Bobby Murcer

Bobby Murcer 1946-2008

Bobby Murcer passed away.
My memories of Bobby are kind of shaky. This is probably because the period he wasn't a Yankee overlaps with the period I was in NYC. It says here:

Bobby Murcer, a Yankee from 1965-74 and 1979-83, passed away this afternoon.
This statement from the Yankees:
It is with deep sadness that the New York Yankees announce the passing of former player, executive and broadcaster Bobby Murcer due to complications from brain cancer. He passed away Saturday afternoon surrounded by family at Mercy Hospital in Oklahoma City. He was 62 years old.
“Bobby Murcer was a born Yankee, a great guy, very well-liked and a true friend of mine,” Yankees Chairperson George M. Steinbrenner said. “I extend my deepest sympathies to his wife Kay, their children and grandchildren. I will really miss the guy.”
A family service will be held in the next several days in Oklahoma City. An additional celebration of his life will be held at a date to be determined. He is survived by his wife Kay, his children, Tori and Todd, and his grandchildren.
An All-Star player, Murcer became known to another generation of fans as an announcer. He also was very close with the players on the team and manager Joe Girardi, who broke down in tears when he heard the news.
More to come on this post as reaction comes in from around baseball.

I was in NYC from 1975 to 1980, so he was only a Yankee for the 1979 season when he was traded back and the start of 1980. He wasn't a part of those World Series winning squads - in fact he never won a world series. He probably ranks along with Don Mattingly as one of the greatest Yankees never to win the World Series. He was traded to the SF Giants for Bobby Bonds, but that was before I recall anything to do with the Yankees.

As if to confirm my memories, I rummaged through my old baseball cards and found this card nestled amongst my Yankees cards:

So he was a Cub to start the season. In fact I recall searching him out of my stash of 'others' and slotting him into the Yankee pile I kept. Goes to show how closely I was reading the headlines and paying attention.
He played 58 games for the Cubs and played 74 for the Yanks. The back of the card looks like this:

At that point in his career, he was a career .280 hitter with 210 homeruns coming into 1979 season. I remember thinking at the time, "uh-huh."
My old man said at the time of the trade, "He was once considered the second coming of Mickey Mantle - but he wasn't."
Which isn't a nice way to put it. He never liked trades for older players. In fact he never liked the older guys, he liked the young, sprightly guys like Willie Randolph and the speedy odd-ball Mickey Rivers. (He used to call "Nettles, GIDP - again" every time my guy Nettles came to the plate with a runner on first, but that's another story. )

A quick and unfair comparison to Mantle at Fangraphs looks like this:

That's a straight comparison of RC/27. The blue squiggly line tells you where the age average was, and the orange line for Mantle disappearing above the graph tells you how God-like the Mick was. It's a bit much asking anybody to be the second coming of arguably the best Centerfielder of All-Time. Still, that 1971 season with an OPS+ of 181 is a season worthy of the Mick so you can see how people might have hoped he was that 9-runs per 27 outs kind of hitter.

He was an All-Star between 1971 and 1975, appearing in five consecutive All-Star games, and he had 1 hit in all those games. The Yankees traded him away after his rather underwhelming 1974 season with a 106 OPS+, and when he came back, he was roughly that kind of hitter, posting 104, 144, in 2 full seasons and the last 3 seasons saw him drift off into retirement with less playing time. Still, a career .277..357/.445 hitter with a career OPS+ of 124 is more than a handy player.

The only real recollection I have of his play was the game after Thurman Munson died in 1979 and he went on to have a blinder.

The Munson game
Murcer gave one of the eulogies at catcher Thurman Munson's funeral on August 6, 1979, in Canton, Ohio in which he quoted the poet and philosopher Angelo Patri: "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." Afterward, the team flew home to play the first-place Baltimore Orioles in a game which was broadcast nationally on ABC-TV. Yankee manager Billy Martin wanted to give Murcer the day off, but Murcer insisted on playing—and play he did. Murcer practically won the game single-handedly, bringing the Yankees back from a 4–0 deficit with a 3-run homer in the 7th, then hitting a walk-off 2-run single down the left-field line in the bottom of the 9th, causing Howard Cosell to exclaim what a heroic performance Murcer had put on for the deceased Yankee captain Munson, who had died in a plane crash 4 days earlier. Murcer never used the bat from the game ever again and gave it to Munson's widow, Diana.

On July 2, 2004, the Seattle Times reported that Diana Munson put the bat, along with other items of Munson's, up for auction. Mrs. Munson said she wants to use the proceeds to open trust funds for her grandchildren. "You reach an age when you think about the future," she said.[9]

In August 2007, the YES Network replayed the game for a new generation of Yankee fans due to a switch of the copyright of the game from ABC to Major League Baseball. About the game, Murcer says that he was playing on "shock adrenaline" and that the game has become "part of my legacy".[10]

After the murder of NFL player Sean Taylor, the Washington Post asked Murcer about how an organization deals with such a tragedy, "You can't forget the moment, because it's so emotional," said Bobby Murcer, "It's a very moving experience ... that next game, we got to remember him as an individual and as a team. But it's not only us that's hurting. It's the fans. It's as much for them as it is for you as an individual. It reminds you that the fans who follow the team, it's as big a part of their lives as it is for you."[11]

He sure seemed like a special kind of player that day.
Rest in peace, Bobby Murcer.

UPDATE: Here's a great article by Joe Posnanski who remembers it all much, much better.