by Marty Appel
As for Michael, Thurman would say to Anderson, “The little guy is a handful!” Anderson felt he said that not only to reflect his times with his son, but to show his awareness of what Diana was going through when he wasn’t around.
Diana would later tell the Springfield (Mass.) Union, “When Thurman is around, you wouldn’t know he is the same child. Usually, Michael gets up ten or eleven times a night and calls for me. But when Thurman is home, he says, ‘Michael, I don’t want you getting up at night and calling Mommy’ And he sleeps until morning. And then when he wakes up, he calls Thurman. When I see that, I know we need Thurman around. This little boy needs his dad.”
The child care issue and the real estate developments were what made Munson think about the benefits of playing for the Indians. He could keep a close watch on his properties while enjoying being at home with his children. He was expanding his thinking and realizing that he wasn’t only a baseball player.
“I’d be more than happy to play in Cleveland,” he confided to Murray Chass of the New York Times. “I even told the Yankees that if we couldn’t get together, instead of losing me as a free agent, they should get three or four players for me by trading me to Cleveland.
“There are a lot of factors to weigh—what I could get here or in Cleveland where I would be home, or maybe I could get twice as much from an expansion club if I was a free agent. You have to weigh all those things. I’m not going to sign until I know for sure that I’m not making a mistake.”
With Andy Messersmith and Dave McNally having been judged to be free agents prior to the start of the 1976 season, Munson, along with hundreds of other players, was in a position to play through 1976 without signing a contract and to declare himself part of the first “free agent class” after the season. As a good businessman, Thurman seemed likely to consider this possibility. Sparky Lyle had almost done it in 1975, and might have been there with Messersmith and McNally, but he signed in the waning days of the season. No doubt he and Thurman talked it over.
Now spring training for the 1976 season had finally opened. The owners had locked the camps while a new Basic Agreement with the union was being negotiated. The commissioner, Bowie Kuhn, finally ordered the camps opened in late March.
Thinking about the benefits of playing for Cleveland versus a straightforward business decision to evaluate an offer from the Yankees, Thurman arrived at Fort Lauderdale Stadium on March 23.
Martin called Munson into his office at the ballpark.
“I want to make you captain,” he said. “I’ve discussed it with George and the coaches, and you’re a natural leader on this team and I want you to be the captain.”
“What does it mean?” asked Munson. “Like, I take the lineup out every game?”
The thought of that seemed a bit off, given that he would be in his full catching gear for home games, and often would have been warming up the starting pitcher in the bullpen.
“No,” Billy replied. “I’ll do that. I need to do that. It gives me time to talk to the umpires, ask about their kids, get on their good side if we need a close call.”
“Then what am I supposed to do?”
“Just be a leader by example,” said Billy. “You already are. But with the title, even a new player will know that you’re the guy carrying on Yankee tradition. It’s a good idea, the more I think about it.”
I suspect that at some level, Billy must have thought that had Casey Stengel lifted the ban, he, Billy Martin, might have liked being the team captain in the 1950s, more so than Mantle or Berra or Ford.
Thurman left Martin’s office and walked out to right field with George Steinbrenner before the team’s first workout. It was a beautiful time of day in Fort Lauderdale—not yet too hot, a gentle breeze in the air, empty stands being hosed down by the few stadium employees, and an occasional private jet taking off from Executive Airport next door. The newly restored general partner and his captain were engaged in business talk. The conversation lasted about twenty minutes.
An intrasquad game was played, with Munson driving in the winning run. Afterward he dressed in his best double-knit plaid plants, threw a Banlon shirt over his head, and walked to the manager’s office, where he, Steinbrenner, and Gabe Paul renewed their discussions about a new contract.
George and Gabe considered Munson’s signing a priority. He had been third in the league in hitting in 1975, and with everyone feeling a pennant in the air, a happy Munson could be a big contributor to a new time of good feeling.
The three talked for more than an hour. With a towel draped around his neck, Thurman went to the players’ parking lot and into Paul’s trailer. Another hour passed, with a few reporters lurking outside.
Finally he emerged, the towel still in place. He looked tired. He got into Gabe Paul’s Toyota, put the towel on the passenger seat, and said, “I don’t want to say anything at this time. I want to sit back and think about what I’ve done. It’s a big load off my mind. I want to relax. It’s been on my mind a long time.”
Murray Chass, the best reporter at coming up with salary terms, reported that Thurman had signed a new two-year contract for a total of $275,000, which would make him the fifth Yankee in history to make $100,000 in a season, joining DiMaggio, Mantle, Murcer, Bonds, and Hunter. Of course salaries were about to change dramatically, and the milestone would be barely notable.
This, Munson acknowledged: “It was a fair thing to both sides, very fair. I knew what I wanted out of it. I knew what I needed. I love to play baseball. Money doesn’t enter into it, although I want to get paid what I deserve. But I don’t need the money I get from playing baseball to live on.”
With that, he drove Gabe’s Toyota back to the Fort Lauderdale Inn on Federal Highway to report the news to Diana. He was of the belief that he would be subject to a sliding scale, adjusted upward to assure his being the highest-salaried player on the team (except for Hunter) as new free agents might arrive. This was, for him, the key to signing the deal. He would maintain that that was agreed to in the trailer meeting.
Munson hit third and went 0 for 5 on the historic opening day of the newly renovated Yankee Stadium, April 15, 1976, the Yanks winning 11-4.
The news of his being named captain was not made official until two days later, prior to the Yankees’ second game in their newly refurbished stadium. (And in his first at bat that day as captain, Munson homered, making him the first Yankee to homer in the new stadium.)
So much news was being made by the reopening of the park that it was thought to withhold it until game two. Many had known about it for weeks, but the official announcement came on the seventeenth.
“What about Joe McCarthy’s pledge to retire the position with Lou Gehrig?” asked Phil Pepe of the Daily News.
“If Joe McCarthy knew Thurman Munson, he’d agree this was the right guy at the right time,” Steinbrenner replied. It was a great answer. And it was probably true. Thurman did indeed have most of the characteristics that made a player a team leader. They didn’t extend to media relations and fan relations, but among his peers, he was seen as the perfect man at the perfect time in the franchise’s history.
The Yankees got off quickly and were enjoying a wonderful season under Martin. While it was true that he didn’t have a full spring training to work with, the team won five of their first six to go right to first place, and never looked back. After twelve years without a pennant, the 1976 Yankees were making this look all too easy.
On May 20 in New York, as though the rivalry needed refueling, the Yankees and Red Sox engaged in a brawl, set off by a home plate collision between Piniella and Fisk. In the ensuing scuffle, pitcher Bill Lee’s shoulder was seriously injured after a clobbering from Nettles. This time, Munson was off to the side in a role as peacemaker, perhaps attributable to his new captaincy, but knowing Munson, probably just owing to his arriving late to the party.
There was a momentary setback on June 5, when a wild throw by Munson, no strange occurrence by now, resulted in a
loss to Oakland. The fans booed and Thurman flipped them off with the well-known “gesture.” Another player might have been doomed forever by the Bronx faithful. But the Yankee fans loved it, cheered him the next time up, and never got on him again.
Of giving the fans the finger, Thurman would say, “I wouldn’t suggest doing that every day to win friends and influence people, but at the time, I felt I got a bum rap and did what I had to, right or wrong. It came out right, I guess.”
Thurman could also be funny, especially after a drink or two after a long airport delay. In the days when the Yankees still flew on commercial flights, he was once playing his tape deck too loud. Alerted to some passenger complaints, Billy Martin sent Elston Howard back to tell Thurman to turn the music down.
“What are you, the music coach?” he said to poor Ellie. It was one of the more memorable lines on a flight that was too delayed for everyone’s good.
If being captain gave Thurman a new sense of responsibility, the only way I saw it demonstrated was when I needed a favor from him, as when I asked him to pose with a sponsor before the game, accept a pregame plaque, or meet some VIP visitors.
Before being named captain, he’d snarl and tell me what I could do with the request. So I’d get another player. “I don’t do that,” he would say to me.
Now, as captain, his sense of responsibility took over. He’d say, “What time do you need me to be there?” I’d tell him and he wouldn’t show up. So I’d scramble to get another player at the last second. I liked it better the original way.
The best example of this would come on Old-Timers’ Day in 1976, when we had Bill Dickey, Yogi Berra, Elston Howard, and Munson all present—a chance to take a picture of this great lineage of Yankee catching, going back to 1928. We were unable to accomplish this until now because Yogi had been coaching or managing the Mets, and hadn’t been to an Old-Timers’ game during Thurman’s time with the Yankees. Not even in 1972, when they retired his number.
So I rounded up Dickey, Berra, and Howard with no problem. Dickey was a wonderful older gentleman. Berra and Howard, both coaches, were fine. And then I ran around looking for Thurman. He was in his underwear in the players’ lounge, eating a doughnut, watching a rerun of The Three Stooges on Channel 11. I explained what we wanted to do and that he’d need to get fully dressed and meet us on the field.
“What time do you need me?” he asked.
I laughed. “No, I mean it this time,” I said. “I’ve wanted to get this picture taken for years!”
He sighed, got up from the lounge chair, and walked to his locker to get dressed.
But he didn’t appear on the field. I ran back into the clubhouse and Pete Sheehy told me to try the players’ lounge. There he was, still in his underwear, watching TV again. It was the same Three Stooges show. I wanted to cry but I could only laugh. Dickey, Berra, and Howard were by the dugout with Michael Grossbardt, our photographer.
I finally got Munson out for the picture. I loved that picture. And when I went to Thurman’s home in Canton three years later for his funeral, there was the photo, enlarged and framed, in his office. He liked it too.
Joe D’Ambrosio had been a batboy during 1976 and 1977 and later became the number three man in the Yankees PR department, working behind Mickey Morabito and Larry Wahl.
“As a batboy with the team,” Joe recalls, “I knew Thurman well, but we weren’t very close. In fact, during my first year as batboy the kids rotated from ballboy to batboy to lineboy over the course of the season. When I was the only kid asked back for the 1977 campaign, Thurman was the one who told Pete Sheehy that I should be batboy all year. He said he didn’t want the other kids ‘’cause Joey knows what he’s doing.’ That meant the world to me.
“One Sunday in 1976, a getaway day, around ten a.m. or so, Thurman came to the park more gruff than usual and said he had a disagreement with Diana and left his road trip clothes in the hallway while he was leaving the house. He came to my locker and said, ‘Keys.’ One word. I said, ‘Keys?’ He said, ‘Give me your car keys.’ Not in an impolite way, but in an ‘I’m Thurman Munson, you’re Joey the batboy’ kinda way. ‘Okay,’ I said. And I gave him my keys.
“About forty-five minutes later, he was back.
“Now, I drove a 1974 mustard-colored Opel Manta by Buick back then. It was tiny. Thurman, not being tiny, must have had trouble fitting in. He tossed me the keys, said, ‘Thanks,’ and started back over to his locker. Then he doubled back to me. I didn’t know what went wrong. He said, ‘Where was the music coming from?’ I said, ‘What music?’ He said, ‘I had to listen to the goddamned Allman Brothers the entire way and I couldn’t shut off your radio. Where was the music coming from?’
“Well, eight-track tapes were the rage back then and I had custom-installed an eight-track player under my seat. When I started the car, I’d ‘kick’ the cassette in and away you go. All controls for volume, track changing, etc., were in the player under my seat.
“When I explained it to him, he just rolled his eyes, gave me a c’mon-get-out-of-here kinda shove (his way of showing affection) and laughed all the way back to his locker.”
The Yanks held a nine-game lead by July 4. Randolph, the rookie at second, was so good he made the All-Star team. Rivers was every bit the catalyst they had hoped he would be, and he became a favorite not only among his teammates but also among fans, especially young ones. Figueroa was indeed a quality starting pitcher.
The Yanks and division rival Baltimore spun a rare ten-player mid-season deal, but it changed neither team’s fortunes. The Yankees kept rolling.
Munson hit .319 in the first half of the season and was the starting catcher in the All-Star Game, playing in Philadelphia for the nation’s Bicentennial. It was his fifth All-Star selection in his seven years in the majors.
(The American League players, along with team and league officials like me, all stayed at the Bellevue Stratford Hotel in downtown Philadelphia, checking out on July 14. On July 27, members of the American Legion checked in for a convention, and contracted what came to be called Legionnaires’ disease. Thirty-four people died, allegedly from some bacteria in the cooling tower of the hotel.)
Thurman did not change his batting style to adjust to the shorter left field wall in the new Yankee Stadium. He never succumbed to the temptation of trying to conquer it. In the original stadium, he hit only 16 home runs in 944 at bats; about 1 every 59 times up. Maybe one a month. In 1976 with the new stadium, he hit 5 in 297 at bats—1 every 59 at bats. It didn’t change at all.
Furthermore, whether Munson being captain helped or not, the press was feeling the presence of a mature team leader guiding his team to victory. In Sports Illustrated, Larry Keith wrote:
At 29 years of age and late in his seventh major league baseball season, Thurman Munson of the Yankees is finally learning to relax. He is still not Mr. Congeniality, but he is becoming less the cranky, what-the-hell-do-you-want misanthrope of earlier years. Just the other day Munson signed an autograph, gave a civil answer to a reporter’s question and allowed as how he was not the only catcher in organized baseball. The best, he said, but certainly not the only one.
And the truth is, Munson is the best and probably has been for the last two seasons. As if Munson’s own mounting accomplishments were not proof enough, it should be pointed out that the Reds’ sore-shouldered Johnny Bench appears to be in decline. Carlton Fisk of the Red Sox is constantly in disrepair and Cardinal Ted Simmons and Pirate Manny Sanguillen do not have Munson’s all-round abilities. It is public acceptance of the notion that Munson is the No. 1 big league catcher—and perhaps even the Most Valuable Player in the American League—that has encouraged him to reveal a better side.
Of course, before we think Munson had reformed, the article later quoted Diana: “He wasn’t always so grouchy. He’ll growl and swear rather than dealing with a situation directly. He even scares me at times. He’ll leave the house for a game and kiss all the kids, then when he comes home, he’s comp
letely different. Sometimes when we’re in public I just cringe at the way he acts.”
The champagne flowed on September 25 at Detroit when the Yanks, eight games ahead of the pack, clinched their first-ever Eastern Division title in the eighth year of division play. The season ended with a rainout (not made up) on October 3, leaving Thurman with a .302 average in 152 games, 121 of them behind the plate. He batted third in the lineup almost every game. He hit 17 homers, drove in 105 runs, hit 10 sacrifice flies, went 3 for 4 as a pinch hitter, stole 14 bases, struck out only 37 times in 665 plate appearances, and cut his errors to 14.
By Labor Day, it was generally written that he was on his way to the league’s MVP award. The voting was done the day the regular season ended, but wouldn’t be announced until November.
The 1976 Yankees drew 2,012,434 fans, the first time an American League team had passed two million since the 1950 Yankees—twenty-six years before. The new stadium, the active return of George Steinbrenner, the coming of free agency, the pennant-winning team, and the big year from Munson were all factors, and this proud franchise was clearly headed into a new era of excitement and success. Two million would become standard for the team, and then it became three million in 2001 and four million in 2005. The dormant years of CBS ownership were long past, and those of us who had spanned the two eras were especially proud of what we saw come to be. I often think of our annual September press release announcing our having reached a million in attendance. The team now hits a million by early May.
The 1976 American League Championship Series was the first of three in a row to be played between the Yankees and the Kansas City Royals. This would be Munson’s first taste of the postseason (at least since the 1969 Syracuse Chiefs) and he caught every inning of the five-game series, batting .435 with ten hits—an ALCS record that was then broken when Chris Chambliss got his eleventh—a game-winning, pennant-winning homer off Mark Littell in the last of the ninth of game five.