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Sunday marks 47 years since we lost Thurman Munson, who not only played awfully close to Hall of Fame level for all of the nine-plus years he was a Yankee — (the opinion here: While it’s right that Don Mattingly’s candidacy seems to gather steam as the years go on, so should Munson’s) — he also left behind an even grander legacy.
He made it OK to be captain of the Yankees again.
After Lou Gehrig died, it became something of an assumed tradition that no other Yankee would ever be named captain. So Joe DiMaggio never was. Mickey Mantle never was. Yogi Berra never was. And none of them expected to be, because in The Bronx, for 37 years, the only captain was a man who had passed away in 1941.
That changed 50 years ago, when George Seinbrenner — football man at heart — demanded the Yankees name a captain. I mentioned this anecdote earlier this year, on the anniversary of this brainstorm. Marty Appel, then the Yankees PR frontman and forever the team’s foremost historian, reminded Steinbrenner that it had been Joe McCarthy’s wish that no other man ever be bestowed the designation.
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