Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain (7 page)

The marriage to Diana pretty much sealed Thurman’s departure from the Munson family as he embraced the Dominicks as his own. He had found a much happier home there. Lou Piniella says that Thurman never talked about his family; Lou knew nothing about them. When I told Bobby Murcer that I had been in touch with Thurman’s brother, Bobby said, “Thurman had a brother?”

In the meantime, Thurman did have a second physical, this time in Cleveland, and this time, alas, he passed and awaited a formal notice to report to military duty.

“We all felt fortunate to be in the Reserve,” recalls high school classmate Gregg Schorsten, who went on to Kent State with Thurman. “I think all of us looked at the protesters as a group that didn’t really affect us. They were doing their thing and we coexisted. The draft motivated us to keep our student deferment and the Reserve was the next best thing. It was an attitude of life goes on. Yes, it was a turbulent time, and maybe because we were so young, we just coped with everything.”

But the call didn’t come, at least not immediately, and as 1969 spring training approached, Thurman was assigned to the Syracuse
Chiefs, the Yanks’ Triple-A farm club in the International League. Initially, he would begin spring training in the major league camp, where extra catchers were needed. He wore number 28. Once the roster began to shrink and the need passed, he’d head a few miles south to the minor league camp in Hollywood, Florida. In the meantime, he played in each of the Yankees’ first six exhibition games that year, two of them complete games. He caught Stan Bahnsen and Al Downing, Mel Stottlemyre and Fritz Peterson, and veterans like Fred Talbot, Don Nottebart, Lindy McDaniel, and Steve Hamilton.

As the season was about to begin, the Army Reserve finally called; the Yankees had managed to get him in. Thurman was assigned to a four-month hitch at Fort Dix in New Jersey, where he worked as a desk clerk. Bahnsen, the American League Rookie of the Year with the Yankees in 1968, would do weekend Reserve duty at Fort Dix, so the two got to catch up on Yankee news whenever Bahnsen would arrive.

When Munson got a weekend pass, he’d fly to Syracuse and get some playing time in. If the Chiefs were on the road, he’d go to Yankee Stadium and take batting practice. It was pretty much a lost year professionally. He played only seventeen games for the Chiefs. But in August, Yankee catcher Frank Fernandez went off for weekend Reserve duty himself and Munson was available. The Yanks activated him on August 8 and he was on the roster, in time to catch the second game of a doubleheader. With Tom Tresh having recently been traded to Detroit, his number 15 was available and the size was correct. Pete Sheehy gave Thurman number 15—the number he had worn at Kent State.

“I had to go digging to find a pair of pants to fit him,” said Pete. “His rear end was too big. I always kidded him about that.”

The Oakland A’s were in town for the weekend, and Munson not only caught the second game of the twi-nighter but got his first
major league hit, a single to center off Catfish Hunter, his future battery mate and close friend. First base coach Elston Howard retrieved the ball as a keepsake. The newcomer drove in two runs and caught Al Downing’s complete game, a 5-0 shutout, giving the
New York Times
a subheadline the next morning that read “MUNSON PACES ATTACK IN 2d GAME.”

Thurman stayed at Gene Michael’s house that first Friday night. On Saturday, which was Old-Timers’ Day, he posed for photos with Gene Woodling, an invited guest. On Sunday, before he had to return to Fort Dix, he hit his first big-league homer—sandwiched between homers by Murcer and Michael. Never mind that Maris and Mantle had retired—here was a bit of M&M&M power, consecutive homers by Murcer, Munson, and Michael. Munson’s shot came off Lew Krausse.

For the weekend, Thurman was 3 for 6 with a homer, 3 RBIs, and 2 runs scored. It was a very nice start.

His Reserve duty ended on August 30. The Yanks had him go to Syracuse, where the Chiefs were in the playoffs and on their way to the International League championship. He caught two games but then rejoined the Yankees on September 5, never again to wear a minor league uniform. He played only ninety-nine minor league games, plus four postseason games.

The recall on September 5 essentially began his career as a regular, and he never looked back. The Yanks were in fifth place, twenty-four games out of first. The Mets were on their way to winning the World Series. It was as low a point as the Yankee franchise could be.

He caught both ends of a twi-night doubleheader in Cleveland, with a contingent of friends and relatives on hand. A personal highlight was working with first baseman Joe Pepitone on a successful pickoff play at first. He loved that, as he would always enjoy the challenge of showing off his strong arm and quick release. In that final month, he threw out seven of twelve runners attempting to steal, a remarkable percentage. It established his reputation early.

In twenty-six games for the Yankees in 1969, Thurman hit .256, with that homer off Krausse and 9 RBIs. He started twenty-two of the final twenty-seven games of the season, as Jake Gibbs prepared to turn over the catching job to him in 1970.

In the winter of 1969-70, the Yankees arranged for Thurman to play for San Juan in the Puerto Rican League. As he had missed so much playing time during the 1969 season, it was important that he get the experience under his belt and make up for the lost time.

In San Juan, Thurman found himself a teammate of the great Roberto Clemente. Clemente did not need winter ball at that stage of his life, but it would have been a national scandal had he sat out the winter. The Puerto Rican players were expected to play before their hometown fans.

Thurman remembered little about his relationship with Clemente when we talked about it for his autobiography. Obviously I would have loved to have written of a close friendship, or learned some personal things about Roberto for the book. But there wasn’t much there; I didn’t get a sense they hung out at all. After all, Clemente would go home to his family each evening. Thurman did speak of standing and watching Clemente hit during batting practice. I couldn’t get more out of him, although he said Clemente told him that if he ever hit .280 he should consider it a bad season.

Munson finished second in the league in hitting that winter with a .333 mark. There was little doubt as to who would be the Yanks’ starting catcher in 1970. And ultimately, that 1969-70 San Juan Crabbers team would be remembered for having two elite players, both of whom would lose their lives prematurely in aviation accidents.

By spring training of 1970, I became Bob Fishel’s assistant in the Yankees’ PR department, with Bill Guilfoile having moved on to the top job in Pittsburgh. One of my assignments was to set up yearbook photos in the first week so we could rush them off to the printer in time for opening day.

That year, instead of a spring training team photo, we decided to take “mini-team photos” by grouping the players by position. We had three catchers: the incumbent regular of the past two seasons, Jake Gibbs; the first-round draft pick, Munson; and a strong boy from New London, Connecticut, John Ellis, a rookie who could also play first base. Fishel told me to position them with Gibbs the most prominent, out of respect to the veteran who was about to lose his job. Jake knew he was passing the torch but appreciated the gesture.

Thurman was not the most productive rookie in camp that spring—that honor went to Ellis, winner of the James P. Dawson Award as the spring’s top Yankee rookie. John did in fact move to first base in time to be the opening day first baseman and to receive a letter cheering him on from Eleanor Gehrig, Lou’s widow. No one
from the Yankees arranged that—no one called her and asked, “Could you send a letter?” She acted on her own, and wrote something about “waiting all these years for Lou’s true successor.” Very flattering, but she wasn’t much of a scout.

The attention to Ellis (who hit an inside-the-park homer on opening day) was helpful in taking some of the focus off Thurman, who was handed the catching job and started off with an absolutely miserable slump.

In his first nine games, he managed a single and seven walks in thirty-seven trips to the plate. By going 1 for 30, he was the owner of an .033 batting average, and naturally, talk was afloat that perhaps more seasoning in the minors was necessary. He had, after all, played only twenty-eight games at Syracuse the year before.

“It shook him,” says his roommate Gene Michael. “I remember him sitting on the bed in our room at the Shoreham Hotel in Washington, really despondent. He didn’t even want to go to eat. I was trying to encourage him. At the end of the year he outhit me by eighty points.”

Ralph Houk knew better, and not only that, he knew how to deal with such a situation.

“Thurman, don’t give a thought to your hitting. You’re my catcher, you’re going to win a lot more games for me catching than hitting, and the hits will come. Don’t worry about it. Just relax and go out there and play the way we both know you can.”

He managed to maintain both his confidence and his normally cocky personality.

“Thurman was ‘cocky’ in the good sense, very confident,” says pitcher Fritz Peterson. “He was so talented he could get away with it. He also had quite a sense of humor. All the players liked him from the beginning. And he was such a team man. He did all the things a Yankee of old would have done to win games. Run, hit, throw, and break up double plays.”

Maybe there were other things on his mind. Diana gave birth to
their first child, Tracy Lynn Munson, on Friday, April 10, 1970, and Thurman was not able to be in Canton for the birth, being of course at Yankee Stadium. He was just twenty-two, a married father, a regular on the fabled New York Yankees, and seemingly holding on to more responsibility than one might throw at such a young man.

He was also courteous and responsive to fans, something the vast public and media couldn’t see. After Tracy was born, a fan sent a homemade knit vest and skirt as a baby gift to him at Yankee Stadium. Thurman wrote a thank-you note on Yankee stationery.

After the Sunday doubleheader in which he went zero for seven, he flew home to see Tracy and Diana, and later said, “I was about the happiest I’d ever been.”

Thurman didn’t have to rejoin the team until Tuesday night in Boston. So, in the first week of his rookie season, he got that little break in the schedule that allowed him a quick trip home—the same circumstances that would allow him to go home in that fateful, final week of his career.

The real problem with going 1 for 30 at the start of the season is that you spend the rest of the year digging out of it. A lot of players will have slumps during the season, maybe not 1 for 30, but when
you’re hitting .288 and you have your slump in July and drop to .272, it’s just not as glaring as starting off hitting .033.

On April 20, Munson went 3 for 4 with a double and two singles, and he never had another slump all season. He didn’t hit a home run until June 28, but no one questioned his hitting from April 20 on through for the rest of his career.

The 1970 Yankees had only two players remaining from their last World Series in 1964—Mel Stottlemyre and Steve Hamilton. There were a few players who had been teammates on the Mantle-era Yankees, notably Roy White and Bobby Murcer. But essentially, the rise of Thurman Munson in 1970 was the first building block toward the three championships that awaited the team later in the decade. Each year, one or two new additions would enhance the roster, until the team was ready to return to an elite status.

Munson wasn’t especially patient with that plan. A battler, a winner, a guy who took every game as a challenge, he appreciated that the 1970 Yanks were having a good year, but he wanted a pennant, not just a good year. He took little pleasure in the team doing well so long as the Orioles were doing better. He wanted to be those guys, and he’d pump his fist at the pitchers in key situations and want more.

“Even as a rookie, he had a confidence and a maturity back there,” says Stottlemyre. “We in turn had confidence in him. He was a kid, but he was very mature as a major league player. We loved pitching to him.”

The fans felt that spirit and liked to see a guy come along who didn’t give in to complacency and mediocrity. The fans were in love with Munson early on, embracing him as New York fans can do—quickly.

A prime example of this came in August 1970, when he was on Reserve duty at Fort Dix and not expected back in time to play at all on Sunday in a doubleheader against Baltimore. However, he drove
impetuously and made it to Yankee Stadium—eighty-six miles—in a little over an hour, in time for the sixth inning of the second game. He listened to the game on WMCA radio as he rushed up the Jersey Turnpike. He went straight to the clubhouse and got into his uniform, emerging into the dugout, where Houk and his teammates greeted him warmly. “Grab a bat and pinch-hit,” said Houk.

Out of the dugout popped Munson. In the press box, Bob Fishel tapped me on the arm with his pencil and pointed toward the on-deck circle. He was smiling. The fans did not expect to see him and his appearance on the field brought a tremendous roar from the crowd. To have been there at that moment was to see Thurman appreciated at a new level—our guy, and our hero.

He lined out to Brooks Robinson at third, but that wasn’t the point. The response to his arrival signaled a bond between him and the fans that would never fade. If you could define the moment the fans fell in love with the future captain of this franchise, that was it.

Munson had arrived with a flourish, very much a part of the team, already emerging as a leader, and surely as “one of the guys.”