A sobering milestone for old-time baseball fans

Four decades ago, few baseball fans under 25 were aware there had once been a fierce rivalry between the New York Yankees and the Boston Red Sox. It had lain dormant for most of the previous 20 years because the majority of Sox squads of the 1950s and ’60s were mediocre at best, and on the rare occasions the Boston nine was relevant (as they were during their 1967 “Impossible Dream” season) the Yankees weren’t.

As the 1970s began, the two old foes found themselves annually (and unsuccessfully) chasing the American League East’s dominant team, the Baltimore Orioles, a concept that must seem like science fiction to fans under 30 today. But then in 1973, a previously obscure shipping magnate who to this day is referred to by New Englanders as He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named, took control of the Bronx Bombers and began the process of returning them to their former dominance. That and free agency, which began in the autumn of 1976, coincided with the return to prominence of a Boston team that began collecting fence-busting position players and competent pitchers, and the Hatfield-McCoy status of the two teams has continued virtually unabated ever since.

No two players better typified the mid-’70s revival of the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry than each squad’s catcher. Both were born in 1947, but to casual and/or willfully biased observers the similarities ended there. Most northern New Englanders saw tall, handsome, Vermont-born, New Hampshire-raised Carlton Fisk of the Sox as a durable and always gracious backstop with the tireless work ethic of one of their own.

They viewed his Yankee counterpart, Ohio-born Thurman Munson, as the polar opposite: Short, squat and eternally cranky, or at least he seemed that way to less-than-impartial fans living east of the Connecticut River. But the two perennial all-stars had far more innate similarities than either’s supporters would have cared to admit. Both were excellent hitters, outstanding defensive catchers and superb teammates. Each was uber-competitive, a fact borne out by their integral roles in several brawls between their two squads during the mid and late ’70s.

The rivalry peaked in 1978 when the Red Sox blew a 14-game lead, caught the New Yorkers on the season’s last day, but then lost a memorable one-game playoff on an unlikely home run by their light hitting shortstop, He-Who-Also-Must-Not-Be-Mentioned.

Then less than a year later, the animosity cooled, at least temporarily.

Aug. 2, 1979 was a scheduled off-day for the Yankees and Munson, as was his habit, used the hiatus to fly his private plane back to Canton, Ohio and spend the day with his family. That afternoon he was practicing takeoffs and landings in the $1.4 million Cessna Citation he had only recently acquired. Something on his fourth takeoff went awry, and while the two friends he was with survived the subsequent crash, Munson did not. He was 32 years and 56 days old on the day he died.

Thurman Munson wasn’t the only ballplayer of that era whose demise was premature. Roberto Clemente, the Puerto Rican outfielder who was the first Latino elected to baseball’s Hall of Fame, was 38 when his plane dove into the Atlantic Ocean on New Year’s Eve, 1972. Don Wilson, who authored two no-hitters for the Houston Astros in the late 1960s, died at 29 in 1975. Bob Moose, Clemente’s teammate who threw a no-hitter of his own for the Pittsburgh Pirates, died in a car wreck on his 29th birthday 35 years ago. Two years after that, 27-year-old Lyman Bostock, one of the American League’s best young players, was killed by a Gary, Ind. gunman who thought he was shooting at somebody else.

Marking the inexorable march of time needn’t require an obsession with baseball. John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Marilyn Monroe, and Malcolm X are just four noted Americans who’ve now been deceased longer than they lived.

To many fans of a certain age, it seems like Thurman Munson has been dead for a lifetime. And he has been, at least for one of his. This year marked the 32nd anniversary of his death.

That this eerie anniversary is taking place on the eve of the American League playoffs seems almost fitting, particularly given that the two wealthy Evil Empires and their overly-entitled fans will likely be involved. The Yankees are already in, and despite their recent bumbling, the staggering Red Sox still might be.

Old-time Yankees boosters still proudly and wistfully recall the legacy of the 1976 American League Most Valuable Player, their team’s captain and spiritual leader during the late mid and late ’70s. But knowing Thurman Munson has now been dead for as long as he was alive must make some of them uncomfortably aware of their own inevitable mortality.

Sign In: