Yankee Fan Favorite Bobby Murcer Recently Turned 60

I must be getting old. Back in May, my favorite baseball player of all-time - Bobby Murcer - turned 60.

Every baseball fan can trace when a certain player became their favorite. For me, it was one insignificant game in 1969, truly the dark days of New York Yankees history.

When I was in Cooperstown a few years ago, I tracked down the date - August 5. The Yankees were facing the California Angels in the first year of divisional play. Both teams were under .500, going nowhere in the pennant race and basically waiting for the season to be over.

The attendance was just 8,830, which seems unfathomable given that these days the Yankees draw in excess of 50,000 for virtually every game.

The fact that Yankee Stadium was a virtual ghost town during those down times hardly mattered to a little kid. I can't remember if this was my first game but I couldn't have been to many. I was all of 10 years old. We even had VIP seats - meaning we had our own waiter service and access to the Stadium Club for dinner.

For eight innings, the Yankees did nothing, managing only five hits and trailing the Angels, 2-0. In the ninth, however, the Yankees got two men on via walks. Two outs and my future hero coming to bat. Angels manager Lefty Phillips yanked his pitcher, Ken Tatum, who had issued the two walks. From the limited view of a 10-year-old, I thought Phillips was a coward for not letting Tatum pitch to Murcer. In reality, Tatum was removed because he was struggling with his control.

In came the next pitcher, Clyde Wright, the father of current Yankee pitcher Jarret Wright. I don't recall if it came on the first pitch, but Murcer hit a game-winning three-run home run. Now all these years later, I'd like to say it was a mammoth home run, 480 feet into the center field bleachers, like Reggie Jackson in the sixth game of the 1977 World Series. But that isn't how it happened. Murcer's home run was a fly ball perfectly suited for the short right field porch at the old Yankee Stadium. Maybe it traveled 320 feet. Of course, all that mattered is that it won the game and Bobby Ray Murcer, country boy from Oklahoma, had a fan for life.

Murcer was a good player for the Yankees, maybe even a very good player. He was not, however, a great player, despite the hype attached to him when he made his major league debut as a 19-year-old in 1965. Murcer had the misfortune to be compared to the man he was replacing, Mickey Mantle. Both were from Oklahoma and both played center field. That's where the comparisons ended.

Murcer was born either too late or too soon. He missed the dying days of the great Yankee dynasty in the early 1960s and also missed the return to glory in the 1970s. Murcer was the Yankees' only star on some very bad teams. In 1971, he hit .331, finishing second to Alex Johnson in the American League batting race. In a 17-year career, Murcer batted a more-than-respectable .277, collecting almost 1,900 hits. He also batted over .300 in 1973 (.304) and drove in more than 90 runs for three straight seasons starting in 1971.

In 1975, with George Steinbrenner firmly entrenched as owner, the Yankees were ready to start winning again and Murcer was traded to the San Francisco Giants for Bobby Bonds in a blockbuster deal. Murcer was devastated to leave his beloved his Yankees. In 1977, Murcer was shipped to the Chicago Cubs and spent two seasons at Wrigley Field while the Yankees were winning back-to-back World Series titles.

Murcer made a triumphant return to the Yankees in 1979, but by then he was on the downside of his career and was used primarily as the designated hitter. Murcer hung around a few years, retiring in 1983. He then made the transition to the broadcast booth and remains immensely popular with the fans as a broadcaster for the YES Network.