Remembering a captain

I was Roy White. That much I remember. Growing up in suburban New Jersey in the 1970s, baseball was the sport of summer in our neighborhood, and we played it endlessly. Like most kids of that era, we modeled our game after the heroes we watched on TV every night. And, since the Mets were basically irrelevant during those years, mostly the players we emulated were Yankees. Late 1970s-era Yankees: Reggie Jackson. Mickey Rivers. Sparky Lyle. Ron Guidry. Goose Gossage. Willie Randolph. Graig Nettles. Roy White. Bobby Murcer. Catfish Hunter. Thurman Munson. Ah yes, Munson. The undisputed leader of the team. The Yankee catcher, each and every day, guiding the team from their lethargy of the late 1960s/early 1970s to their return to greatness in the mid to late 1970s.

Looking back at that time, and that era, and those players stand still, frozen in time – much like childhood memories do the same. It is jarring to me when I see them return for Old Timer’s Day as, well, old men. I still remember Rivers as the guy who limped up to the plate, looking like an old man, but then was the lightning-fast leadoff hitter. Now, he just limps all the time, as an old man. Giudry, the skinny lefthander with the whip of an arm; 25-3, 1.78 ERA in 1978. Numbers forever etched in our memory.  Lyle, with the walrus mustache, big chaw of tobacco in his cheek and the nastiest slider you ever saw. Goose, with his handlebar mustache and menacing scowl. Murcer, with the Okie drawl and sweet lefty Stadium swing. Roy White, with the awkward, unorthodox lefty batting stance; I liked White because he played the game with values that I grew up to try to emulate: steady consistency, humility, hard work, lack of flamboyance. Linking them all together was Munson, the guy who never gets to return for Old Timer’s Day, the guy who didn’t get the chance to live the many more chapters of his life, the guy who was killed in a plane crash, in his prime, 35 years ago on August 2.

Billy Hild sent me a link to a now-old but not outdated article that was written to coincide with the 20th anniversary of his death, in 1999. A wonderful, poetic and haunting piece – about Munson, about childhood memories, about growing old. Since that article, Catfish Hunter succumbed at a too-early age to ALS; Murcer the same to brain cancer. Little bits and pieces of our childhood taken away. But we always remember Munson, because he was taken away when we least expected it. We all cried back then … kids, grown men, all of us. Munson, more than them all, remains frozen in time – a captain and a Yankee for the ages. He has been dead longer than he lived on this earth, but he still remains a larger than life figure, 35 years later.