could always get him out with breaking balls.”

He quickly had him at an 0-2 count.

Martinez looked in at Murcer, rubbed up the baseball, and let his mind flash back.

Years earlier, Ron LeFlore had a 30-game hitting streak for the Tigers. He went 0-3 against the Yankees, and Tippy, then with an “NY” on his uniform, was pitching in the eighth, leading 9-5. The count was 0–2 on LeFlore, and Munson called for a fastball. He took it for a called third strike and the streak was over. But later, Munson told a reporter from
Sports Illustrated
that he’d called for a pitch he felt might be more to LeFlore’s liking to give him one last chance at keeping the streak alive
.

Tippy’s concentration returned to the moment at hand.

“So I’m facing him and I understand all that’s on the line there, and something came over me and said,
Throw one fastball to him—for Thurman
. And I did. It didn’t have to be a strike, but it was, and he still had to hit it, and he did.”

Murcer connected and lined the ball into the left field corner, scoring the winning runs in a 5-4 Yankee win, giving him all five RBIs for the night. At first base, Bobby leaped into the air and into coach Yogi Berra’s arms.

He was rushed by his teammates, with him and Piniella, who had delivered the eulogies, in tears again, leaving the field in an embrace.

As he walked off the mound, beaten, Martinez looked upward and said to himself,
Okay, Thurman, that one was for you
. The ABC telecast followed Tippy, and caught the quick heavenward glance, but was of course unaware of what they had.

The 36,314 fans cheered and cheered for Bobby to take a curtain call, which, embarrassed but euphoric, he finally did. Thirty-six million watched on TV, the second-highest rating in four years of
Monday Night Baseball
. “They won the game for the captain,” said Cosell. “Emotion won the game.” In his earpiece, producer Dennis Lewin was yelling, “Sign off, sign off,” because the eleven o’clock newscasts had to start on time.

“That was Roone Arledge’s command,” said Lewin, speaking of the man who ran both ABC Sports and ABC News. “I hated to leave that game. We never interviewed Bobby. That’s one telecast I think about a lot.”

After the game, the crying resumed. One by one, the players stood before Thurman’s empty locker, trying to gather their thoughts.

Murcer would give the bat he used that night to Diana Munson. He never used it again.

Of all the great moments in the history of the New York Yankees, this was, perhaps, the most emotional of them all. What else could compete with such a performance on the day they had buried their captain? When had the Yankees ever won a game where everyone filed out in tears?

On the Sunday night six days after the “Murcer Game,” Channel 5’s
Sports Extra
in New York did a lengthy Munson special, with John Dockery and Jerry Izenberg interviewing Steinbrenner, Fran Healy, Mel Allen, Bill White, and me.

“Thurman Munson was a unique individual,” said Steinbrenner. “I think people now understand why we made him the captain and what a leader he was by example. As a competitor he was the greatest I’ve ever known and as a person he had a deep human concern for other people, their families and their lives … I don’t know what else you can look for in a leader, a man who does it on the field, by example, who plays when he’s hurt, who never asks any quarter and gives none in competition and at the same time was a deeply caring human being.”

The Yankees paid Diana Munson the remainder of Thurman’s contract, some $1.2 million, through 1981, without dispute, since they had removed the no-fly clause after the contract was renegotiated during spring training in 1978. And just a week after the accident,
Steinbrenner told Dick Young of the
Daily News
, “One thing that saddens me about Thurman is that he spent too much of his little time growling at people … Personally, I’m sorry about Munson’s untimely death, but I can’t be hypocritical about his character. I can’t choke up over guys who glide through life saying, ‘I should be making more money than anybody else.’”