Free Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain by Marty Appel Page A

Although Bench’s lifetime batting average would be only .267, he had a great highlight reel and revolutionized defensive play at the position. Thurman was honored to be compared to him.
    Oh yes, but then there was Carlton Fisk.
    Fisk was the anti-Munson. If Affirmed needed Alydar, if Ali needed Frazier, and if Evert needed Navratilova, Munson and Fisk needed each other.
    Fisk first tasted the big leagues on September 18, 1969, about a month after Thurman did. It was enough to eventually make him a four-decade player.
    He played a little bit in 1971, and then won the Rookie of the Year Award in 1972, making him the
second
AL catcher to nab the honor.
    In many ways, he was everything Munson was not—tall, handsome, graceful, maybe even a little delicate in his movements and body language. The players would sometimes tease him about the latter as only players can. His famous “coaxing” of his walk-off homer in the 1975 World Series was an example of what opposing players saw as the delicate movements.
    People think there was always a Yankee-Red Sox rivalry, goingback to 1903, when the Highlanders (the original Yankees) were formed, and certainly heightened by the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920, and later by Joe DiMaggio and Ted Williams being opposing players.
    In fact, there really wasn’t much of a rivalry at all after the Sox fell onto hard times after the Ruth sale. A rivalry can only be strong when both teams are strong. And for a long, long time, leading to the Munson-Fisk years, tickets to Fenway Park or Yankee Stadium for Yankee-Red Sox games were not that hard to get.
    The Red Sox “Impossible Dream” pennant of 1967 turned a moribund team into a good one, something that, remarkably, is still going on. Not since Ruth helped the Yankees win the 1921 pennant—their first—has a single season so turned around the fortunes of a franchise.
    But the Yankees didn’t catch up right away. While the Red Sox remained strong after 1967, the Yankees were still down, save for the surprising 1970 finish. It wasn’t until the mid-seventies that both teams peaked, and Munson and Fisk seemed to be the symbols of both.
    Fisk was the New England lumberjack, Munson the Ohio blue-collar worker who led their teams to the top of the American League East.
    Munson genuinely hated Fisk. And it was pretty much mutual.
    “I know they were aware of each other’s presence,” said Bill Lee, the Red Sox pitcher. “Munson was always checking Fisk’s stats, and Carlton would go nuts any time a reporter mentioned Munson’s name.”
    It was partly due to his competitive nature, and of course it was fueled by the rising rivalry between the two glamour franchises, but Munson was also jealous and resentful of the attention Fisk was getting, and the All-Star elections he was winning.
    “It’s Curt Gowdy on the Game of the Week always playing himup,” said Munson. “He used to be the Red Sox announcer, he loves them, and now he’s on the national games and he’s always talking about Fisk this and Fisk that. And you know what? Fisk is always getting hurt, and I’m always playing through injuries, and he’s getting credit for things he might do if he was healthy. Gowdy has this thing for him.”
    True or not, it was what Munson believed. (Gowdy had earlier been a Yankees announcer.) Thurman thought you played hurt. “Whenever someone was complaining about anything, Thurman would look at him and say, ‘So, retire!’” says Brian Doyle, later a teammate. “It was a wake-up call to remember how lucky we all were to be playing big-league baseball.”
    And the Fisk attention on NBC did tend to reflect itself in the annual All-Star Game fan voting, which had begun in 1969 by edict of Commissioner Bowie Kuhn.
    Players always have an arm’s-length regard for announcers anyway. They don’t hear the broadcasts unless they are in the clubhouse for a bathroom break or a change of jersey. Much of what they know about announcers is