Thurman Munson died thirty years ago today. Any boy with an interest in sports who lived in the New York Metropolitan area during the 1970’s knows what it meant when Thurman’s Cessna crashed at the Akron-Canton Regional Airport and he burned to death. I will never forget how I leaned of the tragedy. A boy on my block named Ken Bezilla called me to tell me about the early reports. He could hardly speak because he was crying so hard. I didn’t want to believe the news and I was eager to comfort my friend. I told him the rumors couldn’t possibly be true. The Yankee Captain could not be dead. But he was.
I have a friend who has a permanent shrine to Munson in his house. It includes an authentic seatback from the X Section of the Upper Deck, some votives, and a picture of Munson in his Yankee uniform.
It’s hard to understand what Thurman Munson meant to Yankee fans, but you can get an idea from this:
To this day, despite a packed clubhouse, an empty locker next to current Yankee team captain Derek Jeter’s, with Munson’s number 15 on it, remains as a tribute to the Yankees’ lost catcher. The original locker that Munson used, along with a bronzed set of his catching equipment, was donated to the Baseball Hall of Fame (Munson himself is not in the Hall)…
…Thurman’s original locker from Yankee Stadium, which has not been used by anyone since his death, was moved in one piece to New Yankee Stadium. It is located in the New York Yankees Museum. Visitors can view the Yankees Museum on gamedays from when the gates open to the end of the eighth inning and during Yankee Stadium tours.
When the Cincinnati Reds swept the Yankees in the 1976 World Series, I was scarred for life. I was a severely devastated seven-year old. When Reds manager Sparky Anderson rubbed salt in the wounds by saying that Munson couldn’t carry Johnny Bench’s jock, he earned my undying enmity. Johnny Bench batted .533 in the ’76 Series; Thurman Munson batted .529. Johnny Bench never won another championship; Munson won it all in 1977 and 1978.
For kids my age, the death of Munson was a hole in the psyche that could never be filled. When Don Mattingly came along, he showed us that the game could be played as well as Munson had demonstrated and with more talent. But I’ve never mourned a human being as intensely and painfully as I mourned for Thurman Munson thirty years ago today. It might seem silly, but if you grew up when and where I grew up, you’d understand the degree of the loss. In my generation, no Yankee is as revered as number 15.
