by Marty Appel
When the 1968 season ended, Thurman returned to Cape Cod, departing on June 6, the day of the baseball draft, the day before his twenty-first birthday. “There was no reason not to go,” he said. “Even if I was drafted I could play there all summer and sign later. We’d just watch and see what happened.”
Thurman knew he would be a high draft pick, but of course had no idea who would get to select him. After all, he was rated the number one catcher in the nation. Any suspense was over which team more than when picked. He was pretty calm about the whole process.
The Chatham team of the summer of 1968 was going to be one of the great Cape Cod League teams ever. In addition to Munson, they had future major leaguers in John Curtis, a left-handed starting pitcher, Bobby Valentine at short, Rich McKinney at third, and Stone on the mound. Munson, Curtis, Valentine, and McKinney would all get drafted high and leave the team. Stone got mononucleosis and hepatitis and spent the summer in bed. So much for the great Chatham team of ’68.
Munson was there only a few hours when his sister Darla called him. She had received a call from Lee MacPhail asking if she could have Thurman call him. She told Thurman that he’d been selected fourth in the nation.
“I reached him and told him to call the Yankees right away,” she said. “I was very excited. I was a big Yankees fan!”
Woodling’s final scouting report was reduced to two words: “Get him!”
Bad as the 1967 Yankees had been, leave it to their crosstown rivals, the Mets, to have been even worse. The Mets had the first pick in the draft and took infielder Tim Foli.
The Oakland A’s had the second pick. Leaving Kansas City for Oakland didn’t change their position, and with the first pick ever made by Oakland, the team took pitcher Pete Broberg. They never signed him, though; he eventually signed with the Washington Senators.
Third pick went to the Houston Astros, and they selected a catcher named Marty Cott over Munson. Cott was a high school kid out of Buffalo, where winters were long and baseball seasons were short. He never made it to the majors.
Bobby Valentine, Thurman’s Cape Cod teammate, was picked fifth, right after Thurman.
“We tried out Cott in Buffalo with Pat Gillick pitching to him,” recalls Tal Smith, then the Houston farm director, later the Yankees’ general manager, and one of the most respected baseball executives of modern times. “Our reports were good and he put on an awesome display of power. I guess it wasn’t the best draft pick we ever made. We’d gotten John Mayberry the year before and J. R. Richard the year after. But picking Cott over Munson, well, we sure paid a price for that.”
“I remember that Cott was a bust, and our mistake was more in signing him than in drafting him,” says Gillick, who, like Smith, also went on to become one of the best general managers in baseball. “That was forty years ago. My thinking has really come full circle since then. Back then I looked at a player’s physical attributes much more than his mental. Today I know it’s about the mental attitude and about his heart. Munson had that. He absolutely overachieved on the abilities his body might have given him because he had that heart of a winner.”
And so Johnny Johnson, at a ballroom microphone in New York’s Americana Hotel, announced, “The Yankees take catcher Thurman Munson, Kent State University, twenty-one years old tomorrow.” Johnson told the press, “He was our first choice all the way.”
Not too long after Darla’s call, MacPhail, the Yankees’ gentlemanly general manager, was on the phone with Munson, and it was obvious that there was not going to be a Cape Cod League season for Thurman. He was going to sign with the Yanks. Quickly.
Without unpacking, he turned around and drove back to Canton.
The next day, June 7, Thurman’s birthday, MacPhail and Gene Woodling were in the Munson home on Twenty-second Avenue NE for the formality of signing him to a pro contract. MacPhail made the trip because he wanted to emphasize the importance of Thurman to the organization; to show that even the general manager of the team cared about signing their number one pick in person. He also wanted to explain the value of leaving college after his junior year to get his career going, with the Yankees pledging to finance his remaining education if he wanted. It wasn’t necessary to push the point; Thurman was ready to sign.
While everyone in the house was buzzing with excitement over this great day, Darrell Munson was unmoved. Said MacPhail, “It was the strangest thing. There was his father, on what should have been a joyous day, lying on the couch in the living room. He barely said hello and didn’t join us at all for the signing. At one point he just hollered into us, ‘He ain’t too good on pop fouls, you know.’ It was really a bizarre moment. I think he might have even been in his underwear.”
Duane accepts the story except for the underwear part. “That part doesn’t sound like Dad,” he says, and Darla agrees.
5
Before beginning his pro career, Thurman was sent to veteran coach Cloyd Boyer, the brother of big-league all-stars Ken and Clete. Cloyd was a solid baseball man who was managing the Yankee farm team in Binghamton, New York. Usually he served as roving minor league pitching coach, but this summer he had a managerial assignment. Johnny Johnson asked “C.B.” to work Munson out at Binghamton and recommend what level he should start out in the minor league system.
“A week later Johnny called me and asked where I thought he ought to be playing,” said Boyer. “I said, ‘Yankee Stadium.’ He thought I was kidding, but I wasn’t.”
The Yanks decided to keep him at Binghamton, where the Triplets belonged to the Eastern League. These were the final weeks of a franchise that dated back to 1923. Thurman thought the clubhouse, with holes in the floor, had to be the worst in all of baseball. Whereas the number four national pick in college football would be dressing in style in an NFL clubhouse, in baseball the minor leagues were the starting point for pretty much everyone. (Five-time all-pro Russ Washington out of Missouri, who played fifteen years for San Diego, was Thurman’s number four counterpart in the NFL draft that year.)
What Thurman did have in Binghamton was Cloyd Boyer as manager.
Boyer told Munson, “You’re probably going to be in the big leagues next year.”
“I pitched the first game he caught,” says Mickey Scott, who wound up with a brief career for Baltimore, Montreal, and California. “He arrived in a very impressive new Corvette, and we called him ‘Stump’ that year. I remember pitching a four-hit shutout in Elmira, New York, the day he made his debut. He was the top draft pick, so everyone noticed him.”
The Corvette, purchased with a portion of his $70,000 bonus money, was a harbinger of a love for exciting and expensive new toys that would one day, it could be argued, lead to his decisions to purchase not just an airplane, but then bigger and faster ones.
Thurman wasn’t at Binghamton long when the matter of the Army and the draft came up, and the Yanks, using what they hoped were special connections, dispatched Thurman to Fort Lauderdale, where an Army Reserve unit was based right next to Fort Lauderdale Stadium, their spring training home. Reserve duty would require occasional weekend absences plus a week or two of active duty during the season, but it loomed as a far more inviting alternative than being called up and sent to Vietnam.
The Yankees did their best to court recruitment officers to help their players, but not always with success. A notable failure was certainly Bobby Murcer. They tried Reserve duty but instead lost Bobby to military service for the 1967 and 1968 seasons, a genuine setback to his career and to Yankee fortunes.
In Munson’s case, an extra bone spur in his right ankle, something he hadn’t even been aware of, led to his being declared unfit for service, and back he went to Binghamton. Ironically, the absence cost him a few games, and he would wind up ten plate appearances short of qualifying for the batting championship. At .301, he was actually the Eastern League’s only .300 hitter that year—a season known to baseball fans as “the year of the pitcher.” Carl Yastrzemski, also at .301, had been the only American Lea
guer to hit .300 that year.
The league featured Larry Bowa on his way up the ladder to the big leagues, and Jim Palmer, the Orioles star, working his arm back into shape on what would later be known as a rehab assignment. Al Downing, a Yankee star, also “rehabbed,” pitching to Munson while wearing a Triplets uniform.
In August, the Yankees brought the Triplets down to Yankee Stadium to play that regular-season game against Waterbury in Yankee Stadium. For Munson, it would not only be his first visit to the stadium, it would also be his first visit to New York City. Fran Healy, a future Yankee teammate, was the catcher for Waterbury.
“Well, we didn’t really see New York City at all,” Munson said later. “We bused it to Yankee Stadium and then bused it right out after the game.”
The game itself was played in a nearly empty stadium, with MacPhail and Ralph Houk watching from high above, looking at their future first-string catcher. The only other player Thurman spoke to that day, apart from Mantle, was Gene “Stick” Michael, his fellow Kent State alum.
That same month, Diana came up to Binghamton from Canton for a weekend visit, accompanied by her mother. Thurman and Diana decided to get engaged that weekend. Again, the Army was looming over their lives. Although the Reserve unit had declared him unfit, the possibility of being drafted still loomed, which would require another physical, and no guarantees with it.
Since Thurm and Diane had been talking about marriage since they were about thirteen, this inevitable date was set for September 21, right after the Eastern League season ended. A minor league teammate, first baseman Tim O’Connell, attended the Canton ceremony, held at St. Paul’s Parish, with the Reverend J. Robert Cole-man presiding. Darla and her husband were there; their daughter was in the wedding party. Neither Duane nor Janice, by now scattered, attended. Thurman’s parents were at his side.
The couple would live upstairs in the Dominicks’ home on Twenty-fifth Street when they returned from their honeymoon in Hawaii.
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.
6
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.