Yankee for life

Written by Bernie Weisz Historian BernWei1@aol.com 10/21/09

****Reading About Bobby Murcer:My Youth Revisited!

This was a very hard book to read, as I knew from page one what Bobby Murcer's fate would be from his inoperable brain tumor. I had this same feeling of "gloom and doom" when I read Tug McGraw's memoir, published posthumously. Ya Gotta Believe!: My Roller-Coaster Life as a Screwball Pitcher and Part-Time Father, and My Hope-Filled Fight Against Brain Cancer Similar to Tug's book, there is a picture of Murcer on the cover showing him ravished by the effects of cancer. This is not the Bobby Murcer I want to remember. I first met Bobby Murcer as an 11 year old adolescent in 1971. My sister, Helaine, had a boyfriend named Mitch. I would constantly watch the Yankees on WPIX, and this gentleman saw that I liked baseball. Mitch asked me why I never went to a ballgame. I had trouble explaining to him that my father was from Czechoslovakia originally (he was an R.A.F. pilot during W.W. II) who not only didn't understand baseball, but thought it was a stupid game. My father taking me to Yankee Stadium was out of the question. Similarly, my mother didn't understand the sport either, nonetheless driving me from Forest Hills, Queens to the battleground of the South Bronx was simply out of the question. Mitch volunteered. With the Yanks hosting the Oakland A's, in the bottom of the first Bobby Murcer fouled off one of Vida Blue's fast balls right into Mitch's hands.