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

fueled by secondhand interpretations. One of my biggest problems when I was doing the Yankees’ PR was trying to tame what the players’ wives were telling their husbands that the announcers said about them. They often got it wrong, or misunderstood the context, and it invariably caused problems.
    Munson’s point about Fisk’s injuries, though, was not off the mark. From 1972 through 1976, Fisk caught 516 games and was on the disabled list four times. In the same span, Thurman caught 728 games and was never on the disabled list. In fact, Munson would play his entire career without ever going on the DL.
    Those were the years in which Munson formed his opinion about the brittle Fisk.
    Of course, Fisk turned out to be one durable son of a gun. He would go on to be a four-decade player who would catch 2,226games, including twenty-five games when he was forty-five years old. He played more games at the position than any man in history.
    Munson would have come around and saluted his rival. He had a respect for durability because it was how he played the game, and he would have come around on Fisk, as he eventually came around on Reggie Jackson when they were teammates.
    But for those early years of the rivalry, it was real and it was bitter. The two would take some shots at each other in the papers (when Thurman was choosing to talk to the press). And Munson told me that he’d speak to Fisk about things he didn’t like seeing when Fisk came to bat. He’d call him by his last name.
    “Listen, Fisk, I saw what you said in the paper this morning and it’s bullshit,” he might say as Carlton settled in at bat. Stuff like that.
    Of course, his Yankee teammates loved to tease him about Fisk. Gene Michael, who roomed with Thurman for five years, used to tear out good Fisk stories or handsome pictures from magazines about Carlton and put them in Thurman’s locker just to get his reaction when he arrived in the clubhouse. Michael says he’s sure that Thurman never knew who was putting them there.

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    Off their big 1970 finish, with Houk getting Manager of the Year and Munson being so lauded, there were grand expectations for 1971. The front office, however, made no major additions, and the Orioles were still quite formidable, having polished off the Reds in the World Series. Nineteen seventy-one would be the only season during the Yankees’ rebuilding in which not a single major new face joined the roster, save for aging but reliable Felipe Alou and a couple of midseason Rons—Blomberg and Swoboda.
    Blomberg had been the Yankees’—and the nation’s—number one draft pick in 1967, the year before Thurman. He was a remarkably gifted high school athlete with basketball scholarship offers as well. His minor league development was notable for the decision to have him hit only against right-handers. True to his high school reputation, he positively creamed fastballs delivered by right-handers. It baffled fans why he wouldn’t bat against lefties in the minors, but his Syracuse manager, Frank Verdi, told the Yankees’ front office, “When I play him against a lefty, it screws him up against righties for a week!”
    He arrived in midseason to much ballyhoo and became an immediate fan favorite for his zany and sometimes nonsensical interviews, his “Li’l Abner” folksy charm, and his embrace of his religion (he was Jewish) without apologies. Fans waited outside the stadium to give him bagels. He spoke of his parents’ wanting him to be “a doctor and a lawyer,” and he was a regular at the Stage Deli. His batting practice sessions were not to be missed. On at least one occasion, he hit the facade in upper right field, famous as the place where Mantle had twice come close to hitting the only fair balls out of Yankee Stadium.
    Blomberg didn’t drink and liked to go to dinner with sportswriters. If the social occasion demanded it, he would order a vodka gimlet but never take a sip. (I used to tell him to order tap water