I was 20, and Munson had been my favorite player for years. I was slinging blacktop for the city street department in my home town during the Summer, and the news hit me hard in the break room that afternoon. I wept alot throughout the rest of the day-- death had been a stranger to me, no funerals since I was a tot too young to understand. This truly was tough to get through.
I was lucky enough to have met Thurman in 1978--shook his hand at a bar near the team hotel in the Twin Cities. Many Yankees were relaxing there and it was a dream come true for fans of the pinstripers like me, but the sixty seconds or so talking to Munson were easily the highlight of the day and whole series I came to watch. I'll never forget.
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If we are to have another contest in the near future of our national existence, I predict that the dividing line will not be Mason and Dixon's but between patriotism and intelligence on the one side, and superstition, ambition and ignorance on the other. - Ulysses S. Grant, military commander, 18th US President.
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