Wednesday, July 16, 2008
Bobby Murcer: A Little Reverence, A Lot More Love
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In the beginning, he was bedeviled and amused by comparisons to Mickey Mantle.
He was tilled from the same Oklahoma turf, more or less, though his was a considerable leg higher than Mantle's. He was signed by the same scout, Tom Greenwade; he started at shortstop, too, before moving to the outfield after proving a little less than transcendent in the infield.
Abetted as Mantle couldn't be by two years' draft-compelled military service that bulked him just enough, even as a Vietnam-era radio operator, he hit with power breathtaking enough. He could also haul it and cover it in the vast center field expanse, while averaging 25+ bombs a year in his first Yankee tour and leading the majors in on-base percentage at least once.
In the end, Bobby Murcer was what Bill Madden chaptered him for Pride of October: What it Meant to be Young and a Yankee — a pretty fair country ballplayer. More than pretty fair, actually. But in the real end, he knocked Mantle's own courageous end over the center field fence.
He faced cancer flush on and didn't let it chase him all the way out of town. He continued swapping stories the way kids probably swapped his baseball cards when he was the heart of a Yankee franchise in squeamish transition. Oh, he didn't have to confess even half the regrets Mantle compelled himself to confess — come to think of it, regret wasn't exactly one of the most frequent words in his vocabulary.
But maybe Mantle envied Bobby Murcer his unhaunted stability and serenity.
An awful lot of people must have. The quiet grief that rose from the news of Murcer's death Saturday was tempered by quiet smiles and laughter over a man who never quit looking on the bright side no matter how grave the disaster at hand. "He always had that bright smile and that positive spin on everything," said Jason Giambi. "He was the type of guy who never had a bad day."
Well, maybe Murcer had only one bad day, other than the day he'd learn he was in for the fight of his life against brain cancer. The 1973 day he was traded rather bluntly to the San Francisco Giants — in a swap for the Giants' own thought-to-be-a-franchise-player, Bobby Bonds — wasn't exactly high on Murcer's list of things he absolutely had to do on this island earth.
Sometimes he turned disaster into conquest. Give him the news that that tumor they excised from his head was malignant and he just plain waved the news, gently but firmly, back in everyone's face, including the tumor's. Until he was plain exhausted from the unwinnable battle, Murcer refused to shrink, staying on the air whenever he could get there, forcing himself to stick it out at book signings no matter how drained he was.
The conquest they'll never forget was the one he made shortly after his return to the Yankees, after an unhappy exile in San Francisco and Chicago (swapped to the Cubs for Bill Madlock, when the Messersmith ruling came down and the Giants knew an unhappy Murcer wasn't likely to re-sign with them) that followed his seasons of shining on bad teams but never quite living up to the New Mick nonsense.
"It doesn't bother me being compared to Mickey," Murcer loved to crack. "What bothers me is how Mickey felt having me compared to him."
Once a five-time All-Star and a Gold Glove winner, he'd finish his playing career as a useful Yankee spare part, after the Cubs sent him there for a minor leaguer in an obvious salary dump. Sometimes he proved better than merely useful, as much for his personality as his play. He was a singular source of earthbound warmth in a clubhouse that usually seemed just degrees from going nuclear.
But his first season home was a season to try even the most automatonic Yankee's stomach. Reunited with such friends as Thurman Munson, Murcer took it the worst when Munson, his best friend on the team, went down in that Cessna jet crash.
We only learned later that Murcer spurned an invitation to fly with Munson on the Yankee off day. He gave Munson the kind of reason Munson himself would have appreciated, family obligations. He didn't have the heart to tell his friend what really kept him off the flight was his concern that Munson couldn't really handle that spanking new Cessna he'd just bought.
Murcer ended up flying to Canton post haste with his wife at the moment he got the news from George Steinbrenner. They'll never quit talking about Murcer's eulogy to Munson. It only began in the chapel.
He lived, he led, he loved. Whatever he was to each of us ... he should be remembered as a man who valued and followed the basic principles of life. He lived ... he led ... and he loved. He lived blessed with his beautiful wife, Diana, his daughters, Tracy and Kelly, and his son, Michael. He led ... this team of Yankees to three divisional titles and two world championships. He loved ... the game, his fans, his friends, and most of all his family.
He is lost but not gone. He will be missed but not forgotten. As Lou Gehrig led the Yankees as the captain of the Thirties, our Thurman Munson captained the Yankees of the '70s. Someone, someday, shall earn that right to lead the team again, for that is how Thurm — Tugboat, as I called him — would want it. No greater honor could be bestowed on one man than to be the successor to this man, Thurman Munson, who wore the pinstripes with number 15. Number 15 on the field, number 15 for the records, number 15 for the halls of Cooperstown. But in living, loving, and legend, history will record Thurman as number one.
Murcer's eloquence overruled even what he did to slam an exclamation point onto its finish, when the Yankees took on the Baltimore Orioles August 6, 1979, the evening they arrived home from Munson's funeral and burial. Murcer had to beg his way into the lineup that night; manager Billy Martin planned to rest him, knowing only too well what roiled Murcer.
"Billy," Murcer pleaded, "I have to play. I don't know if I'm tired or not. I just know I have to play."
For six and a half innings, however, the game looked as though the Orioles were going to bury the Yankees as they'd just buried their captain, and Murcer looked like one of the walking dead with his swishout, fly out, and line out thus far.
But in the bottom of the seventh, Bucky Dent wrung a walk out of Dennis Martinez and Willie Randolph doubled Dent to third. Up came Murcer. He hit a three-run bomb to pull the Yankees back to within a run — his first launch in The 'Stripes since his 1973 departure; the standing O as Murcer crossed the plate arms high endured over two full minutes — and there the score stayed until the bottom of the ninth.
Again, Murcer had Dent (another walk) and Randolph (safe on reliever Tippy Martinez's errant throw while trying to bunt Dent over) on base ahead of him. He pulled a clean two-run single to right for the game, 5-4. He sent the bat to Diana Munson.
When Murcer was finally through (he'd been only a part-time DH for the only World Series in which he ever appeared, hitless three times up in 1981), he was succeeded on the roster by ... well, let's just say said successor completes the answer to the trivia question about Murcer being the only Yankee to have been able to claim Mickey Mantle and Don Mattingly as teammates.
But let's also say that Murcer went on to become a Yankee executive for a short while and, for a far longer and friendlier while, a familiar and loved Yankee broadcaster, turning tales and amplifying games like a comfortable country neighbor who couldn't let even the big city knock him inside out.
"Bobby always went out of his way to be nice and be positive," said Derek Jeter, who holds the team position Munson once held — and who hit his 200th career bomb Saturday night, en route a 9-4 Yankee win over Toronto, while Alex Rodriguez passed Mantle on the all-time bomb list. "He was probably one of the most positive people you'll ever meet. Ever since I first came up, everyone looked forward to seeing him. He handled himself with class. You never heard anybody say a bad word about him."
Well, maybe you did. If you consider those making note that Murcer wasn't as revered as Ruth/Gehrig, as Joe DiMaggio, as Mantle. But Ruth had his gluttonies; DiMaggio and Mantle, their demons; Gehrig, his quiet tragedy. And if you think Murcer wasn't exactly revered, you haven't had a conversation with Andy Pettitte lately.
"What a spirit he had. He was just a great man. He was always upbeat," Pettitte said. "Just the attitude he took, knowing [the brain cancer] he had was serious, was an inspiration to everyone. People like that, you want to surround yourself with. He was a blessing to be around."
So it's a little reverence and a lot more love. It beats the alternative even if you weren't a pretty fair country ballplayer.