Remembering A Yankee Great

Following the Yankee’s 9-4 victory over the Blue Jays in Toronto, the Yankee family learned that it had lost one of it’s own, former player and longtime broadcaster Bobby Murcer passed away Saturday at the age of 62 after a battle with brain cancer.

Murcer played for the Giants and Cubs, but it’s his time in New York for which he will best be remembered.

Murcer joined the Yankees in the mid 1960s and followed in the footsteps of fellow Oklahoman Mickey Mantle to eventually play center field for the Bronx Bombers.

For his career, Murcer hit .277 with 252 home runs and 1,043 RBI.

In Major League history just 24 players have hit above .275 while also hitting 250 or more home runs, totaling more than 1,000 RBI, stealing more than 125 bases and hitting 45 or more triples.

Among that group only Murcer, George Brett, and Rogers Hornsby struck out fewer than 1,000 times.

But it isn’t stats or even his knack for pulling off the delayed steal that Murcer will be remembered for.

His defining moment came on August 6, 1979 on the same day that he gave one of the eulogies at his friend and Yankees captain Thurman Munson’s funeral in Ohio.

On the schedule for that evening back in New York were the first-place Baltimore Orioles, and manager Billy Martin was going to give Murcer the night off after an emotionally and physically draining day. Murcer insisted that he be in the lineup, saying that something was telling him to play and that he wasn’t tired. His performance was legendary.

With the Yankees trailing 4-0, Murcer hit a 3-run home run in the 7th inning, then hit a walk-off 2-run single in the bottom of the 9th. He drove in all the Yankee runs in a dramatic comeback for the ages.

Murcer never used the bat again, instead giving it to Munson’s widow Diana. He would later say of the game that he was playing on “shock adrenaline”.

Perhaps the best quote to memorialize his passing is the same one Murcer used all those years ago in eulogizing Munson. Murcer quoted the poet and philosopher Angelo Patri saying, “The life of a soul on earth lasts longer than his departure. He lives on in your life and the life of all others who knew him.”

That quote rings true for both of the friends, now united again.