I love baseball.

I’m a little sappy in the way I have a nostalgic view of the sport. Baseball speaks to me of summer days and warm weather. I’ve spent a lot of good days at the ballpark with people I love and through baseball I’ve also managed to experience a multitude of great moments over the years. They’ve left left me with some fond memories, something I’m ever thankful for.

Surprisingly, there are probably a couple of baseball memories that are stronger than other life memories for me. I can recall vividly certain baseball memories going back quite a number of years while surprisingly the nuances of day to day life from those time escapes me.

A few of the ones I can call up immediately are moments as when Jim Abbott threw his no-hitter (and while any no-hitter is special the fact that Jim Abbott threw one is a remarkable feat), the earthquake during the World Series in San Francisco, watching Jim Mason hit a home run in the first World Series game I got to see at Yankee stadium in 1976, getting a chance to take my cousin to see Bobby Murcer in person and spending, going to the Subway Series at Shea with the same cousin in 2000.

I normally don’t give myself to writing something when a celebrity dies. I’ve made a decision to stop doing it but this happens to be a rare exeption because the person who died a short time back is someone I actually met.

As I said, I’m an enormous baseball fan; because of this, certain players hold a special place in my heart. Often enough, it’s for being ‘old school.’ By old school, I mean that a player may have played the game of baseball hard, comported themselves off the field as an ambassador of the sport or simply set an example in a way that’s the exception rather than the rule of professional atheletes today. Consequently, those select few have garnered my longtime respect and admiration. 

Bobby Murcer was all of those things.

I always try to surprise my cousin for a bunch of reasons.... he was the one who helped me get out from under a huge tax mess and he’s helped me in other ways at different times in my life that I want him to know how much I appreciate him.

I’ve taken him out for expensive dinners but he also got to go to a World Series game with me, a couple of playoff games, and a whole host of other cool things but without realizing it I’ve already mentioned some of those things above.

Again, my cousin and I got to see Bobby Murcer in a very intimate setting over at the then Holiday Inn on 57th St at an event set up by the learning annex. I can’t think that there were more than 30 people there but it was really great.

Bobby Murcer was from Oklahoma and listening to his drawl and his stories about being a Yankee player and then a Yankee broadcaster were a treat for anyone who followed the Yankees over that period of time (and my cousin still is a Yankee fan and I was a big Yankee fan right up until 1995).

It was a great time, then Bobby passed and it was especially sad because nothing about the Yankees since can quite capture that same magic. I find John Sterling absolutely UNLISTENABLE and Suzyn Waldman to much of an enabler to enjoy any Yankee radio broadcast.

I can’t say the TV team is great either but Bobby Murcer, I could just listen to him broadcast all day and it was a treat that will be missed. (by the way, this was started way back in July of 2008)