A Boy and Bobby Murcer

Our baby sitter Alison has an expression that my wife and I have grown to love: sharing is caring.  And while she uses it mainly to referee possession disputes between our 3 year-old twins, I like to think she also means something more profound:  sharing is the ultimate demonstration of love and caring for small children.  If you need proof, witness the bond that toddlers have with those who play with them on the floor.   Dropping to their altitude elicits smiles and offers of everything from toys to soggy crackers.  

So it is that merely sharing a first name with the Yankee centerfielder in the early seventies was enough for me to become an adoring, mildly obsessed fan.  Bobby Murcer was a pillar of my childhood.   I don’t remember the first time I heard his name; the memory has no distinct start point.  Murcer’s name conjures memories of watching Yankee games in the den of our house in Union, NJ.  My father and I are on the couch.  The room is dimly lit, it’s Saturday afternoon, and, even as a 6 year old, I know that Phil Rizutto is off-topic.  My father questions the Yankees’ courage with peculiar accusations (“Bloomberg, your pants are brown!”), and I ask him six-year old questions:  by how many points does a homerun raise a batting average?  How long until Murcer is up again?

This is joy:  my two heroes, in one poorly air-conditioned room.

Soft dissolve to: my father pitching me tennis balls in the backyard.  I hit several of them over the fence, across Rahway Avenue, into the front yard of the factories across the way.  My father spins and watches the shots as they clear the crab apple tree, and then turns to me with a smile.   He retrieves them, dodging traffic, while I practice my swing in slow-motion.  I wear a Yankee T-shirt with “MURCER” on the back (iron-on letters courtesy of Mom).  

In 1974, we attended Old Timer’s Day at Shea, the Yankees’ temporary home while their stadium was being refurbished, and the place where Murcer’s long drives became long outs.  I have a picture from the trip, snapped from the upper deck without the benefit of zoom technology. If you squint and hold it at the right angle, you can see the old timers lining up on the field.  My friend Jeff is in the lower right corner waving.  His smile is that of a boy who can’t believe his good fortune.  Shea is a magical place that day.  I am too young to know that it will also be the final resting place of Bobby Murcer’s Hall of Fame potential: he hits just 10 home runs that summer, and there are whispers that the Can’t-Miss-Kid was over-hyped.

After we moved to a larger home to accommodate the arrival of my third sister, I joined little league.   The practice with my dad paid off–my baseball skills were better than many boys.  I was voted to the All-Star team.  The game was covered by the local paper, and I don’t need to look at the wrinkled article to tell you the headline:  ”East beats West in Small Fries’ Big Game.”  There is a team photograph, and I am unsmiling and professional, holding a ribbon.  It is a proud day, the sort of day where it’s not too far-fetched to think that this slight, freckle-faced boy might one day patrol centerfield for the New York Yankees.  Kindly, I’m not aware that it is the last time I will play in an All-Star game.

My father broke the news to me the day Murcer was traded to the Giants for Bobby Bonds.  He sat next to me on the couch, awkwardly anticipating my grief.  ”Your buddy got traded today,” he said.  After processing it, I remember saying the only thing that came to mind: “I’m so sad, Dad.”  I ran to my room and cried.  Shortly thereafter, there was a picture in the newspaper of Murcer and his wife.  He was trying on the San Francisco uniform.  He was smiling, but his eyes were sad.

I was a small boy, and seemed to get smaller as the boys around me grew. There are small boys who can compensate with pluck and speed.  I was not one of them.   After getting hit on my bony frame by pitches a few times, I was terrified to bat:  my right foot (I batted lefty) would twitch and often bail out on its own.   Pitching control, previously my forte, became my weak spot:  batters came to the plate salivating, knowing the offering would be slow and down the middle.  Eventually, I was moved to the outfield, where I grazed lazily with the other boys who were either small, unskilled or uninterested.  In the fifth grade, I made a great over the shoulder catch in left field, after running for what seemed like days.  The other outfielders seemed alarmed– I’d ruined a good thing by raising expectations.  As I came back to the bench, there was stunned clapping from the parents and slaps on the back from teammates.  It was like I had been re-discovered for a brief moment, as if everyone simultaneously ran into an old acquaintence whose name they couldn’t quite remember.

My final year of baseball, I played more out of fear of hurting my father’s feelings than desire.  After mustering the courage to tell him how I felt, I retired at 12.  Dad smiled and hugged me.

I tracked Murcer closely through his years in San Francisco (where he was admittedly miserable) and in Chicago after he was traded to the Cubs in 1977 for Bill Madlock.  He had good, solid years, never great.   He missed the Yankees World Series years of 1976-1978, and I wondered how he felt as he sat in San Francisco or Chicago, watching his old friends Lou Pinella, Graig Nettles, and Thurman Munson celebrate at Yankee Stadium.   He was eventually brought back to the Yankees for the end of his career, and retired a Yankee in 1983.

I eventually got bigger, but it was too late for a baseball career.  I took up running, and would stop and watch my friends play high school ball on my way back from the track.  They would be laughing, shagging fly balls, shouting insults to one another.  I would walk slowly, my running shoes strung over my shoulder, smiling and yelling to them.

Today, Murcer announces the Yankee games on TV.  The shock of black hair is now gray, and his soft Midwestern drawl carries gently on the summer night air in New Jersey.   He is nearly apologetic when his career comes up, and I smile.   My daughter Emma wears the Murcer shirt I wore as a boy, tripping on it as she runs around our den.  I am tired after a long day.   I close my eyes for a moment and see the old crab apple tree, and a boy and his dad.

We’ve never met, Bobby Murcer and me, but we are old friends.