>>>I've always hated the NY Yankees with a passion (just like I hate the Steelers and the entire ACC!), but I always respected Thurman Munson (who was killed 30 years ago today).
>>>
>>>1979 was my first year in teener baseball - I pitched and played different infield positions - but our regular catcher broke his leg before the season started, and I volunteered to catch. Thurman was one of my heros, and so I played exactly the way he played (I actually did pretty well).
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>>And Gene Quill played just like Charlie Parker. ;)
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>>Yeah. Munson was one of the true greats. I felt kind of the same way about Tony Conigliaro (before your time). The guy went through a lot only to die as a vegetable.
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>>> And when I got banged up (all kinds of bumps and bruises from foul tips, hurt my knees, and got hit twice in the head/mask with a bat), I pretended I was like Thurman playing hurt.
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>>>By the time August came around, our season was done, but I kept following Thurman as much as I could. (Even wanted to grow a moustache like his, but I was only 14).
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>>>I was watching a late afternoon Phillies game on August 3rd against the Mets. The Phillies put a four spot on the board in the top half of the first inning. Right before they went to a commerical break, Phillies commentator Richie Ashburn said, "Harry (referring to Harry Kalas), I've just been handed a tragic, tragic news story - Thurman Munson, the great catcher for the NY Yankees, has been killed in a plane crash". I was crushed.
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>>>A few night later, the Yankees and Orioles played the famous Monday night baseball game on ABC, right after the funeral, when the Yankees won an emotional come-from-behind victory and Bobby Mercer cried on the field.
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>>>Back in those days, all I did in the summer was play baseball, watch baseball (and yes, chase girls). I was so stunned by the news that for a week I hardly did or said anything.
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>>>RIP, Thurman, you were a stud
>
>I was watching the game when Tony C. got hit in the face. He was never the same again.
>
>Yaz was my favorite growing up, and he did it without steroids. He led the AL in 1968 with a .301 batting average. The year of the pitcher.

I was a Yaz fan too, but mostly because he played for Boston. When I was a kid, Toronto had a triple-A franchise called the Toronto Maple Leafs (yes just like the hockey team, only they won once in a while), and the Leafs were a Red Sox farm club. So, to be a Leafs fan, meant being a Boson fan, which I would have been anyway because of Ted Williams. Guess who Toronto's short-stop was back when I worked out in the scoreboard at Maple Leaf Stadium. Give up? Sparky Anderson. He ended up as a player coach, and after he left, the coaching duties were handed off to some nobody named Dick Williams.