Sports

IF ONLY MUNSON WERE HERE TO FEEL LOVE OF YANK FANS

HERE is the thing that makes me saddest whenever I think of Thurman Munson: He should be the star next week when the Yankees conduct what remains one of the greatest traditions in sports, Old-Timers’ Day. He should be the featured attraction. He should be the one who gets the loudest cheers, the longest ovation, the greatest amount of attention.

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Old Timers’ Days were invented for guys like Munson, guys who had special and perennial connections with the fans. The very first baseball game I attended was in June 1974, back when the Mets actually thought enough of their fans and their own history to hold Old Timers’ Days, and the highlight that afternoon was when the center-field fence opened up and in walked Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Duke Snider and Willie Mays.

I was 7 years old, and I’d never heard a noise like the one that accompanied that fabulous foursome as they slowly made their way from the outfield toward home plate, a noise so loud it even drowned out LaGuardia Airport. I also had never seen my father cry before, but there he was, bawling like a baby, watching the heroes of his youth amble by on gimpy knees and the wings of the fans’ devotion.

That’s what they should be able to have at Yankee Stadium next week: Munson and Yogi Berra, walking from the outfield, maybe both of them wearing shin guards or chest protectors for extra effect. There is little doubt that Yogi is now the most beloved living Yankee, the surviving icon of one era of dominance. And if Munson were still alive, he would be right there, too, the beacon of another era of Yankee prominence.

We know, of course, that is impossible, because 30 years ago next month, on Aug. 2, 1979, Munson’s plane went down in Canton, Ohio, drilling a void into a large segment of Yankees history, one that remains to this day. I am always amazed at the way old-time Yankees are received now at the Stadium for various honorary functions; the old-timers such as Yogi and Whitey Ford are always greeted with roars, as are the more recent conquering heroes such as Bernie Williams and Paul O’Neill and Tino Martinez.

More muted are the reactions given the likes of Ron Guidry and Sparky Lyle and Graig Nettles and, especially, Reggie Jackson. There’s a warmth there, and a fondness, but you rarely hear the same crashing waves of sound you hear for the older Yankees, or the younger ones, and I can’t help but wonder if it’s almost a muted response out of respect for who’s not there.

If you are a Yankees fan, you miss Thurman. You’ve missed him for 30 years. And you will probably always miss him, and lament the fact that not only was he taken from you, and his family, far too soon, he was denied these annual rites of devotion. Think of all the hundreds of times, the thousands of times, that Mantle and DiMaggio heard the deafening roars of appreciation tumble on them from the upper decks of the old stadium; Munson wasn’t in that class as a player, but he was absolutely in that class as a fan favorite, as the symbol of an era. And he never got the chance to hear the people say thank you.

So do yourself a favor, sometime between now and next Sunday: go out and get a copy of “Munson: The Life and Death of a Yankee Captain,” a wonderful and heartbreaking biography published by Doubleday and written by Marty Appel, who himself is one of the great New York sports institutions of the past four decades. Appel was an assistant in the Yankees’ PR office when he first met Munson 41 years ago, when the Yankees had Munson’s Binghamton Triplets play Waterbury in a Double-A game at Yankee Stadium.

Ten years later, the two men collaborated on Munson’s autobiography, a work that even Appel has long lamented left out so much about Munson’s life that would have better explained who he was and how he achieved what he did, mostly because Munson didn’t want to delve too deeply into himself and wasn’t much interested in using a book to settle old scores. That book sold, sadly, as much because Munson happened to die when he did as much as anything interesting contained between the covers.

Appel’s new book, however, is a wonderful example of what’s possible when you have a compelling subject and an author who not only has the insight to tell that subject’s story but also the ability to tell it in a way that is affectionate without being fawning; that is honest without being voyeuristic; and that is eloquent without being purple. It is, no doubt, closer to the book Appel would have liked Munson to write himself back in 1979, but 30 years distance (and a lifetime of perspective, and a skilled author’s typewriter) make this book far better than that one ever likely could have been.

Perhaps the most amazing part of this book is that it recounts, in remarkable detail, the tragic events of and leading up to Aug. 2, 1979, in a way that’s never been done this completely before, yet still is far more a celebration of how Munson lived than how he died. In that way, it is a perfect companion piece to “Luckiest Man,” Jonathan Eig’s 2005 masterpiece on the life and death of Lou Gehrig, another Yankee captain taken too soon who was also denied the warm embrace of a welcoming Stadium (with one notable exception, of course).

Reading “Munson” won’t make next Sunday any less sad when they introduce the roster of returnees and No. 15 won’t be among them. But it will make you feel better each time you flip it open. And I can think of no better way to spend a couple of summer hours than that. Can you?

Mike Vaccaro’s next book, “First Fall Classic,” will be released Oct. 6. His e-mail address is michael.vaccaro@nypost.com, and for a daily dose of Vac’s Whacks click http://www.blogs.nypost.com/sports/vaccaro.

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