Munson
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Second was his gift of being an elite athlete, which kept him active in sports year-round and provided him with good coaching supervision, good role models, and close friends.
“What saved Thurm was his talent,” says his brother Duane. “If he had been just an ordinary ballplayer and fumbled around the league or not made it, nothing would have saved him. And the Dominicks weren’t much of a family, but they were Diane’s family and she became his wife. The bottom line was that he made some bad decisions, didn’t know who his friends really were, and for some reason, gave up on his roots, for whatever reasons. I contributed to that too because I left home and missed his high school years. That hurt me a lot and maybe it hurt him too. I hope not, but I have to believe it may have. Maybe I could have been a more positive influence on his life, who knows. Janice sure wasn’t a positive influence on him when she was there and I’m not convinced that any of the Dominicks were either. Things just seemed to snowball and happen for no particular reason. I only ever took credit for making him a little tougher and more competitive. I think I succeeded and have no regrets in those areas, just that I wasn’t there at some times when he probably needed an ear and a real friend, particularly a family friend.”
“Thurman was a helluva ballplayer. Aside from that I’m not giving him any credit,” says Darla. “He wasn’t nice to his family. His dad might have been a creep and you wouldn’t have liked him, but at least he worked an honest day’s living. He took care of us honestly. He didn’t go around doing other things to make money.”
Thurman’s siblings did not manage to maintain a close relationship with Diana and her children, and eventually Janice and Duane settled in Georgia, with Darla the one remaining sister in Canton. As in all cases where families go through such periods, the stories tend to have different interpretations depending on who is doing the telling. Of this there is no doubt: Thurman sought to break free of the Munsons and very much embraced the Dominicks, and later found the happiness of a long-denied family life in the family where he was the dad. And he conducted that part of his life just fine.
One might wish that the surviving siblings had a closer relationship to Diana and her children, and in fact to one another, but perhaps it was their destiny, given the home they emerged from.
An impressive grave site was constructed for Thurman near the entrance at Sunset Hills, not far from what is now Munson Street. It is in Section 1, Lot 6. An etching of Thurman in his home uniform, bat held in his left hand, appears above the inscription
THURMAN LEE MUNSON
CAPTAIN OF THE NEW YORK YANKEES
1976-1979
On a lower section of the grave under and to the left of the word MUNSON (with a space for Diane on the right), it says simply
Thurman Lee
June 7, 1947
August 2, 1979
There is a 15 on the rear of the massive stone.
Munson’s uniform number 15 was retired on the spot during the ceremonies at Yankee Stadium following his death, and his locker remained vacant, although sometimes used to store equipment. It isn’t glassed in or untouched. Plans for the new Yankee Stadium called for Thurman’s locker to be placed in its museum portion.
The plaque for Thurman in Yankee Stadium’s Monument Park was dedicated on September 20, 1980, and says:
THURMAN MUNSON
NEW YORK YANKEES
June 7, 1947-August 2, 1979
YANKEE CAPTAIN
“Our Captian and Leader Has Not Left Us
Today, Tomorrow, This Year, Next…
Our Endeavors Will Reflect Our
Love and Admiration for Him”
Erected by The New York Yankees
September 20, 1980
The copy on the smaller marker in front of his retired uniform number says:
FROM 1969-1979
THURMAN WAS THE HEART AND
SOUL OF THE YANKEES. HE HELPED
RESURRECT THE Yankees’ GLORY
BY LEADING THE BOMBERS
TO THREE WORLD SERIES.
HIS DEDICATION AND HARD WORK
MADE HIM ONE OF THE
PREMIER CATCHERS AND HITTERS
OF HIS TIME
A 5,700-seat minor league ballpark at 2501 Allen Avenue SE in Canton was built and named Thurman Munson Memorial Stadium in 1989, serving as home to an Eastern League farm team in the Indians organization. Lou Piniella was among those who attended the dedication. A small round number 15 surrounded by pinstripes can be seen on the outfield wall, but the signage for the park was minimal and it wasn’t well received by those who rate minor league parks for architecture and ambience. By 1996, the stadium had lost that Eastern League team, and it shifted to use by the independent Frontier League, where Michael Munson played for the Canton Crocodiles (later to be called the Coyotes). He wore number 15, wherever he played.
By 2007 no professional games were being played there, but Ma-lone College, a small Christian college located just blocks away from Thurman’s Frazer Avenue home, played their home games there. The home on Frazer is occupied, but unmarked by any sort of marker. “This is a big-time football town,” sighs Joanne (Fulz) Murray, Diana’s friend. “So, as a professional baseball player, Thurman wasn’t so widely embraced and honored locally, nothing close to how fans feel about him in New York.”
A senior center was named in Thurman’s honor at the Horace Mann School on Grace Avenue NE.
After Thurman died, Linda Fisk, Carlton’s wife, sent a sincere, handwritten letter to Diana Munson. She describes the growing respect Carlton had for Thurman and, despite the rivalry and negativity reported in the media, she explains that a real bond was developing between the two men. Speaking for Carlton, she writes: “I don’t think he knows how to play without hurt but he told me he felt like he lost family and might as well have stayed in the hotel instead of playing when he heard of the crash—emotional pain can’t be iced down.”
There is a bronze plaque behind home plate at Veterans Field in Chatham honoring Munson, who played for the Chatham A’s before turning pro. The Thurman Munson Batting Award is given each season to the Cape Cod Baseball League’s best hitter.
Jorge Posada, the best Yankee catcher who followed Thurman, was a fan of George Brett and Don Mattingly while growing up in Puerto Rico, but after signing with the Yankees, became fascinated with Munson, and would hear stories about him from Guidry, Gossage, Piniella, and Murcer.
“Guidry would talk about his ability to call a game, by being so good at remembering what everyone hit, or missed,” Posada says. “He became a role model for me, since he was Yankee catcher, and since I just came to love the way he played the game. I watched him a lot on tape or film—he was always in the middle of everything, whether getting the big hit or making the big play at the plate.”
In the weight room at Fenway Park (of all places), Posada saw a picture of Munson hanging on the wall with the inscription, “Look, I like hitting fourth and I like the good batting average. But, what I do every day behind the plate is a lot more important because it touches so many more people and so many aspects of the game. Thurman Munson, 8/25/75.” He took it and hung it in his locker at Yankee Stadium.
“I think about him whenever I pass that empty locker,” he says. “I really wish I’d known him. He must have been a helluva competitor.”
Yankee fans always were passionate about Thurman Munson making the Hall of Fame, and there was a flurry of thought after his death that he might even be named at once, as Roberto Clemente had been. Indeed, he was made eligible for the 1981 election, with the five-year waiting period waived. But he gathered only sixty-two votes that year, his high-water mark for the fifteen years that he remained on the ballot. In his last year of eligibility, 1995, he had only thirty votes. The sixty-two represented just 21 percent, with 75 percent needed for election.
Bill Madden, the national baseball columnist for New York’s Daily News and a student of the Hall of Fame elections, says, “I used to get periodic letters and e-m
ails from diehard Thurman supporters, pointing out the three straight .300-average/100-RBI seasons and the fact that how many catchers ever did that? But the bottom line always was only eleven seasons (seven of them All-Star) for Thurman as opposed to twenty-four by Fisk (eleven of them All-Star) and seventeen by Bench (fourteen of them All-Star)—his two contemporaries. There was just no comparison. He didn’t play long enough, didn’t have nearly enough All-Star seasons, and his lifetime numbers, nice as they were, pale in comparison to the real Hall of Fame catchers—Berra, Dickey, Cochrane, Bench, Fisk, Hartnett. For Thurman to make the Hall, he would have needed the old Veterans Committee that put in Ray Schalk and Rick Ferrell. Against them, you could make the case he was a Hall of Famer.”
Others have noted that while Munson’s career was cut short, his injuries and reduced playing time at catcher had effectively signaled to voters that they had indeed seen the bulk of his career, certainly his big years, and there was no reason to assume that he would play eighteen or twenty seasons and amass big lifetime numbers.
Time magazine, the week after Thurman died, quoted Munson himself as saying, “I want to play long enough for [Michael Munson] to understand and appreciate what I have accomplished. If I have three or four more good years, I might have the kind of statistics that could get me in the Hall of Fame.”
Bill James, the master expert of baseball stats, weighed in thus: “Players in most cases have to be evaluated by what they actually did, not by what they would have done or might have done … Munson’s situation is an injury, an extreme injury, but an injury. There are dozens of players who would have had Hall of Fame careers if they hadn’t been hurt. Hell, there are more of those than there are actual Hall of Famers.”
The Hall of Fame did exhibit a glove and a mask of Thurman’s. In the 1990s, Jeff Idelson, another former Yankee PR director and then a public relations official with the Hall of Fame, realized a need and persuaded Gene Michael to part with Munson’s glove and mask for display in the museum. There was also a temporary exhibit by a New York artist named Steve Linn of a faux Yankee locker made of wood with a carved glass image of Thurman, and bronze casts of his glove, spikes, bat, and jersey, which was on display until 1994 and then moved to storage.
Some fans maintain such loyalty that their stories stand out.
A fan named Terry Fudin started a Web site called VoteThurmanIn.com to try to spur Hall of Fame interest. “I am a computer programmer and in 2001 I decided to make a simple yet effective Web site which would try to get Thurman into the National Baseball Hall of Fame,” he says. “The site encourages people to send letters to members of the Hall of Fame Veterans Committee in support of Thurman’s inclusion.”
Frank Russo, a fan with a particular interest in “final resting places,” maintains a Web site called thedeadballera.com, at which he advocates for Munson being named to the Hall of Fame.
Dewey Wigod has sought to produce a film about the importance of Thurman Munson to the America of the 1970s. He works for a television program distributor, but hasn’t yet been able to see this project home. He never quits trying, though. I’ve been an adviser to him over the years and served as host when he shot a short segment for it at Yankee Stadium. Diana Munson is well aware of his efforts.
“The most important thing to me about Thurman Munson was that an ordinary man with above-average determination led the Yankees back to their former glory,” says Wigod. “He was a can-do, up-by-the-bootstraps guy—a quintessentially American story coming at what appeared to be a can’t-do time for the country and the world at large.”
In 1999, Newsday asked me to compose the inscription that might appear on a Munson plaque, not only because I had done his autobiography with him, but also because I had had a hand in writing the Hall of Fame plaques for twenty-one years.
So I gave them:
THURMAN LEE MUNSON
New York A.L. 1969-1979
BECAME FIRST YANKEE CAPTAIN SINCE LOU GEHRIG AND LED TEAM TO
3 CONSECUTIVE PENNANTS, 1976-78. A.L. ROOKIE OF THE YEAR 1970.
A.L. MVP 1976. FIRST IN LEAGUE TO BAT .300 WITH 100 RBIS IN 3 CONSECUTIVE SEASONS IN QUARTER-CENTURY. NAMED TO SEVEN ALL-STAR
TEAMS. EARNED THREE GOLD GLOVE AWARDS. BATTED .357 IN POSTSEASON
PLAY INCLUDING .529 IN 1976 WORLD SERIES, HIGHEST EVER BY
A PLAYER ON A LOSING TEAM. MADE ONE ERROR IN 615 CHANCES
IN 1971 WHEN HE WAS KNOCKED UNCONSCIOUS ON A PLAY AT
THE PLATE. A PLAYER’S PLAYER.
The year 2004 marked the twenty-fifth anniversary of Thurman’s passing, and in addition to marking the occasion at Yankee Stadium on Old-Timers’ Day, a panel was held at the Yogi Berra Museum in New Jersey to recall his life. I was the moderator, with Diana, Gene Michael, and Bobby Murcer as panelists, and it was a terrifically “feel-good” gathering of two old teammates, one coauthor, one Yogi, and a hundred or so devoted fans. It was an honor for me to be asked to preside.
There would not be another in-season death of an active major league player until June 22, 2002, nearly twenty-three years later, when Cardinals pitcher Darryl Kile was found dead in his hotel room in Chicago. (Pitchers Tim Crews and Steve Olin died in a spring training boating accident in 1993, and outfielder Mike Darr died in a spring training auto accident in 2002.)
On October 11, 2006, pitcher Cory Lidle died in a plane crash over Manhattan just days after the Yankees had been eliminated from postseason play. He had taken off from Teterboro, Thurman’s local airport of choice. Lidle was on the Yankees’ roster late in the season, but became a free agent as soon as the season ended. Still, he was treated as a Yankee in death, and of course the nature of his accident had everyone recalling that afternoon in August 1979.
Bobby Murcer died of a brain tumor on July 12, 2008. A memorial service was held in his hometown of Oklahoma City on August 6, attended by, among others, Diana Munson. It was the twenty-ninth anniversary of Thurman’s funeral, and of Bobby’s magical 5-RBI night.
In 2004, Diana and I both became officers of a now defunct sports auction house, along with Bobby Murcer and the nation’s premier collector, Barry Halper. When the National Sports Collectors Convention was held in Cleveland that year, she and I walked the floor together, looking at the many Munson items on sale, marveling at the love people still had for him. And the prices his autographed items brought were astounding.
One of the principals with the auction house met with Diana and encouraged her to consider putting some of her personal effects up for auction.
Rationalizing that she had lived with them long enough and perhaps it was time to let Munson fans take ownership, and perhaps tempted by the elevated prices that things were bringing at auction, she parted with some unique items. Sold at this and then later auctions were a single signed baseball ($13,650), Thurman’s Kent State college jersey ($8,041), his last catcher’s mitt ($51,518), his 1979 Yankee road jersey ($31,987), his pilot’s license ($7,938), the un-cashed check from Reggie Jackson for the July 1979 flight from Seattle to Orange County ($2,285), and perhaps most poignant, the bat used by Bobby Murcer to win the game on the night of Thurman’s funeral ($16,827). Bobby had given her his blessing to part with it.
At a 2008 auction to coincide with the All-Star Game in Yankee Stadium’s final season, Diana consigned additional items of importance to Hunt Auctions, all of which sold at remarkably high prices for someone not in the Hall of Fame.
These include $180,000 for his 1978 World Series replica trophy, $110,000 for his MVP award, $45,000 for his 1974 Gold Glove award, $40,000 for his Rookie of the Year Award, $75,000 for a 1979 home uniform, $32,000 for a game-worn cap, $75,000 for his 1976 World Series ring, $125,000 for the 1977 ring, $85,000 for the 1978 ring, $22,000 for his Mercedes, and $10,000 for the ball from his first major league hit.
Of course part of the reason for the high value of Munson items in the collectors’ market—not just these personal items—is that he died before there was a collectors’ market. He never parti
cipated in mass signings; never had an agent to produce limited editions. And he wasn’t especially forthcoming with autographs for fans, often using the trick of carrying something in each hand as he entered and exited ballparks, making it difficult to stop and sign.
He wasn’t the most accommodating signer under the best of circumstances. I know of only one copy of his autobiography that he signed, and it wasn’t mine. (I never thought to ask.)
In 2007, ESPN presented an eight-hour miniseries based on the book Ladies and Gentlemen, The Bronx Is Burning, by Jonathan Mahler. Its central focus was the 1977 Yankees, and actor Erik Jensen played Munson. Munson relatives, fans, old classmates, and others all thought it was a masterful performance and absolutely captured Thurman’s look, walk, and personality. I was a consulting producer for the project.
“In 2006, I got the call that every actor dreams of,” said Jensen. “In spite of having a throwing arm so out of shape I was having trouble getting the ball to home plate while standing up (much less to second from my knees), some obviously misguided unit of directors and producers and writers were offering me the role of Thurman Munson in the ESPN miniseries ‘The Bronx Is Burning.’
“Okay, so imagine having great sex, eating cake, finishing a marathon, doing a high jump, and meeting one of the Beatles (John, possibly George) all at the same time and that’s pretty much how it felt to get that call. I had six weeks to get my skills in shape, find the gait, the stance, the style, the voice and gain 25 pounds. The first day I put on #15, squeezed the orange chest protector and shin guards around my now 204-pound frame, slid my fingers into the catcher’s mitt, flipped the cap backwards, and shambled out of my trailer onto the ball field, filtering the air through my home-grown walrus mustache, it started to get weird.