Love and Other Ways of Dying

by Michael Paterniti

  And the kids went bananas every time he came home, hanging off him like he was some kind of jungle gym. Two doe-eyed girls and a young, redheaded son who was afraid of the dark. Thurman Munson would sit at the kitchen table and eat an entire pack of marshmallow cookies with them. He’d take barrettes and elastic bands and disappear and do up his hair and then leap out of nowhere, Hi-yahing! from around a corner, wielding a baseball bat like a sword, doing his version of John Belushi’s samurai. After the girls took a bath, Thurman Munson did the blow-drying. Then he combed out their hair. He never hurt us, remembers Kelly, the second daughter. I mean, our mom would kill us with that stupid blow-dryer and brush, and he said, I don’t want to hurt you. And he took so much time and our hair would be so smooth and he’d take the brush and make it go under and then comb it out.

  When Michael, the youngest, couldn’t sleep, his father went to him. As a kid, Thurman Munson was afraid of the dark, too, but in his father’s world, Thurman Munson would lie there alone; you were humiliated for your fear, and you learned to be humiliated—often. On the day Yankee general manager Lee MacPhail came to Canton to sign Thurman Munson, the boy’s father, Darrell, the truck driver, lay in his underwear on the couch, never once got up, never came into the kitchen to introduce himself. At one point, he just yelled, I sure do hope you know what you’re doing! He ain’t too good on the pop-ups!

  But Thurman Munson would sit with his own boy in the wee hours—at two, three, four, five A.M. Often he couldn’t sleep himself, lying heavily next to Diana, his body half black-and-blue, his swollen knees and inflamed shoulders and staph infections hounding him awake. So he’d just go down the hall and be with Michael a while. Just stretch out in the boy’s bed. It’s all right, he’d say. There’s nothing to be afraid of.

  And maybe, too, he was talking to himself, his body having aged three years for every one he played. So that at thirty-two, after a decade behind the plate, his body was old. In the very last game he played, he started at first but left after the third inning with an aggravated knee, just told the manager, Billy Martin, Nope, I don’t have it. Went up the runway and was gone. But it was his body that was making money, realizing a life that far exceeded the life that had been given to him—or that he’d dreamed for himself. Including the perks: a Mercedes 450SL convertible, real estate, a $1.2 million Cessna Citation.

  It’s a life that Diana remembers wistfully when we go driving. We visit the cemetery. We talk about the current Yankees, and she confesses that she’s just started following the team closely again, wonders if Thurman Munson means anything to today’s players, is more than just some tragic name from the past. Like with her young grandkids, who know him as a photograph or an action figure.

  Diana takes me to the crash site, too. Maybe takes me there to prove that she can do it, has done it, will do it again. Did it six months after the crash when the psychiatrist said that maybe Diana and the kids were always late for counseling because Diana was afraid to pass the airport. Maybe Diana is always late, thought Diana, because she has three little kids and no husband. And, right then and there, she put them in the car and drove to Greensburg Road, to the very place where Thurman Munson’s plane left black char marks on the pavement. To prove to them—and herself—that Thurman Munson doesn’t reside in this spot, five hundred feet away and forty feet below the embankment to runway 19 at Akron-Canton Regional Airport. The distance of one extremely long home run. No, she says to me now, he may live somewhere else, but he doesn’t live here.

  So I go to see Ron Guidry and Lou Piniella, Willie Randolph and Reggie Jackson, Bobby Murcer and Catfish Hunter. At Fenway, I talk to Bucky Dent. I talk to Goose Gossage and Graig Nettles. I go to Tampa and sit with the Force himself, George Steinbrenner. The old Bronx Zoo, minus a conspicuous few. There are stories about Thurman Munson, a thousand, it seems. Funny and sad and inspiring. And these men—they, too, are by turns funny and sad and inspiring.

  When I visit Ron Guidry at his home in Lafayette, Louisiana, he’s working alone in the barn, chewing tobacco. He’s about to turn forty-nine, the same number he used to wear when he was pitching, when he was known as Gator and Louisiana Lightning. He looks as if he just stepped off the mound—all sinew and explosion. He works part-time as a pitching coach for the local minor league team, the Bayou Bullfrogs, and shows up for several weeks each year at the Yankees’ spring-training facility in Tampa. Mostly, he hunts duck.

  He remembers his first start as a Yankee. He came in from the bullpen, nervous and wired, and Thurman Munson walked up to him and said: Trust me. That’s it. Trust me. Then walked away. As Guidry remembers it, everything after that was easy. Like playing catch with Thurman Munson. Thurman calls a fastball on the outside corner. Okay, fastball outside corner. He calls a slider. Okay, slider. Eighteen strikeouts in a game. A 25–3 record. The World Series. Just trusting Thurman Munson. Can’t even remember the opposing teams, Guidry says, just remember looking for Thurman’s mitt. Remembers that very first start: Thurman Munson came galumphing out to the mound, told him to throw a fastball right down the middle of the plate. Okay, no problem.

  But I’m gonna tell the guy you’re throwing a fastball right down the middle, says Thurman Munson.

  Guidry says, Now, Thurman, why’n the hell would you do that?

  Trust me, says Thurman Munson. Harrumphs back to the plate. Guidry can see him chatting to the batter, telling him the pitch, then he calls for a fastball right down the middle of the plate. Damn crazy fool. Guidry throws the fastball anyway, batter misses. Next pitch, Thurman Munson is talking to the batter again, calls a fastball on the outside corner, Guidry throws, batter swings and misses. Talking to the batter again, calls a slider, misses again. Strikeout. Thurman Munson telling most every batter just what Gator is going to throw and Gator throwing it right by them. After a while Thurman Munson doesn’t say anything to the batters, and Gator, he’s free and clear. Believes in himself. Which was the point, wasn’t it?

  I find Reggie Jackson at a Beanie Baby convention in Philadelphia, sitting at a booth. He’s thicker around the waist and slighter of hair, but he’s the same Reggie, by turns gives off an air of intimacy, then of distance. He’s here to sign autographs and hawk his own version of a Beanie Baby, Mr. Octobear, after his nom de guerre, Mr. October—a name sarcastically coined by Thurman Munson after Reggie went two for sixteen against the Royals in the 1977 playoffs, before he redeemed himself with everyone, including Thurman Munson, when he hit three consecutive World Series dingers on three pitches to solidify his legend. Manufactured by a California company, the Octobear line includes a Mickey Mantle bear and a Lou Gehrig bear—and a Thurman Munson bear, too.

  I don’t like doing media, says Reggie. You can’t win, and there’s nothing for me to say. And then he starts. Says Thurman Munson was the one who told George Steinbrenner to sign Reggie Jackson. Says he never meant for there to be a rift between Reggie Jackson and Thurman Munson, that he mishandled it, and when that magazine article came out at the beginning of the 1977 season—when Reggie was quoted as saying that he was the straw that stirred the drink and Thurman Munson didn’t enter into it at all, could only stir it bad—that’s when Reggie Jackson was sunk.

  I would take it back, says Reggie. I was having a piña colada at a place called the Banana Boat, and I was stirring it and I had a cherry in it, some pineapple, and I said it’s kind of like everything’s there and I’m the straw, the last little thing you need. That killed my relationship with Thurman, me apparently getting on a pedestal, saying I was the man and then disparaging him.

  Near the end in 1979, says Reggie, we were getting along really well, and I was really happy about it, because feelings were rough there for a long time. You know, I wanted his friendship, and he wanted to make things easier.

  The day of the crash, Reggie had business in Connecticut. I’ll never forget that day, he says. I had on a white short-sleeve and a pair of jeans and penny shoes and I was driving a silver-and-blue Rolls-Royce with a blue
top. Heard it over the radio: A great Yankee superstar was killed today. And at first, I thought it was me. I wanted to touch myself. I went like that … Reggie grabs his forearm, a forearm still the size of a ham hock, squeezes the muscle, tendon, and bone. He seems moved, or just spooked by the memory of how he imagined his own death being reported on the radio. He’s driving his Rolls-Royce, and he’s here at a Beanie Baby convention. He’s hitting a home run at Yankee Stadium, and he’s here, twenty years later, going down a line of autograph seekers, shaking with both hands, as if greeting his teammates one last time at the top of the dugout steps.

  Of course, everyone else remembers that day, too. Bucky Dent was told by a parking lot attendant after a dinner at the World Trade Center and nearly fainted. Catfish got a call from George Steinbrenner and went across the street and told Graig Nettles, who was already talking to George himself, and both of them thought it was a joke at first, that someone was putting them on. Goose Gossage and his wife were in the bedroom, dressing to go see a Waylon Jennings concert. It was just, God damn, says Goose. We all felt bulletproof, and then you see such a strong man, a man’s man, die.… Then it’s like we’re not shit on this earth, we’re just little bitty matter.

  Lou Piniella remembers arguing past midnight with Thurman Munson at Bobby Murcer’s apartment in Chicago a couple of nights before the crash—the Yankees were in town playing the White Sox; Murcer had just been traded from the Cubs back to the Yankees—arguing about hitting until Murcer couldn’t stand it anymore, took himself to bed at about 2:00 A.M. Piniella was poolside at his house when George called. I was mad, says Piniella, now the manager of the Seattle Mariners, sitting before an ashtray of stubbed cigarettes in the visitors’ clubhouse at Fenway before a game against the Red Sox. He doodles on a piece of paper, drawing staffs without notes. Over and over. I was mad, he repeats. I’m still mad.

  Bobby Murcer, the last player to see Thurman Munson alive, remembers standing at the end of a runway with his wife and kids at a suburban airport north of Chicago where Thurman Munson was keeping his jet, declining his invitation to come to Canton, watching Thurman Munson barrel down the runway in this most powerful machine, then disappearing in the dark. Remembers him up there in all that night, afraid for the man.

  And George Steinbrenner remembers it today in his Tampa office, surrounded by the curios of a sixty-nine-year life, some signed footballs, some framed photographs. He dyes his hair to hide the gray, but seems immortal. The living embodiment of the Yankees past and present. He has the longest desk I’ve ever seen.

  He remembers clearly when Thurman came to his office at Yankee Stadium, flat-out refused to be captain, said he didn’t want to be a flunky for George, and George finally talked him into it, said it was about mettle, not management. He remembers flying out to Canton at Thurman’s request to see Thurman’s real estate, eating breakfast with the family. And, of course, he remembers the day. He got a call from a friend at the Akron-Canton Airport and at first he didn’t put two and two together, not until the man said, George, I’ve got some bad news. Then it hit him.

  I just sat there, says George Steinbrenner now, folding his hands on his lap. Sat paralyzed. Everything about Thurman came flooding back to me—his little mannerisms and the way he played. When George could move his arms again, he picked up the phone and started calling his players. I don’t think the Yankees recovered for a long time afterward, he says. I’m not sure we have yet.

  It’s 1999 at Yankee Stadium. A papery light and the good sound of hard things hitting. And yet again, there are new faces, new names: Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, David Cone, Paul O’Neill, Roger Clemens. Luis Sojo jabbering in Spanish, cracking up the Spanish-speaking contingent, Joe Girardi chewing someone out for slacking through warm-ups (“Keep smiling, rook,” he says, “keep smiling all the way back to Tampa”), Hideki Irabu in mid-stretch, a big man from Japan, messing with a blade of grass, lost in some stunned reverie, contemplating his next move.

  It’s a team that last year came as near to perfection as any team in history, with a 125–50 record. If the 1977 Yankees, with their itinerant stars, were the first truly modern baseball club, then the 1998 Yankees were the first modern team to play like a ball club of yore, with no great standout, no uncontainable ego. A devouring organism, they just won.

  The problem with a year like 1998 is a year like 1999: a great team playing great sometimes and looking anemic at other times. But always haunted: Paul O’Neill haunted by the 1998 Paul O’Neill; Jorge Posada haunted by the 1998 Jorge Posada. And then every Yankee haunted by every Yankee who’s ever come before. Ruth, DiMaggio, Mantle. To this day, even though the clubhouse is a packed place—Bernie Williams is jammed in one corner with his Gibson guitar and crates of fan mail; big Roger Clemens is jammed next to O’Neill, no small man himself—Thurman Munson’s locker remains empty. It stands near Derek Jeter’s, on the far left side of the blue-carpeted clubhouse, near the training room, a tiny number 15 stenciled above it.

  When I ask Jeter if he remembers anything about Thurman Munson, he smiles, looks over his shoulder at the empty locker, and says, Not really. He was a bit before my time. Jeter is twenty-five, which would make him a Winfield-era Yankee fan. But when I ask Jeter if anyone ever uses it, even just to stow a pair of cleats or some extra bats or something, he looks at me quizzically and says, Uh, no, it’s like his locker, man. It still belongs to him.

  In Jorge Posada’s locker, among knickknacks that include a crucifix and a San Miguel pendant, he’s got a picture of Thurman Munson, in full armor, accompanied by a quote from a 1975 newspaper article: Look, I like hitting fourth and I like the good batting average, says Thurman Munson. But what I do every day behind the plate is a lot more important because it touches so many more people and so many more aspects of the game.

  It’s a sentiment that the twenty-seven-year-old Posada takes to heart. And it’s not just Posada. Sandy Alomar, Jr., the catcher for the Cleveland Indians, wears number 15 on his uniform in memory of the man he calls his favorite player, a connection he was proud to acknowledge even when the Indians met the Yankees for the American League pennant last year. He says it brings him luck.

  I try to imagine guys like Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada five, ten, fifteen years from now. Even as they’ve really just begun to play, they will stare down the ends of their careers, on their way to the Hall of Fame or whatever endorsement deal or restaurant ownership pops up. You play hard, hoard your memories, and then suddenly you can’t see the ball or you get thrown out at second on what used to be a stand-up double, you separate a shoulder that won’t heal or just miss your wife and children, and then you go home to Kalamazoo or Wichita or Canton, Ohio. And then who are you, anyway? Just another stiff who played ball.

  Except you get the second half of your life. You get to try to resurrect yourself as the person you most want to be.

  The house that Thurman Munson built first appears in a vision. One day Thurman Munson and his wife are driving around the suburbs of New Jersey when they turn a corner. Thurman Munson hits his brakes and says, Whoa, I have to live in that house! I’m serious, Diana, that’s my dream house! It speaks to some ideal, something orderly, regal, and Germanic in him, a life beyond baseball, an afterlife, and he sheepishly rings the doorbell and does something he never does. I play catcher for the New York Yankees, he says, and I have to live in this house. I mean, not now.… I just want the plans. I promise you I won’t build this house in New Jersey. This will be the only one of its kind in New Jersey. I’d build it in Canton, Ohio. This house. In Canton.

  The woman eyes him suspiciously, takes his name and number, says her husband will call him. He figures that’s the end of that. But the husband calls. Invites the Munsons for dinner. By then Thurman Munson has composed himself, and the man eventually gives him the plans. And then it really begins—years of Sisyphean work. First they have to find the perfect piece of land, which takes forever. Then, instead of hiring a contractor, Thurman Munson subs out t
he job, picks everything right down to the light fixtures himself. He gets stone for the fireplace from New Jersey; stone for the rec room from Alaska; stone for the living room from Arizona. He wants crown moldings in all the rooms. He wants a lot of oak and high-gloss and hand-carved cabinets. In the rec room, a big walk-down bar … then, no, wait a minute, not a big bar, a small bar, and more room to play with the kids. Pillows on the floor to listen to Neil Diamond on the headphones.

  He flies home on off days during the season to check how things are going. But they’re never going well enough. Thurman Munson rages and bellyaches. He throws tantrums. He has walls torn down and rebuilt. He chews out the workers like Billy Martin all over an ump. Like his own father all over him. The guys start to hide when they know he’s coming. Sure, you want your house to look nice, but this guy’s nuts. He’s dangerous. He’s Lear. He’s Kurtz. He’s a dick.

  And the stone keeps coming. From Hawaii, Georgia, Colorado …

  Then finally it’s done. It’s 1978. Thurman Munson’s father, the truck driver, has abandoned his mother, moved to the desert, is working in a parking lot in Arizona, a dark shadow in a shack somewhere, and Thurman Munson moves his own family into the house that Thurman Munson built.

  Something lifts off his shoulders then—after all the tumult, after the two World Series victories, after his body has begun to fail, after the constant rippings in the press. And yet, he’s also become more inward and circumspect. He doesn’t hang out with Goose and Nettles and Catfish for a few pops after games anymore. No, many nights, nights in the middle of a home stand, even, he goes straight to Teterboro Airport, where he keeps his plane, and flies back to Diana and the kids, follows the lights of the highway, the towns of Lancaster and Altoona and Clarion flashing below and the stars flashing above, until Canton appears like a bunch of candles. Sometimes he’s home by midnight.