In the immortal words of the great Yankee Lou Gehrig… Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth! Reason being, I got to know another great Yankee Thurman Munson. I first actually met him as a fan waiting outside Yankee Stadium by the player’s parking lot. I was one of those kids that would be screaming out Thurman, Thurman. Sometimes he would stop and sometimes he wouldn’t. At that time my Yankee hero was Bobby Murcer. The media had built him up as the next Mickey Mantle. Mantle had been my first Yankee hero.
Murcer and Munson were usually together when they walked out of the park so you could see that there was a friendship there.
In 1973 I was given a job by the Yankees owner George Steinbrenner as a batboy.
That season and in 1974 I would witness the beautiful friendship that Murcer and Munson really had. I also witnessed the great friendship that the wives Kay Murcer and Diana Munson had.
Murcer and Munson along with Lou Piniella were the true leaders of that team. How they talked about all facets of the game and how they talked to the other players about the challenges of that days game was a thing of beauty. That 1974 team was a team that wasn’t supposed to win however they went into September in first place and lost by one game in the next to last day of the season.
The leadership of those players plus Graig Nettles and Roy White was a big reason why.
After we traded Bobby Murcer following the 1974 season George Steinbrenner was smart enough to make Thurman Munson the first Captain of the Yankees since Lou Gehrig.
Thurman wanted no part of being a captain because he firmly believed that you lead by example not by labels. Thurman even told the Boss that Lou Gehrig was supposed to be the last Yankee captain and Steinbrenner countered by saying that if then-Yankees manager Joe McCarthy would have known Thurman that he to would agree that Thurman should be the Captain.
Finally, Thurman agreed. When he got down to the clubhouse there was a uniform in his locker with a letter C for Captain already sewn on. Thurman grabbed the shirt and handed it to the historic clubhouse manager Pete Sheehy who also served Gehrig. Thurman loved Pete so he respectfully handed him the shirt and told him that he didn’t want to see it in his locker again. Thurman also didn’t want the players to call him Captain. He always lead by example and in his time was truly the most respected player on the team. One time the team wasn’t playing well. Thurman wasn’t the type to call for a clubhouse meeting. When I was packing up the bats after a Yankee loss Thurman grabbed maybe six or seven bats and when he walked into the clubhouse the players were not acting like we had just lost three games in a row so Thurman just dropped the bats in the middle of the clubhouse. Everyone stepped on what they were doing and looked in the direction of the noise and saw that it was Thurman. The action spoke louder than any words he could have said. Coincidence or not we won the next five games.
I was amazed at the fact that pitchers loved throwing to Thurman. It was incredible that even though Billy Martin liked being in control of all the action on the field, yet when it came to calling the game Billy would let Thurman take the reins in that department. On his other teams Billy called the pitches.
That was the Thurman Munson that I got to know. I got to love him because he sincerely was my friend and he really looked out.
Through the years I noticed how many great managers were catchers and for the last forty years I really believed that after Thurman would of retired he would of seen his kids grow up and then George Steinbrenner would have talked him into coming back to work with the team and eventually convince him to manage the Yankees.
Thurman would have had Lou Piniella be his hitting coach. Willie Randolph would have been his third base coach Roy White would of coached first base, Mel Stottlmyer would of been his pitching coach, and yes Disco Dom Scala would be his bullpen coach and believe it or not during Thurman’s first season of managing he would of had Reggie Jackson be his bench coach because Thurman had a great respect for Reggie’s knowledge of the game. They actually became very good friends. However after that season for whatever the reason he would have Gene Michael leave the front office to be Thurman’s next bench coach.
Naturally, our trainers would be Gene Monohan and Steve Donohue and Thurman would ask for the Yankees to bring back Herman Schneider from the White Sox because Thurman really liked him.
I honestly believe that Thurman would have been a great manager and the confrontations he would have had with the Boss would have been monumental. That’s all I got to say about that!
All I can tell you is that its nice to imagine what could have been… having Thurman for those ten years during my youth was truly wonderful and I am so very blessed just to be able to say that I actually was friends and got to really love Thurman Munson!
