Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain (11 page)

Mantle retired in 1968. The Yankees were prepared to give him another $100,000 to play another year, but he said he couldn’t hit anymore. So they went out there without him—and drew only 57,000 fewer fans, including a full house on Mickey Mantle Day during the summer.

The 1972 attendance number was embarrassing, but in line with what had been going on. All fingers were pointing to the stadium itself.

Those of us who worked there knew the increasing crime numbers in New York made subway travel late at night precarious and trips to the South Bronx scary. We also knew that Yankee Stadium was literally falling down.

Bat Day in 1971, and again in 1972, had the young fans pounding their bats on the concrete to get a rally going. The action caused cracks, chips, and then chunks of the fifty-year-old concrete to fall. Nothing awful happened—no one was hit with debris, and there were no photo ops of the crumbling, but it was a strong message to us that the stadium needed an overhaul.

We also saw that new ballparks in Cincinnati, Philadelphia, St. Louis, Kansas City, and Pittsburgh had helped attendance spike in those towns.

So, armed with a small threat of considering the Superdome in New Orleans as a possible new home, Mike Burke, the Yankees’ president (on behalf of CBS), and John Lindsay, the city’s mayor, agreed on a plan that would condemn the current stadium, turn the land and the structure over to the city, and have the city pay for a complete remodeling. Lindsay was no baseball fan, but he knew he didn’t want the Yankees leaving on his watch. The process would take two years; the Yankees would share Shea Stadium during those years, and 1973 would be the fiftieth anniversary and final year in the original Yankee Stadium.

Munson, the budding real estate baron, was interested in all of these proceedings and phoned me often in my stadium office with questions. “How long would the lease be for?” he wanted to know. “How did they come up with the $24 million cost? Seems low.”

I had a feeling part of him wanted to be the Yankee catcher and part of him wanted to have a real role in the rebuilding process.

He was right about the $24 million being low. It wound up costing about four times that, prompting howls of protest from budget watchers. The figure had been the cost of Shea Stadium, from the ground up, a decade earlier. It was a number to work with, nothing more. And certainly nothing less.

We thought that celebrating the fiftieth anniversary would be our big focal point for the year, with the announcement that it would be the last season of the original “House that Ruth built.” But
right after New Year’s came bigger news. The franchise was being sold.

CBS had presided over eight seasons of generally uninspired baseball. It hadn’t been a good business acquisition for them, they hadn’t leveraged the relationship in any meaningful way, and they were happy to get out. In fact, they sold the team at a loss—they paid $13.4 million and sold it for $10 million. It remains, at least as far as public records indicate, the only time a major league team has ever been sold at a loss.

Munson’s attention focused on the Cleveland connection. The purchaser was George M. Steinbrenner III, whose father had started American Ship Building on the Great Lakes, and who was buying the team with Mike Burke as well as thirteen limited partners. Gabe Paul, a part owner of the Cleveland Indians and their general manager, had brokered the deal, introducing Burke to Steinbrenner, who he had known was interested in buying the Indians. Steinbrenner had owned the Cleveland Pipers of the American Basketball League in the 1960s when he was only thirty-one years old. Now, at forty-two, he owned the Yankees.

Steinbrenner rid himself of Burke before April ended, the dashing Burke departing when it was clear their styles could never mesh. Steinbrenner was military school, football discipline, short hair, no beards, win at all costs. Burke was hip New York, a longhair who drove a Datsun 240z, dated starlets, posed for formal pictures without a jacket (oh, did George Steinbrenner hate that in the yearbook photo), and liked poetry and rock music. That the relationship lasted until April was pretty amazing itself.

Still, Burke had pulled off the stadium modernization project, had forced the architects to preserve the stadium’s facade as a design element, and turned over all the protests about cost overruns and the very decision to stay—to Steinbrenner.

In his early press encounters, George swore allegiance to the front
office staff he inherited (a loud
whew
from the PR office, for sure), said he’d leave baseball to his baseball people (meaning mostly Lee MacPhail and Ralph Houk), and promised a return to the World Series within five years.

After finishing just a half game out of first in September 1972, the five-years promise seemed longer than fans wanted to hear, but realistic if you looked at the Yankee farm system. There was not much there.

That was where Gabe Paul came in. Before he left Cleveland, he swapped their star third baseman Graig Nettles (with backup catcher Gerry Moses) to New York in exchange for John Ellis, Charlie Spikes, Rusty Torres, and Jerry Kenney All had won the James P. Dawson Award—a Longines watch—as the top rookie in spring training at one time or another, so between the four of them, it was expected that they would at least arrive at the ballpark on time.

With a left-handed swing designed for Yankee Stadium, Nettles reminded some of the Yankees’ trade for Roger Maris prior to the 1960 season. In fact, with that very thing in mind, I persuaded Pete Sheehy to assign number 9 to Nettles: the only time I had a hand in a uniform number selection. (Nettles would then become the first Yankee since Maris to lead the league in home runs.) And boy, could he ever field third base.

Nettles had been a favorite in Cleveland, and was the favorite player of Darla Munson’s husband, Denny, Thurman’s brother-in-law, an Indians fan. When the Yanks and Indians played at Municipal Stadium, various members of the Munson family would be present.

One day when Nettles was still with the Indians, Thurman left tickets for his two sisters, his brother-in-law, and for Diana and her father.

In this particular game, the Yankees were leading and Nettles came up for Cleveland with the bases loaded. According to Darla,
Denny shouted, quite loudly, “Oh God, I hope he gets a home run.” This enraged Diana, who found it in extremely bad taste, and afterward she and Thurman’s sister Janice told Thurman about Denny’s outburst.

Thurman was pissed. He had, after all, been the one who left the free tickets. And right then, he cut off tickets for Denny and damaged the precarious relationship with Darla, who was seen as Denny’s enabler.

Now Nettles was a Yankee teammate, but the Denny-Darla marriage was ending anyway, and family matters were growing more complicated. Thurman further withdrew from the Munsons and drew even closer to the Dominicks.

“It wasn’t long after that incident at Municipal Stadium,” says Darla, “that we were driving to a game there when Thurman and Diana drove up right alongside of us. He was still mad at us and they flipped us off. Well, we went to the ballpark and went to the will-call window, and asked for the Munson tickets. He had left them for someone else, but we claimed them. Ha!”

An example of Thurman’s curmudgeon-like personality is in a tale from Rob Franklin, who served a few years as the Yankees’ traveling secretary early in Thurman’s career.

“One day he opened a present from a fan, and it was a pair of cuff links,” said Rob. “He took one look, grunted, and said, ‘What the fuck would I want these for!’ I was standing nearby, sorting out ticket requests, and he gave them to me. Not because he liked me, but it was the quickest way he could get rid of them. If the wastebasket was closer than I was, it would have won. I still have them; they are the only pair I own.”

Although billing himself as an “absentee owner,” Steinbrenner made his presence known early. He avoided comment on the tabloid-dream wife swap between Mike Kekich and Fritz Peterson, which
was revealed during spring training (he hadn’t been officially approved by the other American League owners yet), but by opening day he was on record as writing down the uniform numbers of the players whose hair was too long. Number 15 made the list. He had Ralph Houk read the list of numbers to the players, the first step toward an awkward relationship between the manager and the owner.

“He was developing his famous Yankee haircut policy,” said Munson, “about ten years behind the times.”

Steinbrenner, though, liked Munson. He saw him—correctly—as a gamer, a guy who played every day to win, just as his own philosophy dictated. And of course they were a couple of Cleveland-area guys, Thurman from the blue-collar background of Canton, and Steinbrenner born on a farm in Rocky River, where he was assigned an
egg
business as a child and would go on to run the family’s shipping concerns. He had watched Yankees-Indians games at Municipal Stadium and witnessed Thurman’s on-the-field qualities, and knew that the Yankee catching position was in good hands.

As the June 1973 trading deadline approached, the Yankees found themselves again in a pennant race. On June 7, Lee MacPhail engineered a pair of trades that brought two workhorse starting pitchers to pinstripes: Sam McDowell and Pat Dobson. These were unlike the moves that the CBS Yankees would have pulled off, and clearly reflected the new owner’s philosophy of trading youth for veterans and going for the gold at once.

“If we don’t win it all now, we only have ourselves to blame,” said Bobby Murcer, excited that the team made such bold moves and was taking the pennant race seriously.

A win at Kansas City on June 9 moved the Yankees ahead of the Tigers and into first place. Although they were only five games over .500, Steinbrenner was gleeful about this first-year showing. It was
the first time the team had been in first place since 1964. And the Yankees remained in first place all through June and all through July, eventually getting to twelve games over .500. Once again, the PR department was spinning into action with postseason publication plans, the ordering of World Series press pins, and a conference with the local Baseball Writers’ Association about ticket allotments and press box seating. The ticket department began to plan for the printing of postseason tickets.

It was shaping up to be a glorious finale for the final year of old Yankee Stadium!

Munson was, of course, a big part of this success. He was hitting over .300, fielding sensationally, and taking charge of a strong pitching rotation with the great Lyle acting as closer. Blomberg was hitting over .400 as July 4 approached and shared a
Sports Illustrated
cover with Murcer.

The Yankee-Red Sox rivalry was really taking hold this year as both teams battled for the top, led by their tough catchers.

The Yankees went to Fenway Park for a four-game series July 30-August 2, one game up in the division as the series began. Just weeks earlier, Munson had finished second to Fisk in the All-Star voting. He wasn’t happy about it.

The games were not sellouts, something hard to imagine today. But they were thrilling. The first three were all decided in the ninth inning. After splitting the first two, the Yanks were tied 2-2 in the ninth in game three. Munson was on third and his roommate Stick Michael was at bat.

Houk called for a suicide bunt, and Michael missed it. Here came Munson. Fisk, holding the ball tightly, had to first shove Michael out of the way and then tag the charging Munson. Munson went into him hard and flattened him, but Fisk held on to the ball. The Boston catcher then flipped Munson over to get himself free, causing Munson to retaliate with a punch. Michael then jumped over Munson
and began hitting Fisk. Both dugouts and both bullpens emptied, and the fight lasted fifteen minutes before the umpires could restore order. Munson and Fisk were both ejected.

“There was no question I threw the first punch,” said Thurman after the game. “But he started it and then my roomie got into it. Fisk was lucky he didn’t get into a fight last night the way he blocked the plate on Roy White.”

For the Yankees, it all collapsed in late August and September. The team just didn’t have what it took to go the distance. From August 20 until the end of the season, the Yanks went 12-23, and fell back to their now familiar fourth place. While they had been leading the league on the morning of August 1, they managed to finish seventeen games out of first by season’s end.

And the end was really ugly. The Mets were winning the National League East, and patience had worn out in the Bronx. The fans were very tough on Houk, who was loudly booed every time he went to the mound to change pitchers. Banners were displayed demanding his ouster. The promise of a pennant evaporated into an 80-82 season, embarrassing everyone associated with the team.

“The final month was one of the worst I’ve lived through,” said Munson. “The fans were on us every day, especially on Ralph. They were never worse than they were during the last game. It pained me when Ralph was forced to come out and make a pitching change late in the game. He got a terrible booing and walked back to the dugout like a beaten man.”

He was a beaten man, but a beaten man with a secret. He had informed MacPhail and Bob Fishel before the game that he would be resigning after the game. He told them he couldn’t manage for Steinbrenner; couldn’t deal with his meddling.

Of course, the team’s collapse and the fan reaction made the meddling seem irrelevant. A change was needed, and perhaps Houk had become too complacent anyway, working for the benign leadership
of Burke and MacPhail. Besides, he already had another job lined up, and would soon be announced as the Tigers’ manager. Ralph was a good baseball politician and engineered his move perfectly.

Still, his resignation after the game, announced in the press room about two hundred feet from the Yankee clubhouse, was a shocker. It ended a thirty-five-year affiliation with the Yankee organization, including three World Series appearances as manager. And as a former catcher, he was a wonderful mentor to Munson, whom he had brought along rapidly by showing enormous confidence in him even when his first two seasons had started out so poorly.