The Vietnam War was going on, and if you were a healthy guy of draft age who didn’t have a college deferment, there was no way you were going to get out of serving. They also got him into the National Guard, which they did for a lot of their players, me included. We both had good springs, and I got promoted to the Yankees’ AA farm team in Manchester, New Hampshire, while they sent Thurman up to their AAA club in Syracuse, New York. I’d never seen anyone get rid of the ball like that. We were all really impressed by his skills-especially by how quickly he could get the ball out of his glove and down to second base. We hit it off pretty well, though we didn’t hang out much together at camp that year. The Yankees drafted and signed Thurman in June of ’68, and sent him off to play with the Binghamton Triplets, their AA team in the Eastern League, so we didn’t actually meet until the following year, when we both went down to take spring training with the Yankees at their facilities in Fort Lauderdale. But even if they had set their sights on him, the Yankees would have snapped him up before the Tribe’s turn came around. But Cleveland already had a really good defensive catcher named Joe Azcue, and a top catching prospect named Ray Fosse, so there wasn’t a whole lot of interest in Thurman coming from that organization. He’d grown up in Canton, Ohio, and gone to school in Akron, so playing for the Indians would have been a natural thing for him. 1 sport, and he had total belief that he could excel on a major league level. He’d also played football and basketball, but baseball was his No. I always had the impression that Thurman would have been happy to sign with anybody who needed a catcher he just wanted to get to the majors as quickly as possible. So when the teams in front of them passed on Thurman in the ’68 draft, there was no question about who the Yankees were going to use their first pick on. Both were good guys who were solid defensively - and Frank had some decent pop in his bat-but nothing about them exuded “greatness” in the way that Yogi and Ellie had. They’d won all those pennants and World Series with Yogi Berra and then Elston Howard behind the plate, but by the time Thurman and I came to training camp in ’69, they had Jake Gibbs and Frank Fernandez splitting time as starting catcher. Of course, the Yankees also needed a great catcher, which is where Thurman came in. So when the Yankees started scouting me, that was as exciting to me as being scouted by UCLA or Alabama. 7 on my Little League and high school teams. Mickey Mantle became my hero I would imitate his stance and his swing, and always ask to wear No. And then I started learning more about Yankee history, and understanding what an important team they were. I saw them play some spring exhibition games in Atlanta on their way up to New York from Fort Lauderdale, and I became a Yankee fan. At the time, the Yankees had guys like Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris, Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra. The Yankees always seemed to be on “Game of the Week,” with their games being broadcast from the old Yankee Stadium. Nobody was talking about Major League Baseball down there at the time, and the only time we ever got to see Major League Baseball down there was on NBC’s Game of the Week, with Pee Wee Reese and Dizzy Dean calling the games. I’d grown up going to see a minor league team called the Atlanta Crackers, who played over at Ponce de Leon Park, which wasn’t too far from where I lived. If they’d drafted me, I wouldn’t have signed with them. I mean, I was kind of a Braves fan at the time, but that was only because I lived in Atlanta and they’d recently moved to town from Milwaukee. Those were two of the most exciting programs in college sports, so playing baseball for anyone other than the Yankees seemed pretty unexciting to me in comparison. I was a basketball and football star in high school as well as baseball, and both UCLA and Alabama were offering me scholarships to come and play for them. If the Yankees hadn’t drafted me, I probably would have gone to UCLA and played basketball for John Wooden, or played football for Bear Bryant at Alabama. I didn’t want to sign with any other team. 1 pick for the ’67 draft, and some other team might have drafted me before them. If the Yankees hadn’t been so bad in 1966, they wouldn’t have had the No. This essay has been excerpted from “The Captain & Me: On and Off The Field with Thurman Munson” by Ron Blomberg with Dan Epstein and is printed with the permission of Triumph Books. By Ron Blomberg With Dan Epstein April 20, 2021
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