Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain by Marty Appel Read Free Book Online Page B

failuresthan throw out names just to possibly look good one day if they got lucky.
    The Yankees trusted them.
    “I like this catcher at Chatham, the one from Kent State,” Hesse told Johnny Johnson, the Yankees farm director and later president of the minor leagues. “You might want to make sure we watch him during his senior year. He could go high in the draft.”
    In his junior year, 1968, the team jumped to 16-9, and Thurman hit .413 with 3 homers and 30 RBIs. He set school records with 38 hits, 10 doubles, and 6 triples, and was named first-team All-American by the American Baseball Coaches Association and first-team All-District IV. He was also all-region. He was not the team captain (that was Ron Macks—a seniority thing for Moose). He would be the only player in school history to have his number (15) retired. His lifetime college average was .390.
    “Being named All-American first-team catcher was, if you think about it, maybe a bigger honor than being named Rookie of the Year or MVP in the American League,” Thurman would later say. “There are so many more players you are competing against, especially for the rookie award. I mean, think of how many college catchers there are every year. And I was first team!”
    He was All-MAC-conference in both 1967 and 1968, joined in the latter year by his battery mate, Steve Stone, who also lettered twice and went on to have a sterling career in the major leagues.
    Today the team plays nearly sixty games a year. It switched to metal bats in 1974, so many of Thurman’s marks are small by school standards, but at the time he held a number of school records for a season and a career, and was named to the Kent State Varsity “K” Alumni Association’s Hall of Fame in 1979.
    Major league scouts were a fixture at Kent State games by Thurman’s junior year. The Yankees assigned Gene Woodling, who lived in nearby Medina, to watch him. Woodling had been one of CaseyStengel’s platoon outfielders in the late 1940s and early ’50s, alternating with Hank Bauer in right. He was one of the twelve players who were part of the five consecutive world championship teams of 1949-53, Stengel’s first five seasons. Woodling was a practical man, one of the few who didn’t spend his life living off his Yankee fame. He gave his all wherever he played and was happily employed as a Yankee scout and spring training instructor, but was a guy you could rely on, like Hesse, for an honest assessment.
    Moose Paskert would point him out to Munson and Stone when he was at their games.
    “Woodling really used to frustrate me,” Thurman said. “I’m a talkative guy. I would have enjoyed having a conversation with him, but I never could get one going. When the day finally came where he introduced himself, I acted as if I hadn’t been aware of his presence all along.”
    The Cleveland Indians, the “hometown team,” also scouted Thurman, but their scouting report said he couldn’t run well, and although he was a catcher, the team never showed much interest. They had a promising catcher coming along named Ray Fosse.
    When the 1968 season ended, Thurman returned to Cape Cod, departing on June 6, the day of the baseball draft, the day before his twenty-first birthday. “There was no reason not to go,” he said. “Even if I was drafted I could play there all summer and sign later. We’d just watch and see what happened.”
    Thurman knew he would be a high draft pick, but of course had no idea who would get to select him. After all, he was rated the number one catcher in the nation. Any suspense was over which team more than when picked. He was pretty calm about the whole process.
    The Chatham team of the summer of 1968 was going to be one of the great Cape Cod League teams ever. In addition to Munson, they had future major leaguers in John Curtis, a left-handed startingpitcher, Bobby Valentine at short, Rich McKinney at third, and Stone on the mound. Munson, Curtis, Valentine, and McKinney