Baseball History Podcast

Welcome to Baseball History Podcast, featuring baseball biographies.  I’m your announcer Bob Wright.

This is game 06 of the 2011 baseball season.

In the first inning let’s take a look at This Week in Baseball History for the 2 week of February.

February 11

1977 The Cubs trade Bill Madlock and Rod Sperring to the Giants for Bobby Murcer, Steve Ontiveros and a minor leaguer.

Bobby Ray Murcer was born May 20, 1946 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.

Murcer was slated to be the Yankees’ shortstop but ended up being the center fielder, following in the footsteps of Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio.  A left-handed hitter, Murcer had a career .277 batting average and 252 home runs.  He became one of the Yankees most popular players of the era.

As a boy, he rooted for the New York Yankees.  Before he became an adult, he was playing for them. Although he left the club for a time, it never left him, and when he got the chance he did not hesitate to return.  He is a man who said that if he had to choose between election to the Baseball Hall of Fame or being honored with a day at Yankee Stadium, he’d pick the latter.
Murcer earned a football scholarship to the University of Oklahoma but thought his future lay in baseball.  As a sweet-swinging shortstop, he attracted the attention of many major league teams.   Although the Dodgers offered him a much larger bonus, Bobby’s favorite team was the New York Yankees.  After the Yankees brought him to Kansas City to work out with them for a day, he signed a contract for a $10,000 bonus in June 1964.

At the end of the 1965 season, the Yankees called him up, and he got into eleven games for the club in September.  His first Major League hit, in his second game, was a game-winning home run.  He also played on Mickey Mantle Day on September 18 at Yankee Stadium . Mantle was his boyhood idol, and he would later describe playing alongside Mantle in that game as the greatest thrill of his career.

The Yankees’ shortstop, Tony Kubek, retired after the 1965 season, and the 19-year-old Murcer was a candidate to replace him.  The Yankees obtained veteran infielder Ruben Amaro to compete for the shortstop job but Murcer played well enough early in spring training to become the front runner.  However, he slumped once it looked like he had the job locked up, and manager Johnny Keane decided to split the position between Murcer and Amaro.  That plan had to be scrapped almost as soon as the season started, as Amaro suffered a severe knee injury and was unable to play again until September.

Since the Yankees didn’t believe Murcer was ready to play full-time for them, they moved third baseman Clete Boyer to shortstop, with Tom Tresh taking Boyer’s spot at third base.  After three weeks of mostly sitting on the bench, Murcer was optioned to Toledo of the International League, where he could play every day.  He had another good season, playing in the All-Star game and hitting four consecutive home runs in a double header.
He was recalled by the Yankees in September, and got into twenty games with them.  He hit poorly but the Yankees weren’t worried about his bat.  Murcer himself said that once he saw Major League pitching for a few games, he knew he could hit it.  His fielding was another story.  Although he had shown rapid improvement, raising his fielding average in two years from .775 to .939, his defense was clearly behind his offense.  His Triple-A manager said that while Bobby had “excellent range and a good arm,” he had problems on balls hit to his right and on charging grounders.  Murcer himself felt his errors were a result of “stupid mistakes and relying too much on my arm.”

At 160 pounds, he wasn’t really considered a slugger, but more a good line drive hitter.  Murcer hit out of an extremely closed left-handed stance then, which he later abandoned for a less extreme stance and a slight crouch.
In 1967 he expected to win the Yankees’ shortstop job, but fate threw him a curve.  On the day he reported to the Yankees’ camp in Fort Lauderdale, his wife called to tell him that he had received his draft notice from the army.  Bobby spent most of the next two years in the military, serving in the radio corps at a camp in Arizona.

While Murcer was in the service, the Yankees regularly discussed moving him to another position.  In the spring of 1969 they had him compete for the third base job with incumbent Bobby Cox.  Murcer had gained 15 pounds in the military; mostly muscle in his upper body.  He won the starting spot with a great spring, and headed into opening day hitting third in the Yankees’ lineup.

This would seem to put a lot of pressure on a twenty-two-year-old going into his first full Major League season, but if Murcer felt it, he didn’t show it.  He got off to a great start, hitting 5 homers and driving in 17 runs in the Yankees first nine games.  Initially, his fielding was good, too, but after a few weeks, he suffered a jammed right thumb.  It didn’t affect his hitting, but he started making throwing errors.

On May 12, in Seattle, Murcer got into a fight with the Pilots shortstop and both were ejected along with Houk, now the Yankees’ manager.  This was to be the only ejection of Murcer’s major league career.  While they were in the clubhouse, Houk instructed Murcer to practice in right field before the next game and that if he felt comfortable there, it would be his new position.  He did and it was.

Murcer continued his hitting, leading the major leagues in Runs Batted In through Memorial Day.  However, on that day he hurt his ankle running the bases, and had to sit out a few days.  When he returned to the lineup, his timing was off, and he started chasing bad pitches.  His hot bat turned ice cold through the next two months.  He hit only two home runs with a .200 batting average during the months of June and July.  On August 5, in a game he didn’t start, he socked a game-winning three-run homer, and thereafter he refound his stroke.  Over August and September, his slugging average was .530.

On defense, Murcer struggled initially after moving to right field but he improved enough by late August to start playing center field part time.  After September 10, all of his starts were in a center.  By the following year, he had learned the position well enough to lead the league in assists with fifteen, the first of four such titles.

Murcer ended the season with a .259 batting average, 26 home runs and 82 Runs Batted In.  The Yankees had a somewhat disappointing season and Murcer’s final numbers weren’t what he was hoping for after his hot start, but he had established himself as a regular.
The 1970 season would be a much better one for the Yankees, as they improved to 93 wins, although they still finished fifteen games behind the Baltimore Orioles.  Murcer’s hitting was hot and cold again and his final figures, that included a .251 batting average, 23 home runs and 78 Runs Batted In, were close to what he had produced in 1969, except that he increased his walks from 50 to 87.

He was never hotter than he was on June 24, when he tied a Major League record by hitting four consecutive home runs.  He did it in a doubleheader against Cleveland, hitting a homer in the ninth inning of game one and then three in game two.

After the 1970 season, Murcer was unsatisfied with his hitting, believing that he should be able to maintain a .300 batting average.  To do that, he decided to stop trying to hit home runs, since he was never going to be a big slugger, and hit the ball where it was pitched instead.  He also adopted a bat that was one ounce heavier than he had used before.  In addition, Mickey Mantle worked with him the next spring to improve his bunting.

His new approach was an immediate success, as he led the Yankees in hits and Runs Batted In in spring training.  He said he was pleased with the number of hits he got to left and center fields.  His hot hitting continued once the regular season began.  With his new approach, he reduced his strikeouts by more than 40 percent, while walking more often, and he continued to hit for power.  By the end of June, he had a .453 on base average and a .579 slugging average.  He was chosen for the All-Star team and an injury to Tony Oliva allowed him to start the game in center.

He cooled off somewhat in the second half, but remained among the league’s leading hitters.  In September, he was briefly hospitalized with some small kidney stones, and soon after he returned to action he pulled a muscle and missed another week.  These injuries didn’t keep him from putting on a late season charge, and he ended up hitting .331 with 25 home runs and 94 Runs Batted In.  Despite his hitting, the Yankees struggled around .500 all season, ending with an 82-80 record.

The following season started about a week late due to a player’s strike that started during spring training.  Once the season got under way Murcer wasn’t at the top of his game.  In May 1972 he only drove in two runs.  He turned things around in June, but by mid-season, his numbers weren’t close to the previous year, though the fans still voted him a starter for the All-Star game.  Like Murcer, the Yankees started out the season slowly, but they caught fire at the end of June, and by August they were only two games out of first place.  This was the first pennant race of Murcer’s big league career, and he responded as the Yankees hoped he would, scoring and driving in twenty-seven runs in August.  The team closed to within a half-game of first on September 12 before collapsing, going 5-12 to finish six and a half games out.  Murcer ended up hitting a career-high 33 home runs and 96 Runs Batted In, while hitting .292.  He also won the only Gold Glove of his career.
The 1973 season started poorly for Murcer. While in Puerto Rico to take part in the American Airlines Golf Classic, as he had the past two years, he tripped over his luggage and broke his right hand.  He was in a cast for four weeks, and missed the beginning of spring training.
His slugging continued in the first half of the 1973 season.  After the second three-homer game of his career, July 13 against Kansas City, Murcer was tied for third in the American League with 19 home runs.  Then, his power mysteriously vanished.  He hit only 25 more homers the rest of that season and the next two.  Also, his walks declined to fifty in 1973, down from ninety-one two years earlier.

Overall, Murcer had another good season, hitting .304 with 22 home runs and 95 Runs Batted In, starting in his third straight All-Star game.  The Yankees’ season somewhat paralleled their star centerfielder’s.  The club surged in June, and was in first place as late as July 31.  However, with Murcer’s power slump, the team could manage only a 20-34 record the last two months.

Murcer had a running feud with Gaylord Perry, the American League Cy Young Award winner in 1972.  Perry had held Murcer to 2 hits in 20 at bats that year, mainly (Bobby thought) by throwing a greaseball.  Murcer had some fun with Gaylord; he once caught a fly for the last out of an inning and spit on the ball before tossing it to Perry.  Another time he sent Perry a gallon of lard.

Perry retaliated by having a mutual acquaintance cover his hand with grease before shaking hands with Murcer and saying “Gaylord says hello.”  Despite having better success with Perry in 1973 (nine hits in twenty-four at bats), Murcer’s complaints about the greaseball got him into trouble in late June when he commented that neither American League President Joe Cronin nor Commissioner Bowie Kuhn had the guts to stop Perry from throwing the pitch.  Kuhn fined Murcer for the statement.
1974 would be a year of many changes for Bobby Murcer, who was now the highest-paid player in Yankee history.  Ralph Houk, his manager since late 1966, resigned, and Bill Virdon was hired to replace him.  Bobby didn’t get along with Virdon, who Murcer felt didn’t treat him with the respect he’d earned as the team’s star player.
Yankee Stadium began a two-year renovation, forcing the Yankees to play their home games in Shea Stadium for the 1974 and 1975 seasons.  Bobby didn’t find the new arena to his liking; the right field fence was thirty to forty feet deeper than the one at Yankee Stadium, and poor drainage in the outfield left him playing with wet feet much of the time.
Virdon, who had been an excellent defensive center fielder as a player, felt that newcomer Elliot Maddox was a better fielder than Murcer, and on May 28 moved Bobby to right field and installed Maddox as the regular center fielder.  The switch seemed to help the Yankees, as Murcer excelled in right field, where he threw out twelve baserunners in his first fifty-two games.

As they had the two previous years, the Yankees contended for first place.  This time, however, they didn’t fade at the end of the season.  Murcer did his best to help the team win.  On September 20, he tripled off nemesis Gaylord Perry to win the first game of a doubleheader, and the Yankees ended the day tied for first.

His first Shea Stadium homer the next day tied the game as the Yankees came back from a seven to two deficit to win.  Another round-tripper on the 22nd was the game winner and kept the Yankees one game ahead.  If it hadn’t been for a great surge by the Baltimore Orioles, who won 28 of their last 34 games, the Yankees would have won the division title.

After a game on September 29, with two games remaining, the Yankees were only a half game out of first.  However, Murcer tried to break up a fight between backup catchers Rick Dempsey and Bill Sudakis and got a broken finger in the scuffle.  He had to sit out the remaining games, which the Yankees split while the red-hot Orioles continued to win; the Yankees finished two games out.  Murcer ended the season hitting .298 with just 10 home runs but 88 Runs Batted In.

The biggest change of the year came a few weeks later.  Although Murcer had been assured by principal owner George Steinbrenner that he would be a Yankee as long as Steinbrenner owned the club, and was told by team president Gabe Paul a few days earlier that he wouldn’t be traded, Bobby awoke on October 22 to find himself a member of the San Francisco Giants.  The Yankees had traded his contract for that of Bobby Bonds, in the first ever exchange of $100,000 players.

The trade devastated Murcer.  Since he was a boy, he’d wanted to be a Yankee.  He’d achieved that dream, become the star of the team, and now he had to start all over, in a new league, clear across the country.  From a pennant contender, he’d been sent to a team with a 72-90 record.
Cold winds plagued Candlestick Park, where the Giants had their home games.  Murcer hated playing there, and requested a trade as early as the summer of 1975.  He called it the “worst place I’ve ever seen.  It’s summertime everywhere around the United States but here . . . I’m just glad I don’t have to pay to get in.”  Once he tried keeping his bats in the clubhouse sauna until it was time to hit; the experiment failed when the pine tar on the handle melted.  Despite his dislike of the place, Murcer hit well at Candlestick, with a career on base average there of .400.
Although he may not have been comfortable on the field, he made himself comfortable in the clubhouse, sitting in the rocking chair that had followed him from New York.  Bobby became notorious for his use of a rocking chair.  He had five more at home, and would take a nap in one after day games.  The one in the clubhouse was rather short because the day after his first Shea homer back in 1974, teammate Sparky Lyle had sawed through the legs.  Lyle reset the rocker so that Bobby couldn’t see it had been damaged, and everyone got a good laugh when he fell to the floor.  The clubhouse staff was able to repair the chair, and it followed Bobby the rest of his career.  The chair fit his easy-going attitude in the clubhouse, but it may have harmed his reputation, as some people thought he was too relaxed while playing, or that he didn’t work hard enough.  During his years in San Francisco, there may have been some truth to this since he was so unhappy.  Murcer even said that he felt that he was just visiting the National League teams he played on; he’d always be a Yankee in his heart.  The fact that the Yankees started winning pennants without him made him feel even worse, especially since the Giants were under .500 in each of his two seasons with the club.

Murcer’s request for a trade was finally honored on February 11, 1977, when he was sent to the Cubs in a multi-player deal that brought Bill Madlock to the Giants.  The Cubs didn’t want to pay Madlock up to $200,000 per year over several years, but Murcer was crafty enough to realize that he had the Cubs over a barrel.  They couldn’t afford not to sign him after trading Madlock’s contract for his, so Bobby negotiated his first multi-year deal, calling for $1,600,000 over five season.  The pact made him the highest paid Cub player in history.
Even better, Murcer’s power stroke, which had returned in June 1976, came with him from San Francisco.  With his help, the Cubs, who were 75-87 in 1976, had a great first half and led the league by seven and a half games by June 30.  They were in first place for two months until August 6, but faded badly to finish at 81-81.  Murcer was among the Runs Batted In leaders most of the season, but a poor September left him with disappointing final numbers of 27 home runs, 89 Runs Batted In and a .265 batting average, all enhanced by playing in hitter-friendly Wrigley Field.

That same 1977 season, he inadvertently became involved in a controversy even while he did a good deed.  He spoke to a young, sick fan on the telephone before a game, and then hit two home runs that night.  Keith Jackson, announcing the game for ABC-TV, reported that Murcer had promised a boy dying of cancer that he would try to hit a home run for him.  However, the boy hadn’t known he was dying until that moment.  The child passed away two weeks later.

The next season things didn’t go well for Murcer as he slumped the first three months.  His hitting picked up in mid-season, as his return to a closed stance propelled him to a .317 batting average for the final three months.  His home run power disappeared again, and he hit only nine all season.  The Cubs teased their fans once more with a pennant run; they were only two and a half games out of first on August 27, but they again collapsed to finish at 79 and 83.

In 1979, he came under increasing criticism due to his lackluster play.  Many people felt the only reason he was still playing regularly was his large contract.  Cubs’ general manager Bob Kennedy had called Murcer’s fielding minor league quality in 1978, and when he missed a couple of routine fly balls in a spring training game, things got worse.  In response, his teammates showed their support by voting Murcer team captain.  This was an odd position for Murcer, who had always denied an interest in being a team leader, believing he didn’t have the right personality to take on such a responsibility.  He tried to do a good job, instituting a “kangaroo court” in the clubhouse, fining players for minor infractions.

In May, he was able to get the fans back on his side with a hot streak at bat, but when that ended, trade rumors swirled.  Talks with San Diego and Los Angeles came to nothing.  Murcer had a no-trade clause in his contract, so his approval was needed before he could be sent to another club.  Finally, on the morning of June 26, Kennedy said the Yankees were interested in obtaining him, and wanted to know if Murcer would okay a deal.  Bobby quickly said that he would, and a few hours later a trade for a minor league pitcher and a little cash made him a Yankee again.  After telling reporters he felt like he was going home and had never been happier, he flew to Toronto and was in the starting lineup that same night.

His improved state of mind didn’t do anything for his hitting, however.  He played fairly regularly for the Yankees, but by August 1, his slugging average was only .250.  His fielding in center field also left a lot to be desired.  There were fears that he was washed up.  That day, the Yankees wrapped up a series in Chicago.  Murcer stayed at the suburban home he was still renting with his close friends Lou Piniella and Thurman Munson.  The next day the Yankees were off, and Munson returned home to Canton, Ohio, where he tragically died when he crashed his new jet plane while practicing takeoffs and landings.

Murcer flew to Canton, and spent the night comforting Thurman’s widow, Diane, and their children.  Four days later, he returned there for the funeral, and delivered one of the eulogies.  He and his teammates went back to New York for a game that evening, and although he was tired, Murcer insisted on playing.  With the Yankees trailing 4-0 in the seventh, he hit a three-run homer, then came to bat in the ninth with runners on second and third and singled down the left field line for a 5-4 victory.  It was his first home run since returning to the Yankees.  Murcer put the bat he used in that game aside, and later gave it to Diane Munson.  The game seemed to serve as a catalyst for Murcer, who slugged over .500 from that day through the end of the season.

His hot hitting should have put him in a good position with the team heading into the 1980 season.  However, he had to compete for playing time with several other left handed hitting outfielders such as Reggie Jackson, Oscar Gamble, and Ruppert Jones, the team’s new center fielder.  In the first twenty-six games, he had only ten plate appearances.  He spent more time complaining than he did playing.  Murcer felt that he could still be a productive player, and feared that his career would come to an end without him having a chance to show what he could do.  He went around in such a funk that his teammates took to calling him “Black Cloud.”
He finally got a chance to play regularly against right-handed pitchers in late May, and from then until the end of July he drove in thirty-three runs in 122 at bats.  This hot streak was sadly interrupted in June, when his father passed away.  Murcer continued to hit fairly well the last two months, but in subsequent years his playing time steadily decreased.
In 1981, it didn’t look like the Yankees would have a spot for Murcer on their team, but an injury to Reggie Jackson at the end of spring training saved his job.  Murcer hit a pinch-hit grand slam home run on opening day in the Bronx, and received a huge ovation from the crowd.  He stayed with the team the rest of the year, except of course that he went out on strike with the other players for two months.  When the 1981 season ended, so did the big five-year contract he had signed with the Cubs.

In the off-season he waited to see if any team was interested in his services.  He had contract talks with Milwaukee, Texas, and a Japanese team but really wasn’t interested in changing teams, and accepted an offer to come to spring training with the Yankees without a contract.  Reggie Jackson was gone now, and the team needed some left-handed power.  Late in the spring, he was invited to the “Welcome Home Yankees” dinner.  Murcer said, “I think it’s a good sign that I officially got invited to the dinner, but they haven’t told me yet whether I’ll be sitting on the dais or waiting on tables.”  It turned out to be the former, as he signed a three-year, $1,125,000 contract with the Yankees.

In 1982, Murcer continued to hit well off the bench, but only received 141 at bats, just five in the last two months.  The following year, he once again had to worry about a roster spot.  The Yankees put him on their AAA Columbus farm team’s roster over the winter, bringing him to spring training as a non-roster player.  He quickly won a job by hitting safely in his first seven at bats in exhibition games.  However, once the regular season started, he found himself in his familiar spot on the bench, occasionally pinch-hitting.

Early in the season George Steinbrenner told Murcer that the Yankees needed his roster spot so that they could recall Don Mattingly.  Murcer was just 4-22 in limited playing time that season.

His playing career was now over.  Steinbrenner offered Murcer a spot in the television broadcast booth, and Bobby accepted. He started that night on WPIX. He would continue with the station through the 1984 season.  On August 7, 1983, the Yankees honored him with a “Bobby Murcer Day” at Yankee Stadium.

When he was fired from his television job, the Yankees hired him as an assistant vice president for 1985.  Working in the front office for Steinbrenner didn’t suit Bobby, and the next year he was rehired as a broadcaster, working both on tv and radio.

In 1987, he was only part of the television crew as the season opened, and at the end of May found himself in uniform again, this time serving as a hitting coach for the Yankees.  Oddly, since they were over the limit on coaches, during games Bobby had to wear “civilian” clothes and watch the games from the press box.  Odder still, he only coached left-handed hitters, with full-time coach Jay Ward continuing to work with the right-handers.  This arrangement lasted the rest of the season, and then he returned to broadcasting.

Bobby Murcer died July 12, 2008 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma.
A large part of this biography comes from the SABR Baseball Biography Project written by Clifford Blau.  It can be found online at http://bioproj.sabr.org

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Well, that’s it for today’s Baseball History Podcast.  I’ll see you later at the ballpark