Make no mistake, my love for baseball is genetically based. During baseball season, whenever we visited my grandmother, I remember how feverishly she would root for the New York Yankees and her favorite player, Thurman Munson - in English and Japanese. Near her chair, there always was a TV Guide with all the televised (Channel 11 - WPIX) Yankees games circled in red. Unfortunately, during most of my childhood, the Yankees weren't too good. And though I didn't know too much Japanese back then (... like I'm a walking Japanese dictionary these days), I'm quite certain that many of the words directed at the TV were not pleasant ones. At breakfast, lunch and dinner, my father would often share his memories of the Portland Beavers - a minor league team he grew up watching in Oregon. Among her high school recollections, I remember my mother telling me about how popular baseball was at the Tule Lake Relocation Camp during WWII. My sister and brother (though Jon will deny it now... silly Red Sox fan), as a I recall, seemed to always have the television tuned to the Knicks, Rangers or Yankees - during their respective seasons. No matter who the Yankees shortstop was at the time, Elise seemed to always have a crush on this player (Mason, Dent, Jeter...)... strange. My idol, growing up, was Bobby Murcer. Even after he left the Yankees, I followed his career religiously - from San Francisco, to Chicago, then finally back to New York. When I played, I would copy all of his mannerisms (sans his Oklahoma accent) - the way he batted, how he threw the ball, the way he walked. I even made sure that I had his uniform number (#1 or #2) when I played Little League and High School ball - darn good thing that the smaller uniforms had the low numbers : ). So, as you can see, baseball has always been kind of a sick obsession for me. But I think my neighborhood friends were similarly crazed, because if there wasn’t snow on the ground, you would be sure to find us playing whiffle ball in the driveway or stickball at the local school. Ah, the good ‘ol days.http://www.cancer.org/docroot/home/index.asp
4 comments:
Ah yes, the good old days. I will always remember walking into Grandma's house in Wantagh and find her watching a Yankees game, or Grandma and the three of us huddled in front of the tv in Smithtown rooting for our beloved Yankees. Bobby Murcer was and always will be one of our family favorites. What a true epitome of a Yankee he was, and a real gentleman. It was great to see and hear him broadcast the games on the YES network; he always brought back wonderful memories with all his life stories. He will be missed.
Yes Bobby Murcer will be missed, gone at a young age but will not be forgotten.
I'm bringing a wiffle bat & ball to the reunion so let's get it ON! What did we use for second base in Smithtown? The corners of the red driveway stones were first and third. Home plate was the center driveway concrete square.
hey isn't (wasn't) that my bobby murcer card???
The one on the left (black bordered)? Possibly. I'd send it back to you, but I didn't think Yankees paraphernalia was allowed in the state of Massachusetts. Maybe I'll put it up as a prize in one of these trivia contests.
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