May 8, 1977 – Yankees 10, A’s 5

NEW YORK – Throughout his decade-long career with the Yankees, catcher Thurman Munson was one of the most respected players to ever wear pinstripes. He was the captain, everyone called him the captain, and not only was he tough and gritty and a strong leader, he was also an All-Star player who could hit for average and power plus handle a diverse pitching staff with the deft touch of a crisis management negotiator.

Ask anyone in the media who covered Munson in his heyday, and they’ll also tell you that he could be the most crotchety of pricks, often rude and sometimes downright nasty, and some felt it was such a shame because his boorish behavior painted a picture that, according to those closest to him, simply wasn’t true.

In his book Thurman Munson: A Baseball Biography, author Christopher Devine delved into this issue. He quoted Munson’s agent at the time, Bob Woolf, as saying, “The public image of him was all wrong. Thurman was really a pussycat.”

Devine recalls a story from 1978 when a female writer approached Sparky Lyle and asked, “Why is Thurman so mean?” Lyle responded in an irritated tone, “Just leave the guy alone. Thurman just wants to be left alone. He knows how good he is. Quit writing about why he’s so mean. Just accept the fact he has an off day like everybody else, except he has more of them.”

That certainly seemed to be true early in 1977; Munson was often in an ornery mood, most of it having to do with Reggie Jackson’s noisy infiltration of the Yankee clubhouse. But, ballplayer that he was, Munson didn’t let his grumpiness carry over to the field. Once he stepped between those foul lines, it was all about the game, and in the Yankees third straight victory over Oakland, Munson went 4-for-5 with a triple, a solo home run, two singles, and four runs scored.

He was now riding a career-best 16-game hitting streak, during which his average had gone from .189 to .337, his on-base percentage from .286 to .384, and the Yankees had won 14 of those games and inched into first place in the AL East with a record of 16-10.

Actually, Munson and Jackson had been getting along fine in recent weeks. Ever since Munson had sought out Jackson for a talk when times were tough in Milwaukee back in mid-April, the roiling seas had calmed. Munson was making an honest effort to try to understand Jackson’s “magnitude of me” personality while also impressing upon him that he needed to spend more time with his new teammates so they could get to know them, which in turn would also work the other way, too.

Of course, this was still a couple weeks before the famous Sport magazine story came out where Jackson, during an interview that had taken place back in March, said he was “the straw who stirs the drink” and that “Munson thinks he can be the straw that stirs the drink, but he can only stir it bad.” When that hit newsstands, the seas would churn once again, but they weren’t there yet. For now, the Yankees were winning and all was well.

In the clubhouse after the 10-5 blowout over the A’s, reporters flocked to Jackson, who’d gone 1-for-4, and he praised Munson by saying, “He’s got more flexibility at the plate than anybody I’ve played with. He’s a smart hitter, he’s a great situation contact hitter. He’s a winning ballplayer.”

Munson was then asked to talk about his relationship with Jackson, and he said, “I’ve had a lot of conversations with Reggie. I’ve tried to help him adjust to the club. Reggie is the kind of guy who would like to have some say on the club, and rightfully so; he should have some say. I like Reggie. He likes to play. He has problems because he talks a lot. But he likes to play, and as long as you play baseball, you’re going to get along with me. One thing I have tried to relate to Reggie is don’t worry about what other guys think of you; just go out and play, the hell with what anyone thinks.”

That, of course, was the complexity of Munson. He said he didn’t care what anyone thought, but deep down, he did.

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