The old Yankees.

Thinking of Bobby Murcer makes me think about the old Yankees of 1965 to 1975. The team I grew up with and saw almost every day during the summer. We would jump on the train and get tickets almost every week, sometimes three and four times a week. You could always get an upper deck ticket for less than five bucks. Sometimes only a dollar. And then you would move down to the box seats.

Sometimes we went with the YMCA or the Con Ed kids. We would be in the bleachers screaming our fool heads off. Bobby Murcer would be right in front of us sometimes when he would run to get a ball that went all the way to the wall. In the old configuration the monuments were on the field. I remember when Mel Stottlemeyer hit an inside the park grand slam as the ball rattled around the monuments. You could go on the field on the warning track after the game to exit the Stadium. Thats when you could see the monuments. When they redid the stadium in the seventies, they set up Monument Park in behind the fence and made it a lot more corporate.

Those were the Horace Clark Yankees. We sucked. We went crazy when Celerino Sanchez came up to play third to replace that bust from the White Sox Rich Mc Kinney. Man he was a folk hero for a couple of months. But that team really sucked. It was only known for piss poor baseball and wife swapping pitchers.

So when I hear other asshole fans tell me that as a Yankee fan I don't know what it is to lose, I say suck it. I know all to well what it is like. Just ask Horace Clarke. Or Johnnie Ellis. Or Steve Kline. Or Frank Tepidino. Or Roy White. Or Bobby Murcer.